Today is screw the base day, where insider liberals whine about us not accepting their ineffective bullshit.  First up is weakling Louise Slaughter and her diary on Dailykos.  Second up is 23 members of the CBC who wrote an incredibly whiny letter to Clinton, Obama, and Edwards asking them to do the Fox News-CBCi debate.  And third is Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist.

Alright, and to the barricades!

FU One

Representative Louise Slaughter is a nice example of the old progressive caucus mentality.  Here's her pathetic whiny diary on Daily Kos explaining why she's chosen to kill more Americans and Iraqis with her cowardly choices.  Activists are mad, as you can read in the comments.  Slaughter is basically acting like an irresponsible child.  She keeps pretending that this is Bush's war instead of an American war that we can and need to stop, and it's everyone's responsibility to deal with it but hers.  

Slaughter has always been an institutionalist, though she has a liberal voting record.  She's quite proud of her integrity and work on ethics, but if you talk to actual citizens that work on the issue, she's not there when you need her.  Last cycle, Slaughter refused to file an ethics complaint against Republicans because she didn't want to break the ethics truce with Tom Delay inc.  And then there's Slaughter endorsing a self-funding primary challenge to Eric Massa in NY-29, even though Massa has all the grassroots support in the district.

At the end of the day, Slaughter is part of a machine.  She doesn't have any independent capacity to make decisions or work according to progressive values.  She plays by Republican Calvinball rules.

FU Two

Let's go to the mostly progressive CBC and their choice to protect a really bad decision.  Here's a list of CBC members who whined to the Presidentials that they should go on Fox News in a letter written and sent a few days ago.  Color of Change listed the signers as follows.  I removed two of them because their names weren't clear. and I also bolded the members of the progressive caucus.  The CBC members who signed the letter didn't want their names out there, so I'm putting them out there.  It's so awesome how they want to ask Democrats to go on Fox News and don't want their names associated with the ask.  

Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick
Bennie Thompson
James Clyburn
Sanford Bishop
G.K. Butterfield
Mel Watt
Danny Davis
John Lewis
Keith Ellison
Charles Rangel
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Sheila Jackson Lee
Donna Christian-Christensen
Diane Watson
Al Wynn
Elijah Cummings
David Scott
Yvette Clarke
John Conyers
Hank Johnson
Al Green
Corrine Brown

Keith Ellison is particularly disappointing.  

FU Three

Let's go for old reliable in progressive disappointment, Hillary Clinton.  Here's Mark Penn, her chief strategist, on his corporate and political work.

`I have found the mixing of corporate and political work to be stimulating, enormously helpful in attracting talent, and helpful in cross- pollinating new ideas and skills.'

``And,'' he added, ``I have found it good for business.''

And what does Clinton think of this?

``The real question from the campaign perspective is whether Senator Clinton is comfortable with what Mark is doing, and the answer to that is yes, unequivocally,''

Progressives have seen better days. I think we all knew this was coming prior to the 2006 election, and it's best to take the long view. We didn't get into this mess in 2003, and it's going to take more than one election cycle to get us out.