“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
Barack Obama, January 8, 2008
When I started this blog over a year and a half ago, I had no idea where it would lead. That road leads me today to a new venture at Plunderbund, where I will join Eric Vessels, Brian Hester (aka Modern Esquire), Joe Mismas, Brian Guilfoos, and the rest of a growing crew at what promises to be the most ass kickin’est blog in Ohio, ever. Here’s my first post.
Why leave Blogger Interrupted behind? I did need this place to myself – one of the problems at group blogs where I’d contribute was a constant danger of the blog morphing into the Tim Russo Experience. It was always unfair to expect other bloggers to endure in their own space all that came with it. That job was mine alone, and it needed to be done in a place of my own.
Well, this blog has done its job. My past finally feels like the past. This blog, as important as it’s been to me, is a part of that past, been that way for a while. I once thought there’d be some big life changing moment when I knew for certain that I’d turned a corner, but it doesn’t work like that. No applause, no big payday, no choirs of angels serenading a happy ending, no victory lap. Redemption works like this – if you put your nose to the ground, and fight like hell, one day you just notice that, somehow it’s all…different. Nose is still to the ground, but it’s now focused on my new social media consulting business, and other such mundane matters I once thought I’d never be a part of again.
This blog will stay up and visible for a few reasons, not least being that if anyone wants to know about me, they can get it straight from this horse’s mouth. In addition, herein is documented a journey back from oblivion that I am quite certain has never remotely been travelled before by anyone – a kicking, scratching, and clawing at life, that isn’t just my story, it’s in some way all of ours. There but for the grace of God go all of us. You’ll never endure anything like it, that I promise you. But on your journey back from your own mistakes, maybe you’ll find a little hope in the knowledge that no matter how bad it may get, you’ll find a way. After all, I did.
You’ll be hearing from me plenty. I’m still freelancing for the Independent, which is getting some great traction. Still gonna blog hyper local at BLACKHEARTCleveland. And from now on, the political blogger in me will reside at the new Plunderbund 2.0. Eric’s been bangin’ on me to join Plunderbund forever, and I always made it clear that unless Brian Hester joined us, I’d just as soon stay at my own place. If you’re gonna do a group blog, it ain’t beanbag. It simply will not work unless you have a hard core of really tough bastards who know what they’re doing and cannot be played, bought, pressured, or seen to be holding back in the slightest. We’ve got that core at Plunderbund. And no blog in Ohio even comes close. Not one.
Thanks to everyone who came on this journey with me. Time for another one. See you there.
But one thing about the rally proved sparklingly clear: Michele Bachmann is a major star. When she stepped up to the podium on the Capitol steps, the crowd went wild. It wasn’t too hard to imagine the event as a warm up for the 2010 presidential election, where Bachmann might prove a far more viable candidate than Sarah Palin. The rally confirmed her primacy as a leading voice of the Republican Party—a party that, with this protest, has fully embraced the conservative movement’s most extreme elements.
Modern notes the wicked irony of Dayton mayor Rhine McLin endorsing Lee Fisher in September because of his record on JOBS, then losing her own JOB in November….because of JOBS. Lee Fisher is such a habitual loser, he infects everyone else with losing. But the real kicker is that McLin is about as neck deep in ODP as Chris Redfern, probably more. In addition to being interim ODP chair before Chris Redfern shoehorned himself into the seat….
Rhine McLin wasn’t just some mayor. Her father help founded the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus. She was a former Minority Whip in the State Senate. She still is the Vice-Chairwoman of the ODP’s Executive Committee.
Redfern and McLin are probably not going to be very friendly for the foreseeable future.
“The guy who won in Dayton did not get elected. She (McLin) was defeated.” — Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern, who said McLin didn’t commit enough time to campaigning early in the year.
This is just a tiny taste of the meltdown that will happen to Ohio Democrats if Lee Fisher wins his primary in May against Jennifer Brunner. Which is why Lee Fisher won’t win that primary.
I’ve had a long, bumpy history with the Great And Powerful Kos. I’ve been banned from his site so many times, I’ve lost count. We mixed it up in the UK in 2005 when he blogged for the Guardian, and I worked for Labour. For a while during the 2006 Senate primary, some of his sycophants made me a punching bag on his site. It’s funny how primaries work – Kos and I were both on the O-Train early, so no blog fights in 2008! Yay!
DailyKos is on my list every day, largely to see what diaries are percolating up the rec list. There’s no better way to gauge the pulse of the Democratic Party base than to watch that rec list. For example, the Kos diary list played a huge role in the explosion the McCain Palin Mob Youtube. When Eric posted the video there, it shot up the rec list so fast, got so many comments, it became a phenomenon instantly.
And occasionally, Kos comes down from his perch to tell us what he thinks. Kos is no longer the blogger he once was, I guess he’s too busy running the business, which is fine. However, when Kos does pipe up, he does have influence. I’ve seen some of his perpetually awkward, almost weird appearances on Olbermann and Maddow – the fact that the man looks congenitally incapable of taking media training doesn’t stop him from getting booked. But that’s o.k…..I’m all for progressive voices getting heard, even if they are going to look odd while doing it.
