Netroots and New Orleans

I had a fun time in Pittsburgh and found the Netroots conference to be, as I did last year, a great opportunity and experience. Getting to speak on two separate panels was exciting from a personal standpoint and gave me two chances to talk about our efforts at local progressive political reform and the contributions of this community to local investigative news gathering efforts. I went to several trainings, speeches, and panels. I approached people who I wouldn't ordinarily have opportunities to meet.

The feedback I got from folks that attended one of my panels and from people who I spoke to in lobbies, elevators, bathrooms, and bars was extremely positive and encouraging. When you have the opportunity to do some retail politics about the importance of New Orleans, when you can pose direct questions gauging people's thoughts on what obligation the Left and/or the Netroots has to address New Orleans, they pay attention. They get it.

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I blog about two things really.

I blog about my local environment and I blog about national/ international politics.

That's pretty similar to what most Netroots bloggers do. The difference is other people's local environments don't include New Orleans. Or the South at-large, for that matter.

And unfortunately, New Orleans doesn't fit in to the national political picture for most people anymore except for once or twice a year. That's unfortunate and unfair.

Add it to the pile.

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Upon thinking about my conference experience for the last few days and after reading through a pretty resentful local email thread about the perceived reception for the New Orleans panel, Netroots organizers, or what is perceived as Netroots leadership, I think there are two very bad but easily reversible things going on.

First, I think that the Netroots conference specifically and the Netroots in general face a real crisis about what they want to be. I asked a question similar to this within the blurb I wrote for the New Orleans panel.

Are Netroots progressives chiefly concerned with affecting chance in American communities or more concerned about achieving more electoral victories for Democratic politicians?

A lot of times, those concerns align quite nicely. But a lot of other times, they don't.

It was really an honor to see Bill Clinton speak. I like the Big Dog. It was exciting.

But is it the right thing to do for Netroots to invite President Clinton to keynote but not answer questions or address challenges from the audience?

I will probably try to go to Las Vegas next year. I understand it is fun for a weekend and Netroots is a useful place to exchange ideas with like-minded people.

But is it the right thing to do for Netroots to go to Las Vegas for the second time in five years while overlooking the nation's most challenged communities? Does going to Las Vegas again reflect the progressive principles that drove the 50-state strategy and the overall growth of what could be a larger, more diverse, national progressive movement?

I'm not the only one asking. There are a lot of Netroots attendees vexed by the challenge of what Netroots is and what it should do.

Certainly, it feels to me to be way too much like the Democratic National Convention Lite.

We talk about this stuff.

I... I'm finding it bizarre to type.... twittered... my displeasure with the announcement of Las Vegas as the site for next year. A few hours later, the Chairman of the Board of Netroots specifically sought me out at the bar to talk to me about it. So too, separately, did another Netroots bigwig. I don't like their explanations very much but I see where they're coming from.

They have a tough job. Not inviting Bill Clinton or other big names means less tickets sold and less people attending. They try to go to places with robust local progressive communities. They try to go places that are cheap and accessible via air and road. They try to go places where hotels will offer generous deals. They try to go places that work on attracting them. They go where it is convenient.

Should they challenge themselves to take Netroots to places like New Orleans and Detroit, places where it would matter?

I made the case. They didn't disagree. They know they need to come down South.

I'm going to continue to engage them in a dialogue about it. That's what I'd like to think we progressives try to do.

And that brings me to the 2nd bad but easily reversible trend: our own tendency toward bitterness and isolation.

When the NCAA chooses somewhere else instead of New Orleans to hold March Madness, I don't boycott college hoops.

I don't think it helps us, not just in terms of attracting more attention from national progressives, the Left, and/or Netroots, but in terms of obtaining attention from anybody to immediately go all Sinn Fein anytime anybody does something we don't really like.

I like the idea of ourselves alone. I like it as a local organizing principle and a rallying cry for our work to clean up what's in our own backyard. I wish many more communities would adopt a similar approach to local change. But our problems are bigger than that and are beyond our backyard.

We have problems with the front porch and the roof.

