But do it remembering that DEM Leadership IS US!

We face a terribly difficult challenge right now. There is a political battle to fight INSIDE the Democratic Party that is nothing short of life or death.

But within the Progressive movement, all of our rhetorical instincts have been trained by 20 years of fighting the GOP to react to bad politics in a heavily partisan manner. We--of course correctly!--trashed the GOP for decades. When Bush did something bad, we hammered him.

But the situation has changed in a way that renders our traditional tactics dangerously out of date. The leadership is now US, not THEM. If we react to what Obama, Pelosi, and (ugh) Reid do using the same tactics we used against the GOP, we weaken the very forces we need to achieve our goals--our own party!

Our situation, an excruciating dilemma--is simultaneously partisan and trans-partisan:

- The same corrupt forces that purchased the GOP lock, stock, and barrel, have heavily compromised major portions of our own Party. We must fight the neo-libs in our own party as resolutely and implacably as we did the GOP.

- At the same time, partisanship is an inescapable reality of enormous significance in the battle. The infrastructure and identity of the Democratic Party are precisely what we fought so hard to advance, and we did it because they make progress possible. To undermine the Democratic Party is to fatally weaken our battle for our principles.

This is not an easy situation, folks. Pragmatists who want to excuse the Party's betrayals of its constituency give the game away. But so do idealists who are eager to throw the Party under the bus. Both approaches are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

What we need is to develop ways to SIMULTANEOUSLY ...

1. Support the Party

2. Pressure it effectively to move it sharply left

As a movement, we desperately need to develop  synthetic combination of 1 AND 2. And, if we don't find it soon, I think that both American democracy and the earth's climate may not survive.

Jerome--I challenge you and all the leaders of the Progressive movement to collaborate energetically and purposefully to develop coordinated strategies for pressuring Democratic leaders without trashing them. I don't know what the key to that would be and I have no influence anyway. Nor do I have the inside knowledge that you folks do.

What I do know is that, right now, the Progressive movement is rudderless. The moment is not about winning elections. It's about organizing to influence governance, a very different thing. ORGANIZING! Not just venting and whining and fretting about 67 different issues as WE are currently doing.

We need leadership which helps us focus our energies:

1. On one central issue at a time ...

2. And with one clear tactical initiative.

Lead us, guys! We need to make a difference in the Party without weakening the Party and we need to do it soon!

I never know how people will judge speeches. Here, in this thread, people seem to wrestle with what one is looking for. Consider this line:

"Few applause lines, wasn't trying to create a mood of celebration."

I don't want to pick on desmoinesdem, but I am bewildered by this sort of judgment. It sounds like the application of a category derived from pundit-speak. And it seems pretty irrelevant--how can you establish applause lines with 4 million people spread out over several square miles outside in the cold?

So I don't worry about trying to judge whether this speech is "great" in some aesthetic sense. What I know is this:

Barrak ENGAGED every aspect of the malaise that is killing our nation, the world's economy, and the planet itself. He drilled down to the core of each issue, from world diplomacy to rule of law to economic regulation to interfaith tolerance. Point by point by point, he absolutely NAILED the heart of what needs to be changed.

He set down markers, folks. Let's hold him to them.

He heralded an agenda of re-invention. Lord, do we need that.

And laid out a vision that reminds the world of what a socially responsible government can be. Amen, brother.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," we read in Proverbs 29.

I can't imagine a better vision than the one Barrak laid out today.

There are about 800 pressing issues on the plate. Many of these issues have much higher priority.

Furthermore, I would say this.

Currently, the DEM Party does not possess sufficient political capital to accomplish systematic election reform. It simply is not yet a realistic possibility.

We may or may not get to the point where we can take this on. I hope we do, but I don't know.

But I do know that the moment for it is not now. We have many other battles to win first, and if we lose them, election reform will cease to have any meaning.

The GOVERNOR of the state is a Thug.

But the election is run by the SECRETARY of STATE, who is a very able, fair DEM.

As a resident of Minny, I am very confident that the recount will be done as fairly as is humanly possible.