Well, this week, I started a new account at Kos – I get to post diaries starting next week! Who knows how long I’ll be allowed in the play pen. I don’t intend to shrink from debate, but I do plan to be a bit less gratuitous with the criticism. In that spirit, I really must respond to this declaration on Tuesday’s election results, much of which I agree with, aside from the following.
GOP turnout remained the same as last year, but Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem…
True. Dem turnout always goes down in off years, and GOP turnout always stays constant. It’s a function of who Democrats and Republicans are. The reasons are largely demographic, and likely to get worse, given that the Dem base is getting younger, more diverse, AND bigger, more likely to ignore off year elections, and older Republicans just aren’t dying off fast enough.
But Kos just can’t resist beating his chest over it, and as usual, issues a veiled threat from behind his curtain.
Tonight proved conclusively that we’re not going to turn out just because you have a (D) next to your name, or because Obama tells us to. We’ll turn out if we feel it’s worth our time and effort to vote, and we’ll work hard to make sure others turn out if you inspire us with bold and decisive action.
The choice is yours. Give us a reason to vote for you, or we sit home.
Dems sit home in off years anyway, Kos, sorry to break it to ya. I’m all for getting more reasons for Dems to turnout, getting more progressive results out of Congress, no doubt. But the Dem base isn’t going to turnout in off years no matter how many Kos-approved reasons they get. Republicans always will. This inflates the importance of a dwindling Republican base in off years, yes. It also places great pressure on congressional Democrats to chase the voters who do turn out….older voters who trend heavily Republican.
For example, black turnout compared to 2004 was huge in 2008, for one giant, rather obvious reason. What Kos-approved reason would have achieved that turnout in 2009? The Kos argument applies more to the younger voters, whose turnout out in NJ and VA in 2009 was half that in 2008. But would a Kos-approved reason have literally doubled young voter turnout? In an off-year?
It’s a time-tested, very old, chicken egg problem. Kos says the Dem base needs more reason to turnout. The Dem base just doesn’t turn out in off years, and unless they do, they won’t get those Kos-approved reasons. If someone has an answer to this problem, I’m all ears, but having been around this block a few times, I long ago resigned myself to off-year Republican gains, and a perpetual turnout battle in our base.
One year ago today, America elected it’s first African American president. The magnitude tends to get lost in the day to day rough and tumble of governing. But this awesome achievement will only grow moreso the further away from that day we travel. I’ve written before that if Barack Obama did precisely nothing with his presidency, America will owe him a debt it can never repay. Policy change, compared to this tectonic shift, is simply dwarfed.
But in the intervening year, Barack Obama has done well more than change American history. He’s pulled the American economic system away from total disintegration designed and implemented by the full flower of Republican economic orthodoxy. He’s put America back at the head of the table of the international community. He’s about to reform the American health care system. And he’s just gotten started.
The pressure from Barack Obama’s left to do more is a good thing. The internet, which allowed Barack Obama to make this history, is also giving voice, for the first time in memory, to an effective infrastructure of progressive pressure for change. Social progress toward equality and justice never got very far without this kind of pressure, and it’s great to see it continue in a new, more powerful medium. Good will certainly come of it.
But the deepest change is on the right.
The history of this man’s presidency necessarily created a backlash, with familiar undertones of ignorance, rejectionism, and blind hate. The core of this backlash is as old as the country itself, its vocabulary has been on automatic redial in their brains for 400 years, embedded into an ever shrinking, ever angry, tiny minority. That tiny, angry minority also has the internet, they have talk radio, and they have Fox News, all of which amplifies their angry backwardness well beyond its actual, quite tiny, reality. They will continue to test their puny impotence.
But Barack Obama didn’t create this history, America itself did, by becoming what America always becomes. The Italian oregano, Irish stew, East European paprikas of the last century’s turn, piled like cord wood into the Lower East Side of Manhattan, are today mixing with the Mexican poblanos, the Indian curries, the Chinese chiles that now embed into every community in every state….a uniquely American blend which made Barack Obama not only possible, but inevitable. That is the “real” America, and the fictional America of the reactionary Palinosaurs has been yielding to it, involuntarily, since the day the Declaration of Independence was signed. Barack Obama’s election merely put that reality into the White House.
The Palinosaurs will test their power, as they did this Tuesday in NY-23, to spectacular failure. Their fiction has been perishing under the heavy weight of America moving forward for centuries, only now, they have a villain to blame, and that villain is our president. They wanted their mano-a-mano referendum on this man, they picked their spot, they got their tiny turnout electorate in the most conservative congressional seat imaginable, a better battleground they could not have created, and on that ground, they lost. They will fail every single time, loudly, pathetically, and with great flourish, aiming their fire at a single man who happily accepts it.
This battle didn’t begin one year ago, but it was set in stone that day. As Barack says in the video below, ordinary people can still do extraordinary things in the United States of America. One such ordinary American has taken upon himself the full burden of his country’s singular ability to change. He has 3 years before his inevitable re-election.
I don’t know how many times the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has to make a god damned fool of itself before they get the most basic election processes correct, but this is one Tremonster who’s gonna make damn sure it’s documented, even in a low turnout, off year, muny election. Enough is enough already.
Mon, Nov 9, 2009
8 Comments