We have problems next door, down the street, and on the next block.

It really matters what the rest of the country does.

I don't see how New Orleans achieves medium-term sustainability, a reasonable quality of life for its residents, or any whiff of justice for what has happened here without federal attention. I don't see how we obtain federal attention without engaging people around the country about what the situation here is.

I don't really post very often to DKos or TPM Cafe or anywhere else that might reach a national audience. Most of us don't. It would be helpful if I and we did that more often.

I'm excited by the conversations I had with other folks that blog about social, racial, and economic justice issues in other parts of the South and other urban areas. I look forward to continuing those discussions over the course of the year about how to better aggregate information on issues of mutual concern and how to organize around policies that might address those issues. I look forward to figuring out ways we can help each other.

And, as I said before, I plan on continuing to engage with conference organizers about coming to New Orleans in 2011 or 2012 or about a smaller, mid-year "salon session."

I'd like to think that they would be welcomed.

I'm curious to see people's thoughts.

Waterloo

Talking Points Memo published the following reader comment earlier today:

Just to mention something that is obvious, but hopefully not overlooked, i.e., if this country cannot pass a bill which insures that every citizen has access to medical care, which every developed country has managed to do (and got done many many years ago), there is something very fundamentally and structurally wrong with this country.

Such an event, in my mind, would confirm that we live with a completely corrupt and dysfunctional form of government. Forty nine states, each with bicameral legislative bodies, some of which have distinguished themselves recently with unabashed levels of incompetency and cluelessness. Then, graft a federal government over that, which is also bicameral, the non-representative portion of it being filled with officials who are certifiable morons and/or who are bought and sold like whores by wealthy contributors.

Talk about a Waterloo.

This is a defining moment in our history. Do we fulfill our supposed status as a "shining city on a hill" or continue our long slow decline into a second rate oligarchy?

I am not one prone to hyperbole.

I believe this to the depths of my soul.

This is pretty much how I feel about healthcare reform as I filter of my analysis of the issue through the lens of the history of progressive movements in the United States. The most compelling reason for to vote for Democrats, donate to Democrats, and work for Democrats is that the Party represented the best shot for the implementation of progressive policy, however incremental those policies have to be sometimes.

Universal healthcare has probably been the most sturdy plank in the Democratic Party's domestic agenda for the last 60 years. The creation of Medicare and Medicaid represent two of the most substantive and important achievements of the Great Society coalition.

After decades in the wilderness, a new coalition has been forged, one that voted in record numbers, not just to repudiate the neoconservative dogma of the last decade, but to affirm a domestic policy agenda that centered on a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich and universal healthcare coverage for the working and middle class.

It actually happened.

Democrats control the House of Representatives by a comfortable margin.

They hold a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the first in decades.

And there's an immensely popular and powerful leader in the executive branch that is actively working to keep the campaign promises he made and which the American people voted for.

If real healthcare reform fails - and Republicans certainly realize this - the Big Bang enthusiasm that so many people feel for this so-called new era will disappear into a black hole.

What compelling reason will I have to vote Democrat ever again if they can't deliver on the most fundamental policy promise they've made to their base constituents for the last six decades?

If Democrats can't deliver on their signature issue, what hope is there that they'll be able to do anything worthwhile on issues where there is less historical consensus?

The Blue Dog wing of the Party, in my mind, is doing everything they can to ensure they sink their own ship. If they effectively neuter or kill healthcare reform, I don't see how the Democratic Party will be very popular heading into 2010 and 2012. Given that Blue Dogs come from districts less likely to vote for Democratic candidates under favorable national conditions, how the hell do they expect to get reelected over Republicans in national conditions unfavorable to Democrats? It's not as if Blue Dogs were ascendant in the Party from 2000-2004.

Meanwhile, the Republican opposition smells blood. The 'waterloo' comment by Senator DeMint is a fairly candid way of stating the Party position.

They don't care about healthcare coverage or healthcare reform. They don't have an alternative plan because they believe that if you don't have insurance or if you have bad insurance - it's your own fault. For them, this is only about political victory.

