Who Doesn't Hate TNR

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and Wayne Garcia both argue that the New Republic no longer matter. Kos makes his argument on political grounds.

That was obviously violated today as the New Republic betrayed, once again, that it seeks to destroy the new people-powered movement for the sake of its Lieberman-worshipping neocon owners; that it stands with the National Review and wingnutoshpere in their opposition to grassroots Democrats.

Garcia faults the credibility of TNR's Scott Thomas Beauchamp war diaries. I'm not with Garcia on this. I do question the judgement of Beauchamp being TNR editor Elspeth Reeve's husband. The story shouldn't be married to one of the editors.

The problem with TNR boils down to Martin Peretz. He has put his bizarre political agendas, such as supporting Al Gore, Lewis Libby and the invasion of Iraq, ahead of quality journalism.

It is a sad but true fact of American political life that liberals rarely exercise so much influence as when they happen to be endorsing conservative causes, and this temptation has proven consistently irresistible to Peretz and his magazine. TNR under Peretz has been a vehicle that proved extremely helpful to Ronald Reagan's wars in Central America and George Bush's war in Iraq. It provided seminal service to Newt Gingrich's and William Kristol's efforts to kill the Clinton plan for universal health care and offered intellectual legitimacy to Charles Murray's efforts to portray black people as intellectually inferior to whites. As for liberal causes, however … well, not so much.

In case you are wondering, TNR considers itself a Lefty political magazine. With friends like this who needs the National Review?

Goodbye DLC

Noam Scheiber responds to the Democratic Leadership Council attacks to his New York Times op-ed. I have my own issues with the DLC.

The DLC attacks against teachers unions are something I'm against on many levels. Only the DLC would be stupid enough to attack one of the party's strongest bases. The Democratic Party has ideologically supported unionation has an effort to give better wages and worker rights. The DLC bitches about unions. It is because their whole dog and pony show is being against what the majority of the party supports.

Another classic example is the DLC attacks on critics of the Iraq war. Scheiber show how out of touch the DLC is with young progressives (the Democratic Party's future), America and reality.

Finally, From also mischaracterizes my critique of the DLC on the war. I did not accuse the DLC of "blindly supporting the President's position on Iraq," as From alleges. I wrote that the DLC had spent much of 2006 "attacking opponents of the war"--a fight that seemed quaint (to put it mildly) by that point in the Iraq fiasco. Again, this charge is simply undeniable. For example, in the summer of 2006, Marshall Wittmann and Steven Nider, two DLC officials, took to the pages of the Hartford Courant to proclaim that "far too many Democrats view George W. Bush as a greater threat to the nation than Osama bin Laden." Set aside the possibility that this view may be right. The line was clearly intended as an epithet against war opponents.

Finally, the DLC seems more concerned with picking fights within the party than holding Republicans accountable. They made so many enemies within the party and progressive movement that they are laughed at when they attempt to label themselves the "progressive center."

Independents, swing voters and even some Republicans who haven't voted our way in more than a decade are willing to hear us out. With an ambitious common-sense agenda, the progressive center has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win back the White House, expand its margins in Congress and build a political and governing majority that could last a generation.

There is no such thing as a progressive center movement. The DLC are rebranding themselves because neoliberal has outlived it's usefulness. Unfortunately the DLC doesn't realize the same can be said about them.