Escaping the Veal Pen

I was going to write a post about the stupidity of Van Jones' resignation on the grounds that you never, ever let a bully win. Even if denying the bully a victory hurts you in other ways, you never, ever do what a bully demands you do, because a victory empowers the bully and makes him ten times harder to defeat the next time.

But it turns out the Van Jones Affair is far worse than I imagined.

Jane Hamsher explains how throwing Van Jones under the bus was just the latest manifestation of the Obama administration's co-opting and silencing liberal public interest groups.

And so the groups in the DC veal pen stay silent. They leadership gets gets bought off by cocktail parties at the White House while the interests of their members get sold out. How many have openly pushed back against the Administration on Don't Ask, Don't Tell or DOMA? Well, not many. Most tried to satisfy their LGBT members by outsourcing activism to other organizations, or proving their bona fides by getting involved in the Prop 8 battle that is not directly toxic to the White House. It's a chickenshit sidestep that betrays the their members in the interest of personal gain, which they justify with feeble self-serving palliatives about the importance of "maintaining a seat at the table."

Where are they on health care? Why aren't they running ads against the AMA, the hospitals, the insurance industry barons who have $700 million in stock options, PhRMA, the device manufacturers and the White House for doing back room deals with all of the above?

Why are they not calling for the White House to release the details of those secret deals?

Because they are participating in those deals, instead of trying to destroy them. Well, that and funneling millions of dollars in pass-throughs to their consultant friends that they are supposed to be spending on the health care fight.

The truth is -- they've all been sucked into insulating the White House from liberal critique, and protecting the administration's ability to carry out a neoliberal agenda that does not serve the interests of their members. They spend their time calculating how to do the absolute minimum to retain their progressive street cred and still walk the line of never criticizing the White House.

Liberals are told that the public option is an acceptable sacrifice such that we don't repeat the 54 seat swing to the GOP after health care failed in 1994. The President told Progressive members of Congress that they should think about the poor Blue Dogs (who by happy coincidence are sucking up all the health care lobbying dollars) who might face tough elections in 2010.

Well, now that you bring it up, let's talk about 1994. The election came on the heels of NAFTA, which demoralized the liberal base and depressed turnout. Even as the GOP works hard to rile up their teabaggers base and push turnout numbers up for the 2010 midterm, Democrats are watching the public option die and seeing Van Jones thrown into the meat grinder so Blue Cross and the Blue Dogs can get a room. Telling progressives to go Cheney themselves to save the Blue Dogs could have horrendous consequences on downticket races across the country.

SNIP

The message is loud and clear: incur the wrath of the right wing, and you're on your own.

Wow, is that a way to encourage your team or what.

If these groups, if these liberal leaders, let Jones just hang there while Glenn Beck pounds his chest and celebrates the scalp, we have no liberal institutions. What we have are a bunch of neoliberal enablers who have found a nice comfortable place in the DC establishment that they don't want to jeopardize, and place on the new K-Street gravy train that they don't want to lose. Dropping Van Jones from their rolodex is a small price to pay.

If there is going to be a serious progressive movement in this country capable of standing up for health care against an industry that spends $1.4 million a day on lobbying, we can't just look to the members of the Progressive Caucus and say "hey, you, get something done." They need cover. They need to know that they will be supported. And people like Van Jones who have given their lives to causes we say we value like prison reform and environmental advocacy need to know that they will be defended, and not handed over to Glenn Beck as an acceptable casualty in the battle for K-Street dollars.

So to all you liberal organizations in the "veal pen" -- this is your moment of truth. I get all your emails. And the next Common Purpose meeting is probably on Tuesday. If you can't get it together to at least put out a statement of support for Van Jones and condemn the White House for using him as a sacrificial lamb to right wing extremists that will devour us all if left unchecked, it's time to add "proudly liberal only when it doesn't matter" to your logo and be done with it.

Read the whole thing.

Depressing, I know, but I urge you not to give up. I haven't given up, but I've stopped depending on Obama to do the right liberal thing on his own.

President Barack Obama is our employee, and he's fucking up.

Blue Dog/DINO/Corporatist voices are the only voices he's hearing, which means we have to scream louder. Keep writing, keep calling, keep emailing. Let him know just how pissed off you are at his failure to keep even the centrist promises of his campaign, much less the unspoken liberal promise we read into him.