Observe Dick Polman's discussion of GOP flack Michael Steele's latest:

Q: "Is it morally acceptable for 30 to 40 million Americans to be without health insurance?"
Steele: "I don't know if that's the consideration for politicians versus a pastor."

Q: "Do Republicans support an individual requirement to get coverage?"
Looking flummoxed, the chairman clearly had no idea what the question was about, despite the fact that this issue - whether Americans should be required to sign up for coverage as part of health care reform - was debated extensively during the 2008 campaign. Steele: "As an individual requirement? What do you mean by 'an individual requirement'? To require individuals to get health coverage? Again, that is one of those areas where there's, there's, different opinions by some in the House and the Senate on this...Look, I don't do policy."

(Translation: He does slogans, not substance.)

And then there was the piece de resistance...

Q: "Why didn't the Republicans, when they held both houses and the White House, do something substantial to address the health care issue?"
Steele: “Well, I think that, you know, there were efforts along the way."

He cited the GOP Congress' passage of the expensive Medicare prescription drug law, but then, apparently remembering that the conservatives in his party actually hate this law, he quickly added, "There's always been a debate about that particular piece of legislation." And then he took a second stab at the core question, about why the ruling Republicans did so little to address health care during the Bush years, why in essence they didn't do policy.

Steele again: "The other reality is, you know, the will to do it...There has been just a general lack of focus on this issue, by many."

Bingo.

This disgusting approach to civic life seems to be winning some momentum in the healthcare debate right now.

I sense that the White House understands the stakes.

I hope Senator Mary Landrieu does too.

TODAY! Wednesday the 22nd, there will be a rally at 10:00 AM outside Mary Landrieu's office at the Hale Boggs Federal Building.

500 Poydras St.

Karen Carter Peterson will speak.

I will be there.

Calling all Virginia Democrats

In January I predicted that the Virginia Gubernatorial Democratic primary (TODAY) would be big story and a huge indicator as to the direction of the Democratic Party.

I was half right. This race indicates the direction of the party but it hasn't really been a huge story. It hasn't really been covered on mainstream cable news as much as one would have though, especially given that Terry McAuliffe makes for such trainwreck TV.

I guess Democratic Party reform efforts won't get any attention when the GOP can't even throw a damn dinner party without the whole thing turning into a soap opera.

Anyway, I still think it's HUGELY important to keep Terry McAuliffe out of the general election. I was thinking Brian Moran would be the alternative candidate to take him down but it turns out that Creigh Deeds has hugely impressed VA voters. Go with either.

Anybody but the hack.

Terrymania is a surefire way to undo the progress that the Left has achieved in Virginia.

If you've got a pal in Virginia, call 'em up and remind them to vote today.

Stay Stumpin'

This morning Obama held a town hall meeting in Indiana that was sublime. He took a significant number of unfiltered questions from the audience, including one from a self-identified Hannity listener. The USA Today annotates that interaction like this:

A young woman (Tara Nisley) asks the president why some of the people he nominated for key positions weren't trustworthy (because they had failed to pay some taxes). "I'm one of those who think you need to have a beer with Sean Hannity," she adds, referring to the conservative Fox News Channel host.

Some in the crowd object to the woman's question. Obama quiets them, saying it's a legitimate one.

"There are a couple who had problems before they came into my administration," he says. "I think they were honest mistakes and I made sure they were honest mistakes beforehand." That said, if only people who never made mistakes could be in his administration, "you're not going to have anybody taking your jobs."

As for having a beer with Hannity, Obama says he'll take that under advisement. He knows Hannity doesn't like him, the president jokes, "but I'm always good for a beer."

It was powerful live because of the way in which Obama comforted his detractor as the crowd went to boo the question. He celebrated the question's legitimacy quite genuinely, answered it, and finished with some jokes. The whole event was masterful, I thought. We haven't had a sitting President willing to answer unfiltered questions from regular people since when?

