Lyndon Baines Johnson was born 100 years ago today. After Franklin Roosevelt, his record as a progressive Democrat was unsurpassed. Thanks to his leadership and passion, Congress enacted Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education, Headstart, the Job Corps, legal services for the poor, and countless other pocketbook measures that helped millions out of poverty and reinforced a secure middle class. And Johnson took immense risks to pass the three landmark civil rights laws. It is not an exaggeration to say that without Johnson's leadership, Barack Obama would not be accepting the Democratic nomination for president this week.

But here in Denver, where podium time has been found for a mind-numbing array of obscure speakers, the day will pass without ceremony or acknowledgment. Why? In part because for many Democrats, Johnson's greatness on domestic achievements has an asterisk--the Vietnam War, a divisive debacle too reminiscent of the Iraq War.

But, interestingly, the decision to ignore Johnson was made by Barack Obama himself. Senator Tom Harkin, a huge admirer of Johnson's War on Poverty and the rest of the Great Society, told me that several months ago he contacted the LBJ presidential library in Austin. Harkin arranged to have a short, 11-minute film made about LBJ and the Great Society as a centenary tribute. He pitched it personally to Obama, who was not keen on the idea. They cut the film to seven minutes. Still too long, said the convention planners; and finally to five minutes. It will air, with no fanfare, reportedly during non-prime-time Thursday, not even LBJ's actual centenary. No official announcement has yet been made.

What's the problem here, people?

But as competent, well-executed and even dramatic as the Convention has been, at least as striking is what has been missing.

First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years.

The CW among apologists for this situation is that we cannot do more now because the country is not ready and (here's the key) that the country will be ready at some unspecified time in the future.

To me that completely ignores the vicious circle characteristics of these policies: viz., that wasteful spending, reckless militarism and curtailment of civil liberties in the long term require ever less money for useful projects and ever greater curtailment of civil liberties.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

Oddly enough, the story doesn't mention which one.

I think that the accountability needs to be with the party and the candidates- fine. But what about the 'netroots'?

Frankly Obama looks a lot like Ned Lamont to me. A light airy confection that has been puffed up beyond all reason because he appeals to the sweet tooth of children. Who is left holding the bag when their souffle flops? The Lieberman debacle could easily have cost the Dems control of the Senate and will cause an embarrassing black eye at the GOP convention this year. The genius 50 state strategy has spent a God-awful amounts of money. If Obama tanks who are we supposed to be left with for viable candidates for '12?

Here at my house yesterday, stumbling around stewing over yesterdays Convention antics, pacing in a pair of dirty sweat pants, I was cooking up some brain food yesterday and I couldn't tell if I was a genius or a befuddled buffoon, so I jotted down the torrent of thoughts and as it turned out I was a certifiable dumb ass. Oh and still ANGRY!

Dammmmmit, I need to get fresh and to get frisky [flirt flirt]/

I WANT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
I am willing to fight any fight to get it.
How can we pressure the Obama Camp to deliver and not just act as mouth breathers on this issue?
I fear that even if he picks up Hillary's Torch, the flame will die down as soon as he gets in office [if he was to win].

I'm at a loss here. I'll come back when I feel fresher.

HuffPo OfftheBus column.

Better party discipline? Or too much control?

Will the Democratic Party take notice that I'm no longer working on campaigns, fund raising and being a visible Democrat in CA's most Republican congressional district? Who knows...

The Democratic Party takes me and my vote for granted. They've had good reason to. For years I have voted straight Democratic tickets and hoped that the party I thought I was a part of would stand up and be counted for the things I thought it represented. Only recently have I realized that the Democratic Party I was voting for and the things I thought that party represented were really just my fantasy...and the fantasy of many others who thought they were the party's base.

I've read the books by NY Times financial reporter David Cay Johnston and I recommend his book on the tax code (Perfectly Legal) and how that tax code has been rigged by both major political parties to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the working class to everyone.

I've tried donating to the party. I've tried letters and phone calls to the party and to my elected representatives. I've worked to elect Democrats. And I've turned out to vote for Democrats each and every election since I was 18 years old. Always, I have told myself that the party I believed in would soon stand up, would soon find its spine (apparently lost sometime between November of 1980 and January of 1981) again. None of it has worked. So now, about the only thing I can see left for me to do to hold the Democratic Party to account...is to stop voting a straight Democratic ticket, withhold my vote and make sure that the party is aware of it and why.

