tug-of-war

David Brooks announces the marginalization of the netroots:

In the beginning of August, liberal bloggers met at the YearlyKos convention while centrist Democrats met at the Democratic Leadership Council’s National Conversation. Almost every Democratic presidential candidate attended YearlyKos, and none visited the D.L.C. …

Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the “netroots.” …

In the first place, the netroots candidates are losing. …

Second, Clinton is drawing her support from the other demographic end of the party. …

Third, Clinton has established this lead by repudiating the netroots theory of politics. …In a series of D.L.C. memos with titles like “The Decisive Center,” Penn has preached that while Republicans can win by appealing only to conservatives, Democrats must appeal to centrists as well as liberals. …

Fourth, the netroots are losing the policy battles. …

The fact is, many Democratic politicians privately detest the netroots’ self-righteousness and bullying. They also know their party has a historic opportunity to pick up disaffected Republicans and moderates, so long as they don’t blow it by drifting into cuckoo land. They also know that a Democratic president is going to face challenges from Iran and elsewhere that are going to require hard-line, hawkish responses. …

Finally, these Democrats understand their victory formula is not brain surgery. You have to be moderate on social issues, activist but not statist on domestic issues and hawkish on foreign policy.

Brooks, who sniffs the winds of Washington for a living, may be on to something. If so, however, the leftosphere remains embarrassingly far behind the curve.

Josh Marshall:

Am I the only one embarrassed by the dingbat brouhaha over Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s attempt to visit Ground Zero to lay a wreath? …

So what’s the problem exactly? Presumably we can be frank enough to acknowledge that the real issue here is that while Ahmadinejad is not Arab to most of us he looks pretty Arab. And he is Muslim certainly — and pretty up in arms about it at that. And we officially don’t like him. And we classify the country he runs as a state sponsor of terrorism. So even though he has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, when you put all these key facts together, he might as well have done it himself. And what business does anyone with the blood of the victims of 9/11 on his hands have going to Ground Zero?

That’s basically it and don’t tell me it’s not.

Alternatively I guess it’s that he’s a very mean guy, said bad things about Israel or questioned the Holocaust? Is this man any worse than the various Soviet dignitaries who we feted and hosted around our country? Or is it simply that we’ve grown increasingly infantile as a country since the end of the Cold War, more and more obsessed and histrionic about minor powers like Iran and Iraq?

If we’ve grown “infantile as a country,” Josh Marshall, who’s hardly part of the “netroots” (he’s a Zionist, so he’s not invited to the party) and who holds a Ph.D., is exhibit number one.

His unwillingness to grapple with the moral, tactical, political, strategic issues surrounding Ahmadinejad’s provocations—denying that there are any such quandaries involved—is the mark of a deeply unserious person.

If the writers on the left want me in their corner, they’d better be prepared to give me passionate arguments about why, for example, we should “dialogue” with Ahmadinejad in New York. They should lay out for me a believable scenario in which such graciousness from America leads to a good result for the United States in its obviously ultra-tense relationship with Iran. Instead, Marshall tells me that I’m a racist and a wuss.

And he’s one of the smartest writers in the leftosphere. This is beyond pitiful.