On Ideas

This kind of crap infuriates me:

RUSSERT: We have seen the Democratic candidates nurturing the blogosphere and the bloggers. Some would say pandering to them. And yet after one of them wins the nomination and begins to try to turn to the center and run across the country in a general election, will the progressive bloggers be outraged by that potential behavior?

BAI: I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why. You mentioned the pandering, and, as you may know, I helped moderate the debate at the blogger convention in Chicago, and there was an awful lot of pandering going on out there. [laugh from both Bai and Russert] But I don’t think that will be a problem, and here is why.

This is a very tactical movement. This is a movement based almost entirely around winning or losing, about how you get the blue team to beat the red team. This is not a movement based on any vision of government. And that’s really, you know, a large part of what I talk about and sort of reveal…uh… in the book.

Yes we frickin' do. It's built on the ideals of the Constitution, including regulated capitalism so that everyone gets a fair shake, promoting the general welfare through the common good, and equality of opportunity to pursue happiness and liberty. I could name about 50 specific policies while we're at it. The issue is that progressives actually have a surfeit of ideas, and different ways to go about solving the problems we face within those broad ideals, and we don't all agree with one another. It's this terrible burden of independent thought.

The fact that we understand regional realities and the need to build a progressive movement instead of springing it on America everywhere right away, is where Bai falls off the rails. A Democrat in Nebraska that votes for a progressive Speaker is an asset even if his vote isn't always right.

Furthermore, exactly what ideals or broad vision do these media mavens share? Do they even bother to live up to the ideals of their job description, to strive for the truth above all, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to stake out an adversarial position with those in power in order to arrive at the facts, loss of cocktail party privileges be damned?