I can not and will not hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils any longer. I won't hold my nose and vote for a candidate who is not against needless war, but is instead just in favor of different needless war. I won't go to the polls to support yet more expansion of government largess to line corporate pockets, to support yet more "the free market is god" ideology or to support more nibbling around the margins when it comes to standing up for things that I thought were basic Democratic values such as health care for all, a living minimum wage and a truly progressive tax code.

So...where does that leave me? Damned if I know. I guess it leaves me on the outside looking in. But the truth is, I have apparently been on the outside looking in for all of my adult life. The only difference is that now I know it.

If that means I should no longer post here, that'd be good to know cause either way I'm going to continue to speak out against people like Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington, and David Shuster, and Chris Matthews, and Rachel Maddow, and David Sirota and Jim Clyburn and anyone else who has built a career out of dividing the Democratic Party.  I'm going to continue to do that somewhere.

Case in point.  It is asked above what should we do to hold the party accountable???  Markos Moulitsas once said it would be good if Harold Ford lost because then it would be a rejection of a political style that he thinks is bad for the party.  Essentially the argument is that it is  only by losing elections that the party will learn that a political style is bad and reject it.

Ok.  Fair point.  Or is it?  I don't think so.  I think that's divisive crap.  And of course Jeralyn has now stated we can not make the same argument here about Barack Obama.  Why not?  Whatever I think of that kind of argument isn't that a fair argument to make??  What does Jeralyn think of that kind of argument??

So what does Jeralyn want, does she want us to stop behaving like her blogging associates???  

That said, the old delegate system and the more recent primary voter system seem to be at loggerheads. As we witnessed during the primaries, the party is not an embodiment of the will of its rank-and-file. Party committees, party rules, state chairman, and federal laws determine how "the voters' will" is measured and what "the voters' will" means. At the same time, the best-laid plans of the DNC ruling committee and state chairs were exposed as a democratic farce by a deeply divided rank-and-file. Party does not seem to have any discernible identity from the top down or the bottom up.

Add to this, the party platform seems to hold less and less relevance for party members. The voting records of the party's officeholders never seem to add up to a political philosophy, and increasingly reflect the insider-outsider, elite-DFH, and "creative class"-working class bipolarity of Washingtonians and party activists. Bipartisanship is elevated as the "true" objective of the party, not the outcome of partisan politics. Lastly, left bloggers (the loyal opposition in the party when it needed one), have abandoned the traditional Democratic emphasis on policy and governance, in favor of the media's emphasis on personality and symbolics.

However, if someone who has as many misgivings as Jeralyn is willing to declare her support and even urge people to donate, there's zero incentive for Obama and the DNC to pay any attention at all to any grievances she and other like-minded people have. As soon as they don't want anything else from you, they'll throw you out with yesterday's newspaper. See, for example, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

To me, Obama and the Democratic elite have committed or condoned a number of egregious acts, most notably their active promotion or passive enabling of libelous charges of racism against Hillary and Bill Clinton. The rigging of the Florida and Michigan delegations, the initial reluctance to allow Hillary to even be nominated, and yesterday's Soviet-style roll call were merely icing on the cake.

The only things I have that they want from me are my vote and my money, and clearly, one of them a lot more than the other. If I hand both of them over for nothing, what hope do I have that they'll address any of my concerns?

I was in Denver yesterday.  I live in Colorado Springs so even though I am not a delegate I can easily go up.  Two years ago working for local and congressional candidates I was sure I could end up being a delegate.  Sadly, I picked the wrong person according to my party.  I chose Hillary and thus was shut out, ignored and treated like an inferior human being by the latte drinking dems who before this election did NOTHING.  I was going to caucuses when the most who would attend was three or four people.  We were the ones doing all the work for this apathetic party for years.  NOW, not only did they treat us condescendingly at our last caucus, they pretty much gave us the message we are old and done.

Up in Denver I talked to everyone from Obama supporters to Hillary supporters to Anarchists to Pink Code to haters of Hillary to haters of Obama and yes, even to some PUMAs.  All people, all unique points of view; all passionate, most respectful to me and my Hillary shirt.  
On the street there is respect.  Not so much in the party.  How do I change that?

One woman had a t-shirt I really identified with:
Tell Howard Dean I'm not coming home.

Now for those all ready to label me a "dead ender", or "bitter knitter," slow down and hear me out.  The democratic party's attitude toward older women was publicly condescending when they say "they'll come home, they have no place else to go."   That is a statement that is said to children who run away or teens who think they can do better.  For women of a certain age, who grew up at a time as late as in the 1950s when women were treated like chattel; where even working women could not purchase big ticket items without a husband or father cosigning, being talked down to as if we are children is about as bad as it gets.

How do we change that?