I missed the broadcast last night--I was working--and just watched it online an hour ago.

I thought it was genuinely superb, BOTH politically AND in terms of policy. I honestly feel that it will make a real difference with hesitating working class folks. Inspiration AND solutions!

But I have seen little discussion of it online today, and I was wondering what the ratings were. I have a sense that the punditocracy is a bit miffed at Obama doing an end run that bypasses their control, and have tended to try to overlook it. If the message didn't get out, then it couldn't do much good.

Well, these ratings are excellent. With big ratings for that presentation, then I cannot imagine that any genuinely undecided person wouldn't feel a huge pull toward Barack.

I will be very surprised if this show doesn't raise his following by a point or two, and especially in hard working parts of the country. As in, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, etc.

Barack is running the best campaign America has ever seen.

is more electable than Edwards.

I would love to see America elect a woman. Or a person of color. Or a woman of color.

I like much about Obama. I like far less about Hillary.

There is no way that either can compete with Edwards when it comes to electability.

Give Edwards the microphone that comes with being a nominee of a major party, and he would obliterate the GOP.

Meanwhile, Hillary and Obama would struggle with American prejudices.

Furthermore, both Hillary and Obama would hand to the GOP the typical problem shared by DEM candidates since McGovern: fuzzy principles.

Speculative polls months in advance do not deal with these matters.

No poll will convince me right now that either Hillary or Obama is more electable than Edwards is.

Noted.

You are apparently the constituency for a triangulator like Hillary. You must be happy looking forward to trying to win 51% of elections.

And apparently you think that "some in the progressive/liberal movement" have foolish, unrealistic expectations about the party. OK.

Guess what's going to happen when you turn to "some in the progressive/liberal movement" who provided the volunteer and fund raising energy that lifted the party the last 6 years. They just may not be there for you.

And you know what, if you really believe that the job of the Party is to "win elections" rather than to end and prevent wars and deal with all the other crises that are emerging in  America today, ...

Then you might as well be a Thug, where partisanship is the only notion that has meaning.

My God.

I find your response appalling.

Have fun counting your votes while we bomb the crap out of Iran and kill more hundreds of thousands of people.

"Both sides live to fight another day; neither suffer more than temporary and superficial harm."

Disagree. Completely.

We don't have to win this vote. It means nothing except insoafar as it advances the political football on the war--or not.

What DEMs have failed to understand for decades is that you can win by losing votes! (The GOP has long understood this.)

What happened today?

The DEMs tried to take a step toward ending the war.

And the GOP obstructed that effort.

Every step like that not only erodes GOP political capital and INCREASES DEM captial! We get stronger. They get weaker.

I just heard a clip of Schumer promising to relentlessly come back again and again!

THAT IS THE NUTS, FOLKS! Come back to this again and again with steps ever closer to de-authorization and beyond. Every time the GOP stops the movement, they lose. And if they don;t stop, we win.

This is a big day folks. The DEM leadership showed they are beginning to understand that they win by fighting battles, even those they "lose."

Then why is her candidacy ruled by the same tringulating crap that her husband's cabal followed?

I see not one shred of evidence that Hillary is her own person.

I see abundant, overflowing evidence that she is the tool of the DLC cabal that is manufacturing her candidacy.

I will believe she is her own person when she shows evidence of it. It will be a long wait.

"She hasn't truly learned the lessons of 9-11."

You are exactly right.

And THIS is why breaking HONESTLY AND RESPONSIBLY with the past is essential.

That's why people want people who were WRONG about the war to DEAL WITH THAT before trying top move on.

If they won;t, they then cannot learn the lesson you refer to.

This is:

"The hatred and vitriol that Sen. Clinton receives on this and other blogs in my humble opinion is despicable."

Where do you get off characterizing my disgust at Hillary's imnneffective campaign as "hatred and virtiol"? It's like Wingers dismissing criticism of Bush as Bush hating.

I WANT TO LIKE HILLARY'S CANDIDACY!

