Ian Welsh. The liberal / progressive  blogs movement failed because of a lack of core beliefs and obsequiousness to the Democratic Party, which mostly co-opted them. I never expected them to succeed since they had no real plan for how they would take over the Democratic Party or how they expected not to be corrupted and co-opted while trying. To me, they seemed earnest, well-meaning, and naive. My politics were forged during the radicalism of the 1960’s and I’ve never believed voting will accomplish much.
Unlike the Tea Party, most left wingers don’t really believe their own ideology. They put partisanship first, or they put the color of a candidate’s skin or the shape of their genitals over the candidate’s policy. Identity is more important to them than how many brown children that politician is killing.
Tea Party members are partisan too. The big difference is the Tea Party will stand and fight. Quick, tell me, what does the Democratic Party stand for? Not much, far as I can tell. The prog blog movement too often got caught up in championing vaguely progressive candidates then collapsing into supporting the establishment candidate because of the “lesser of two evils” theory. Nader got that quite right when he called it the “evils of two lessers.” And of course netroots was almost completely opposed to third party runs or anything that seriously questions the existing system or capitalism.
So progressives have no power, because they have no principles: they cannot be expected to actually vote for the most progressive candidate, to successfully primary candidates, to care about policy first and identity second, to not take scraps from the table and sell out other progressive’s interests.
Liberals and progs wanted to reform the Democratic Party from within. This can’t be done. It, like the Republican Party, is corrupt and utterly beholden to special interests.
The Avocado Declaration remains completely relevant.
Peter Camejo wrote The Avocado Declaration in 2004. It details how a prime function of the Democratic Party is to siphon real protest into itself, where it then renders it inert. This has been going on for quite some time. After all, the Democratic Party backstabbed the Populist Party in the 1890’s.
He wrote this from a Green Party perspective as a vice presidential candidate on the Nader ticket. However, his analysis of how the Democratic Party pretends to be the friend of social movements before attempting to co-opt or neutralize them, remains on target and cogent. Both parties are corporatist and do not serve the people. That’s his primary point.
Interestingly, mainstream Republicans though they could co-opt the Tea Party and instead almost got jacked by them, with the result that their party is now fracturing.
Jerome Armstrong has a long comment to Welch’s post with detailed history, a must-read, about how and why netroots imploded.
When Democrats sided with the banks in 2008, and the progressive movement balked at primary challenges against those bankster-sponsored incumbents in 2010, it was all over.