About the Washington Monthy profile of Markos of Daily Kos, I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that Markos doesn't need to be all things to all people. If he seems himself as a tatician or attack dog, let him be just that. There are, you know, other people in the Democratic Party. This ties in to an idea that has been making a lot more sense to me since I left Washington for the greener pastures of New York. There are roles in politics -- some of us are attack dogs, some noise makers, some advocates, some thinkers, some pundits, some activists, some moderate elected officials. Nothing wrong with that, I think. But the article raises an important point: the liberal blogosphere can be a rigid environment -- one that rewards those in every role who act with absolute certainty and disdains those who don't.
I reject that idea that it's a simple matter of valuing partisanship over wonkery, the way that Kevin Drum talks about it here. In my mind, it's deeper than that, deeper than even health care policy. What I'm starting to think that one thing missing on the progressive side of things is an exploration of the intellectual and academic underpinnings of the movement. (Off of the top of my head, I'm thinking of things like this: lessons learned from the civil rights movement in this country, our connection to freedom movements all over the world, the progressive take on technology, a thousand different things.)
It of course makes complete sense that we have overdeveloped the tactical/attack dog side of things -- we've been under direct attack for the last several years. But it might now be time for some of us to break off from day to day tactics, take a step back, and begin to think about how we grow the other parts of the movement.
It's not entirely clear that blogs, for all their wonderfulness, are the means by which to grow the thinking part of the progressivism, or that our existing think tanks and niche publications (Washington Monthly, American Prospect) are up to the job. Maybe we shouldn't even be worrying about having dedicated thinkers at all, and should instead focus on coopting the thinking that's already out there in universities and churches and such that is progressive in nature. I dunno. It's well worth exploring other ways of doing this. I have a couple of ideas, and I'm sure others do, too.