One thing that this event and last week's speech to Democratic members of the House have got me thinking about is the relative weakness of the grassroots Left. The stimulus debate has exposed a lot of the cleavages masked by the unity harnessed to put him over John McCain in November. There are those that are freaking out about how bad the stimulus package is and blame Obama's bipartisan strategy for the bill's relative weakness. There are also those that have defended the Obama stimulus plan and bipartisan posturing as part of a longer term strategy. (I look at the blog debate between David Sirota and Al Giordano as generally indicative of some of the disagreements that I've seen.)

Without getting into too much of the back and forth, I tend to agree with Al's view that Obama's campaign is a remarkable achievment for organizers and represents, perhaps more than anything else, an incredible opportunity to build grassroots coalitions that can sustain a long term movement for real progressive change.

But right now, after so many years of backsliding and in the midst of a truly frightening economy, the grassroots Left still really doesn't have what it takes to win in DC. In spite of the immense progress that was the Obama campaign, 'winning' a debate in Washington depends too entirely on the oratory of Obama himself - or the confidence that it inspires.

Over the long term, a progressive movement will only sustain based upon the activities of the grassroots foot soldiers. But in the very short term, in this crisis, Obama has got to make sure he continues to speak to the American people directly, almost as if he were still on the campaign trail. Though he and his communications staff, probably correctly, tend to deemphasize the importance of the 24 hour cable news cycle, too much of the media discourse on the stimulus bill was given to the Herbert Hoover hacks. There is too much uncertainty. People are fearful. I'm anxious myself. When Obama speaks, it helps people more rationally contextualize the first three weeks of his Presidency, the utility of the stimulus package, and the overall long term direction of his administration. When Obama is silent, people are more easily consumed by fear and doubt. The economic situation is that scary and Obama is that powerful. I think he has the responsibility to use the bully pulpit to maintain the public's hope levels.

Ultimately, the Left will never be able to do anything until organizers build that kind of power for the grassroots. I believe that Obama wants to contribute to that kind of movement. For right now, however, I think he has to be careful not to over-delegate the responsibility of selling short-term legislative priorities to the public. That's why I'm so glad he's finally getting out on the stump. I think if he hadn't waited so long, we'd probably have a better stimulus bill overall and a calmer, more fact-based media discourse on the matter.

Organizing For America

One of the main reasons I started supporting this commie pinko so many months ago:



No other politician in America could propose something like this, no matter what the details look like when they emerge.

Terry?

The progressive movement has gained all of this strength over the last 4-8 years based on power yielded in opposition to the traditional Democratic Party establishment. Progressives must continue to hold the Democratic Party accountable. It was shooting fish in a barrel because Democrats kept losing, so arguments were easy to formulate.

But now that Democrats are winning, it might be increasingly tricky to sustain vigilance in efforts to reform the party through primary contests. Will the Left have the stomach for internal battles or will progressives capitulate to calls for Party unity?

Some progressive bloggers have been up in arms over the possibility that Caroline Kennedy might be appointed Senator from New York, but the debate hasn't particularly galvanized the grassroots. Not only do voters have no power in a Senate appointment, but the arguments against Caroline Kennedy have tended to focus on abstract concepts of nepotism instead of qualms related to actual policy or political tactic. The objections of folks like Bowers, Kos, and Harman haven't hinted at any kind of plan of action. IMO, the whole controversy has been a fairly shallow and short-sighted snipefest that has gotten way more attention that it has deserved because of the celebrity of Kennedy, the cult of New York, and the post-election news lull.

This, on the other hand, will be a much more useful and important test of progressive movement theory.

Watch the Virginia governor's race very closely.

This year is a relatively uneventful election cycle but Virginia will be the most important flash point. That's not a wantom prediction, it's a sure thing.

McAuliffe represents everything about the Democratic Party that I have worked to change. I will not support him for Governor of Virginia under any circumstances. I suspect that others are already working on articulate posts describing McAuliffe's practical and symbolic significance.

Katrina, the Left, and New Orleans Today

This article from the Nation is a painful read for a variety of reasons.

