No Give-Up

To read the blogs on the left today, you'd think Democrats just went out and killed puppies. I'm not too happy either about Sam Alito's imminent confirmation. I thought at the very least you deny your opponent a moment of glory at the State of the Union, and force an unpopular President to whine about it from the lectern. Now we'll see Mrs. Golden-Globe-for-crying-on-cue Alito sitting next to Laura Bush, probably with a purple finger and a Health Savings Account in her hands. You'd have changed the narrative with a legitimate one-day filibuster.

But we lost this battle in November 2004 (accepting for a moment that the votes were counted properly). You can do a lot with 40 Senators, but want you can't do is find much political cover, especially when so many of this crop of Democrats come from red states. A 9-vote margin of error as opposed to a 4- or 5-vote is huge. Or better yet, win the chamber and you can defeat these things outright. If it was a question of a few moderates turning to Alito when we had a majority, that's one thing. This is quite another.

That's certainly not a vote for surrender. The thing to do is to channel the negative energy into winning races this November. I got a call this weekend from the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rather than assail this person with "You Democrats have to stand up and filibuster or you don't get a dime from me ever again" and the like, I ponied up a couple shekels. The key is to win elections.

From a strategic standpoint, a lot of Dems stood up in opposition to this nominee (and I assume more will in the final vote, where Alito probably won't break 65), and the Internet activists made a proud showing. We did about the best that could be done with this crop in there. It's well past time for a new crop.

That means Ned Lamont's possible primary challenge to Joe Lieberman should be supported. It means Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, and Paul Hackett or Sherrod in Ohio, and Jon Tester in Montana, and Harold Ford in Tennessee, and Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and Jack Carter in Nevada, and Ben Cardin in Maryland, and Bob Menendez in New Jersey (technically he's an incumbent, but he just got there), and countless others in the Senate and House need our support. It's one thing to be depressed and upset and angry, and despair that fundamental rights will be taken from the American people. But the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, and we have the power and the message to take the two others back. Which of course will eventually affect the third.

Matt Stoller sums it up this way:

In case you haven't noticed, the netroots have taken huge strides over the past two weeks.  Here's a quick rundown.

The Filibuster - The Senate was flooded with calls during the filibuster, despite a complete lack of leadership from NARAL, PFAW, and the groups.

Glenn Greenwald and the Dewine Amendment - Glenn Greenwald uncovered the fiasco of the Dewine amendment, which got major media coverage and substantially advanced the story on wiretapping.  He is now blogging questions for the Judiciary Committee, here and here.

Jane Hamsher and the Washington Post - Jane Hamsher led a campaign to force the Washington Post to correct itself on the Abramoff scandal, showcasing the lack of accountability of Washingtonpost.com.

The MyDD poll - Chris Bowers led the first open source polling operation ever, funded and designed by you.  This data revealed that there is no national consensus behind the Iraq war, the failure of the Homeland Security's persuasive authority, as well as partisan attitudes behind security concerns.  (And there's more to come.)

SOTU parody - James Adomian released a hilarious SOTU parody, which has been seen 160,000 times so far (44,000 times on our internal host, before we moved it too youtube).

TV Blowhards - We've waged hard-hitting campaigns against Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, tarnishing their credentials as legitimate journalists and challenging the media establishment to examine the unaccountable pundits who grow fat off of spewing dishonest nonsense on TV.  Russert has engaged in a smear campaign against Arianna Huffington after she revealed conflicts of interest on Meet the Press, and Matthews retracted his statements and spent a few days pretending he and Michael Moore were journalistic buddies.

And now we're exploring action against Lieberman.

Congrats.  We're going to change the party.  We're going to do it, because we are doing it.

We are. And so there's a time for despair, and then a time to get to work. In the words of Joe Hill, don't mourn, organize.