Thursday, June 22, 2006
Left, Right or Center?
Pragmatism or expediency
Summer has begun. The mid-term elections are getting closer and there are signs that the Democrats don't have their act together. The Republicans are vulnerable but how strong is the backlash against their excesses and the president's failed policies remain open to questions. A lot can happen between now and November. But November will certainly be an indicator of the direction the winds are blowing. Then the presidential hopefuls will begin jockeying in earnest for 2008. David Broder's Thinking Outside The Blog describes the influence of bloggers in shaping policies of the Democratic Party. "But the blogs I have scanned are heavier on vituperation of President Bush and other targets than on creative thought. The candidates who have been adopted as heroes by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the convention's leader, and his fellow bloggers have mainly imploded in the heat of battle -- as was the case with Howard Dean in 2004 -- or come up short, as happened to the Democratic challengers in special House elections in Ohio and California."
- Fortunately, there are others than these "net roots" activists working on the challenge of defining the Democratic message. I do not include the Democratic congressional leadership in the hopeful camp. The new legislative "agenda" that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Co. trotted out last week was as meager as it was unimaginative.
Yes, bloggers like Moulitsas of the DailyKos have an impact. If some of them are strident, some stridency is needed. For too long the divisive and militant tactics of the Republicans succeeded in muting the voice of opposition. However, for the Democrats to take back Congress calls for the need to compromise. My fear is how far to the right they will move. The Democratic leaders in Congress do not give much reason to hope that they will be more principled than the members across the aisle. I am for pragmatism; I will bitterly condemn them if they sell themselves and end up becoming Republican light.
Is the departure of Martin Taylor from Microsoft a significant event? To us, non techies, he was unknown until the announcement on June 20th that he was no longer vice president of Windows live and MSN marketing. There are speculations about where he will surface---Google, Yahoo. Does it really matter?