The investigation by A.C. Thompson details white vigilantism at Algiers Point during the immediate aftermath of Katrina. A group of white neighbors formed a militia to keep Algiers safe, which for them meant terrorizing African Americans, murdering them, shooting them in the back without any justification beyond what might be charitably described as a sick cowardly prejudice.

Thompson was able to interview some of the racist citizens who took up arms against victims of the floods. They express no remorse, instead glorifying themselves as protectors.

It makes your skin crawl.

Color of Change is pushing this petition, which calls on Governor Jindal, State Attorney General Caldwell, and the Justice Department to investigate racist vigilante shootings.

I have signed it and I recommend that you do too.

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Yet on another level, I hate how the piece was written and am disheartened by Color of Change's call.

A little weird, I know, but let me try to explain.

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One of the things I thought the article lacked was a complete context. Dambala gets at some of this in his reaction to Mr. Thompson's work. There's something gratuitous about the use of the phrase 'race war' in reference to what happened on Algiers point. Maybe I'm the one overgeneralizing a little bit here but my sense is that only a certain "type" of white guy chooses not to evacuate during a huge hurricane threat but instead to stick around with a gun collection. "Choose" being an extremely operative word that provides a not so insignificant contrast to the majority of people with basic means that chose to evacuate and to the masses of poor black people without those basic means that had no choice but to stay.

But maybe it's parsing to get all bent out of shape over the use of that phrase. We're a little bit sensitive to it I think because 'war' implies a certain ubiquity, implies that everyone was involved and that everyone chose a side. It totally oversimplifies the issue of race, but particularly so for the city of New Orleans, which has a complex history of racial tribalism that is not as simple as black vs. white. I think that I would have gone with "Katrina's unrepentant supremacist terrorists" instead of "Katrina's hidden race war," but that's just me.

The much more consequential whiff, on Thompson's part, was the failure to contextualize these vigilante killings as a part of a chaotic whole. He pays only lip service to the reality that there were scores upon scores of murders and rumored murders on the East Bank during Katrina. He couches the NOPD's failure to keep records during the storm or to disclose public records to him as specific to his investigation of the shootings on Algiers Point.

We know that there were grizzly acts of violence committed throughout the city during that time, by citizens, by the NOPD, by black people, by white people, by Ray Nagin, by Kathleen Blanco, by Michael Brown, by the Army Corps of Engineers, and by President Bush. Thompson cherry-picks a specific incident and doesn't do nearly enough to place it into the context of what was a much larger event. He boils down the entire injustice that was Katrina and the Federal Flood AND decades of systematizing racism via the criminal justice system into a digestible 'nobody is investigating these rednecks!'

But I don't want to just blame A.C. Thompson.

Color of Change should consider its reaction to this story.

They call on us to get to force "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the racist shootings, and to demand accountability from Louisiana's dysfunctional criminal justice system."

Certainly, it's a noble thing to ask for, but at the same time, it's also short-sighted and maybe even a little bit selfish.

Even if Bobby Jindal were to call on an investigation and supposing that NOPD was able to piece together charges based on records they never kept and evidence they don't have, would it really be credible enough in a court of law to yield a conviction? What kind of healing would that bring for the victims? What about all the other horror stories from those days? Are we investigating all of them? Are criminal convictions possible for any of them?

What we need is an independent federal investigation into all of it: All of the vigilante killings, all of NOPD's desertions, all of Nagin's mistakes, all of Brownie's incompetence, all of Bush's neglect, and the Army Corps of Engineers for the failure of the federal levee systems. We need the truth and we need accountability, but what we really need is healing. Color of Change's call, even if it succeeds in precipitating an investigation into what happened in Algiers, is just as likely to salt our civic wounds as it is to sanitize them.

We needed it starting in late 2005 and we still need it today. Color of Change isn't going nearly far enough. They're flailing in Bobby Jindal's direction in reaction to the Thompson piece instead of actually putting forth a proposal that might help usher New Orleanians toward some sort of closure.

But again, I don't just want to call out Thompson and Color of Change. This instance is emblematic of the larger role that Katrina and New Orleans play in national political discourse.