But her candidacy sux. She has no principles and she represents the people whop have destroyed the DEM Party and are bent on destroying the nation.

Hillary could still win my vote. I don't hate HER! She's a perfectly fine human being.

But she wants to lead MY NATION and MY PARTY and she does so with lousy principles and as a tool for the very people who are behind the Liebermanization of the DEM Party.

THAT I DESPISE!

But it isn't personal. It's POLITICAL!

And your attempt to mis-characterize the honest response of committed progressives who see the weakness and wrong headedness of her candidacy as personal vilification is appallingly narrow minded.

Grow up.

"Hillary has nothing to apologize for."

Hillary Clinton has screwed up on the war for YEARS! ANd she does not give any indication of a stance with any clarity.

You cite Kerry as a comparison showing that an apology is not necessary? Kerry? Do you remember '04?

Hillary Clinton has dithered and triangulated and avoided responsibility for Iraqq since '03.

And she is STILL DOING IT!

Maybe if she looked at her FAILURE in the past, she would have a clue about how she need to change course to succeed moving forward!

Argh. There's nothing left to say.

DEM toadies who stand up for their weak, misguided, irresponsible "leaders" are just as pathetic as GOP toadies who stand up for theirs.

Scores of US soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis die each week. And DEM leaders can't find the courage to stand up and take a decisive stand!

Pathetic.

I am disgusted by Hillary's campaign.

Look. It's not a knee-jerk response. I would LOVE to support a woman for president. (52 year old white male here.) And I have sympathy for the human side of the woman. (There is one, isn't there?) She went through hell and it would be a wonderful example of poetic justice if she returned to the White House and shoved that in the GOP's face. (I suspect that many Hillary supporters are driven by that instinct.)

But this woman doesn't have an ounce of leadership or vision in her body. She is WHOLLY an inflated product of the DC-insider machine propping her up. On a lesser level, her candidacy is fabricated out of nothing in a way that has parallels with the selling of Bush in 2000.

And I do not believe that her front runner status and early poll results will last long when people start paying attention. I think they're phony and unsustainable. I think she will crash and burn, because DEM activists will not swallow dreck the way GOP ditto heads did in 2000.

Hillary's utter failure on Iraq is a neon light flashing over her head. She cannot hide her faiure, and I think that her popularity will shrink on this issue just as McCain's has done.

I alswo think she is a lousy candidate who will wear very poorly during the long campaign.

I have long predicted that she will not survive the DEM primaries. The general? Foggedaboudit!

But suppose I am wrong? Suppose her machine pounds down the challengers and she accepts the nomination?

Well, until very recently, I always assumed that I would vote for her with distaste.

But I am starting to formulate a different sense of my own inclinations. I am starting to feel that I would neither work for her nor vote for her. And here's the fundamental reson:

Voting for Hillary is not voting for Hillary. It's voting for the triangulating insider creeps who are running her as a puppet.

And THEY ARE DANGEROUS! Given a WH victory, those creeps would immediately move to throttle the Progressive Revolution in the Democratic Party. And THAT would be very, very bad for America. The Progressive Movement would be set back some number of years, and we cannot aford that.

The ONLY reason to vote for Hillary for President in the general election would be to think about Supreme Court nominations. That's the only argument I can think of in the other direction.

And assuming that we extend our control of the Senate and House and continued the Progressive Revolution in the Party, we could probably manage SCOTUS nominations by a weakened GOP president.

And if the Carville Creeps fail with Hillary, I really think they will be left without a helluva lot of options. I think they will then be decisively discredited in the eyes of the broad party.

Well, I dunno. 2008 is a long way off, and I do have an open mind.

But I find myself becoming increasingly resolute in my opposition to Hillary. And I don't think I am alone.

Gawd, she is a disaster as a candidate!

"I really think we netroots folks have to be uncompromising when it comes to single-payer, because it's not going to happen otherwise."

Yep. I agree completely.

Eventually, some candidate will get it right. But until then ...

I refuse to get caught up in compromises that have no chance.