Fuck The Netroots

I was reading the comments at Loaded Mouth and Shakespeare's Sister. Taz and Shakes maintain that the DCC need to respect the netroots more. I say the netroots hasn't made much of an impact. Dean's presidential bid failed. So has Paul Hackett's Senate attempt. The fact is most voters could care less about political blogs. What is troubling is progressive blogs having this holier-than-thou attitude towards the Democratic Party. Bloggers should not kiss up, but saying "fuck you" isn't going to convert establishment Democrats. The reality is we need them.

We should be getting to the twenty-somethings coming up in the party. Why aren't we? Why are County Democratic Parties across the country poorly organized? A big reason is people spend too much time fighting a better seat at the table. Republicans know how to play nice with each other and achieve the goals.

Stark posted this in Shakes comments.

I hate to say it, but the Dem establishment might not wake up to us until we show them what happens when we boycott an election. As it stands they can do whatever the fuck they want and we'll still vote for their candidate. We have no hand.

This defeatist attitude kills me. Here's what I wrote in the comments.

The netroots argument and infighting is pointless. I want Republicans out in 2006 and 2008. The netroots is becoming another special interest group that infights with the rest of the Democratic Party. If you people stay home on election day or vote for third party candidates then don't expect things to get better. Look at the Presidential and Congressional response to Katrina and then tell me it doesn't matter what party you vote for.

People died because of incompetent leadership. What will change if these people aren't voted out. Bush won't run again. That doesn't excuse Congress's pathetic response to Katrina. Remember Dennis Hastert saying, "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." Explain to me how voting for Democrats could be worse then the Speaker of the House.

Taz (my Loaded Mouth blog boss) post a response in the comments.

Not that I can really identify myself with the netroots crowd, and I know that the Democrats really only view "netroots" as a cash register whose teet they suck and they could pretty much careless about our views. In this instance, though, that's not the crux of the matter.

This is a case of complete incompetence and internal corruption, not to mention outright stupidity, on the part of the Democrats. It makes absolutely no sense to back an unpopular candidate in a dog eat dog fight with a candidate from the left, who has thrived off grassroots organizing, has name recognition, and got 44% in the 2004 election. That's a candidate which can win. But instead, the DCCC places all their support (read: money) behind a candidate that doesn't even live in the district she's running for Congress in, and she eeks out a primary victory by 2%. Why did the Democrats even spend money on this race if they can only beat a low budget, grassroots candidate by two measley percent? Wouldn't it just make more sense to back that grassroots candidate with the money that she needs?

This is why the Democrats are losing races. The national party leadership forces the left to support candidates that really aren't popular. This is where the in-fighting is coming from.