For the nation, the federal response Katrina signalled a final deathblow to President Bush and conservative governing philosophy. Polls demonstrate that the public pretty much turned on the GOP for good as a result of the Katrina saga. The PR battle that took place between the parties was one in which the Right blamed Nagin and the natives for their lack of "personal responsibility," while the Left (and the vast vast majority of the country) blamed Bush and his henchmen for their inexplicable and inexcusable inability to respond to an entirely predictable catastrophe in a major American city.

Since then, national analysis of New Orleans is through these lenses, not just the lens of 'Katrina' but the lenses of were was the immediate partisan reactions to Katrina.

The Left, during Katrina, was justifiably incensed over the way that African Americans were labeled "looters" while whites just looking for food. That's why it is unsurprising to see the lions of the liberal netroots (HuffPo, Think Progress, Color of Change) seize upon this story - it scores points in that old front against racist right wing media portrayal.

Katrina is an eternally smoldering political fire, that actual people live here New Orleans is an abstraction that most don't, can't, and won't think about in the midst of the constant drone of the 24 hour news cycle. That the story of New Orleans continues, that it takes on new twists and turns, that its existence continues to be tenuously propped up on a three-legged stool of racism, corruption, and incompetence seems lost on much of the progressive netroots, on thinkers who I respect greatly and read every day.

The most frustrating thing to me is that the progressive netroots really can be of great assistance in this city, without really sacrificing the opportunity to score those political points.

It's great that Color of Change is pushing Bobby Jindal to investigate these vigilante shootings and I'm sure they'd also support a real truth commission for Katrina, but neither option is particularly viable in the short, medium, or long terms unless we start changing course at the municipal level.

What we really could use at this moment is help forcing the reopening of Charity Hospital and help preventing the needless demolition the historic black neighborhood of Lower Mid City. That fight is right now. It has real tangible consequences for the African American community, it speaks to national progressive issues, and Bobby Jindal is an obstacle.

For Color of Change and other progressive/netroots orgs, it's a battle they ought to be itching to join.

Save Lower Mid City, Reopen Charity

It's real in our lives right now.

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*One of the biggest reasons national progressive advocacy organizations seem to be so ignorant as to the situation here is that local bloggers, myself very very much included, do a horrendous job of communicating to an audience that isn't totally ensconsed in the daily municipal minutia. We can definitely do a better job summarizing things more regularly for a national audience in a way that imparts the critical concepts without oversaturating names and locations. To that end, I'm crossposting this at Kos.

Rick Warren and Caroline Kennedy

The other day I broke down and set up a feed reader. Now, I'm furious with myself for not having done so months and months ago. I already feel so much more on top of a lot of the national voices that I used to read with a lot more frequency when I wasn't so preoccupied with local issues.

Hopefully this will allow me to weigh in on the national minutia with more frequency as well.

There are two arguments preoccupying a lot of lefty bloggers right now.

The first flash point has been Caroline Kennedy, who confirmed her interest in replacing Hillary Clinton in the Senate on Monday. There are seemingly two sides to this one.

There are those that are really angry about this, like Jane Hamsher, who's post here seemed to be a rallying point early on. Her argument was valid because it focused on a condemnation of dynastic entitlement in politics in a more general sense.

Yet as things developed, the front against Caroline Kennedy has become increasingly shrill. Hamsher again:

I thought at least she's get out before the cameras and start making her case to the public before she announced her intentions, because simply lobbying your well-connected buddies just oozes an outrageous sense of entitlement and insufferable pomposity.

I guess she'll take entitlement for a thousand, Alex.

And Markos has published several pieces over the last ten days voicing his strong opposition.

The case for Caroline Kennedy is pretty straightforward.

1. Senators don't really do a whole lot of constituent services.
2. She's been an advocate for progressive causes for her whole life, though less publicly.
3. She'd have immediate gravity in the national discourse.

Point three is especially appealing to me. Though things are going pretty good for left these days, I remember a time when the Democrats lacked a national voice capable of taking an unpopular stand without fear of political consequences. I remember when Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq war, at least in part because of her national ambitions. Really, Democrats lacked a strong firewall against the Republican message machine throughout the first Bush term. Caroline Kennedy would have to take a lot of unpopular stands before she became electorally vulnerable in New York. So she might be someone that could come in handy down the road when things aren't so peachy.

I'm still pretty sympathetic toward people arguing to do away with executive appointments like this all together. But what I don't understand is why the prospect of the Kennedy appointment drew out all the fire on this. Nobody was making much fuss about Jesse Jackson Jr. being mentioned as a potential replacement for Obama's seat. How many Senators wouldn't be where they are without mommy or daddy's last name? Even most that were not directly related to a former big name politician were certainly born into a privileged social network.

Matt Yglesias has a part of it right:

[S]ome of the hostility to dynasticism stems from a sort of misguided desire to pretend that electoral outcomes are this incredibly rational process. So if we all point at Caroline Kennedy and say she’s only under serious consideration because of her name, then maybe if we all object loudly enough to this it’ll turn out that the other 99 Senators are there because they’ve passed a set of rigorous credentialing examinations or something. But of course that’s not how things work at all. The whole business of electioneering is full of irrationality and tradition all the way from top to bottom.

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The other big controversy bubbling right now involves Obama's decision to invite homophobic fundy pastor Rick Warren to deliver prayer at his inauguration. This decision has really invited the ire of lefty bloggers, and the ensuing controversy has become a top story at TPM.

Warren is a jerk, there's no doubt about that. He backed prop 8, he regularly equates abortion to he Holocaust and regularly equates homosexuality to bestiality, etc.

But I can't say I'm really all that pissed off that he's going to be at the inauguration. Warren is the Oprah of the religious right. This largely symbolic gesture means little in terms of substantive LGBT issues but builds a little bit of political capital with fundamentalists that might be reasonable when it comes to working with us on matters of poverty and the environment.

The other point here is that a lot of the anger over the Warren invitation would never have been so virulent had prop 8 failed. The fact that this has generated such controversy speaks volumes about the momentum behind the LGBT rights movement right now. During the Bush years, our President and members of his Party met with leaders far more reactionary than Warren with such regularity that people came to accept the reactionary position as mainstream. Now, the mere appearance of an opponent of LGBT rights in Washington is a dominant news story. That's a good thing.

Besides, Obama won an election based on a commitment to find a new way to do discourse in Washington. The old way might have been to just shut out everyone who disagrees with the LGBT cause. Republicans did this for years and those angrily advocating for Warren's banishment from the inauguration seem to be merely retaliating.

Al Giordano has an excellent post up about the failure of the tactics of identity politics related to this matter.

But I think he leaves out an important addendum:

I believe that my position for full and equal civil rights for LGBT individuals and couples is the right one and so I believe that if we engage in a debate about the issue with opponents of civil rights, we'll win.

(Of course there's a lot more to say about the political strategy behind the decision to invite Warren to speak. There has to be something useful about a President appearing bipartisan by angering his base on a matter of symbolism but that's a different discussion.)

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It's fascinating to examine these two issues together because they're really quite similar. Both are similarly dividing progressive bloggers along familiar fault lines of ideological purity. I believe the major voices out there are generally capable of engaging in a discourse on the matter and the thing I love about blogging is that it allows the proliferation of all sorts of different perspectives. However, it isn't all that difficult to anticipate the magnification of these kinds of divisions over time.

Pretty much everyone in the progressive blogsphere supports the Employee Free Choice Act, there only appears to be some effort to organize online efforts to pressure wishy-washy Democrats like Blanche Lincoln, who appears more concerned with maintaining the friendship of WalMart executives in advance of her 2010 reelection campaign than with workers' rights.

People angry over Caroline Kennedy and Rick Warren are not further to the left than those that don't see legitimate battlefields on these issues, but I can envision these kinds of fault lines hardening for those that more consistently assume a fighting stance on every pop culture issue where there might be a political position to take.