The single most important thing I have learned in the last four months, however, is that the single greatest problem we face as a nation is the mass media (and though I definitely mean the so-called MSM in particular, the blogs are not exempt).

There is a sense in which the mass media are our sensory system. They are our eyes (cameras) our ears (audio recordings) and even our minds (narratives tend to set the categories inside which we think).

There is a strong sense in which the health of our democracy relies more heavily on the Fourth Estate than on any thing else. People choose their representatives in Congress and the White House on the basis of the information they recieve about these candidates. If our Fourth Estate, the estate reponsible for giving us that information has been corrupted, then how can we make meaningful choices when the very meanings we base those choices on are programmed by corporate and social elites?

I heard on the radio the other day, in passing, that most news divisions are under the entertainment centers of the media coorporations they are a part. I haven't had time to check this yet, but if true, what a sad statment on our democracy that the Fourth Estate is now an entertainment division. Certainly it FEELS like it is being treated as such.

To the central question of the OP, it is my belief that left or right, anyone who cares about issues first and horse race second must think carefully about sustained criticism of the MEDIA in all forms.

The only way to hold politicians and party leaders accountable is at the ballot box.  

Yet, any attempt to hold the party accountable with our votes will inevitably be met with the exact same arguments we are hearing today -- if you don't vote for "the Democrat", the GOP will take over and do horrible things.

In 1968, Hubert Humphrey lost to Nixon in large part because of the way he got the nomination -- it was handed to him by a corrupt party establishment despite Humphrey failing to win a single primary.  It wasn't just because Humphrey was Johnson's VP and Vietnam was unpopular -- it was because voters had made it clear that they did not want Humphrey -- and the party bosses gave them Humphrey anyway.

Humphrey's loss resulted in a complete and radical reform of the nominating process and most other party procedures -- and resulted in the replacement of most of the entrenched overwhelmingly white male party hacks as "diversity" was made mandatory.  (It also resulted in George McGovern having to run without the full support of the old power-brokers, resulting in one of the biggest GOP landslides in history.)

And while this years primary season was somewhat more ambiguous in its results, the fact remains that the candidate who got the nomination was NOT the choice of Democratic voters, nor did it represent the way that the system was designed to work.  

I personally don't see how you can accomplish meaningful party reform while rewarding those who have abused the system, and taken the party in a direction you don't want it to go in.

Bill Clinton closed the deal for me last night. (He is undeniably the most skilled, most charismatic politician on the face of the planet today.)  If he and Hillary can both publicly stifle their disappointment and anger about the nomination abomination, and still believe--or at least profess to believe--that McCain will give us the same monstrous policies that have all but undone this country--I can't sit home on my hands election day.  

I still don't trust and don't respect our nominee and the DNC.  (I doubt the Clintons do either.)  But I'm at the point of despair for my country, my children and my grandchildren, that I'd probably be persuaded to vote for a duck-billed platypus with a chance of winning over the Republicans. (and a chance of winning makes the platypus more attractive than Nader).  So, I'll vote, reluctantly and dubiously, for Obama.  We KNOW McCain will tolerate the neo-cons' outrageous pre-emptive war policy.  That his support for Bush's taxation outrages will continue and bankrupt this country's middle-class.  We don't know what Obama will do, and it might be worse, but presumably it will at least be different.  

But please, let us work to reform the nomination process before 2012!  No more caucauses. No more discriminatory, arbitrary distribution of state delegates. Most important, we desperately need to break the control of the media monopolies...just as Teddy Roosevelt went after the monopolies.  Which means an honest, or at least not proudly corrupt, Justice Department and attorney general.  We won't get that with McCain.

During the campaign for the 2006 Midterms, the promise to hold the Bush Administration accountable and to derail the more dangerous paths they were walking were the HUGE carrots dangled in front of our noses.  And we eagerly responded by giving Democrats Majorities in both the House and Senate.

And how did they repay us for that unbelievably precious commodity, our vote?  By ignoring us.  By jamming their fingers in our eyes, telling us to shut up and sit down and "trust them".

Now we have a Nominee who still isn't able to get important segments of the Democratic Base on-board and we're being told to trust, again, that this time, after he's elected, it will be different.  Hell, we're not even being promised THAT.  We're being told "just Vote for him".

At some point, the comparisons between how the Democratic Party cuddles up to us during Election Season and then kicks our teeth in the day after they get our votes and how an abusive spouse coos and cuddles to get dinner on the table and then beats you as you're clearing the dishes are inevitable.

So, do we stay with the abusive spouse eg. the Democratic Party even as he buries us in promises before claiming he doesn't need us and, besides, where else are we going to go?

Or do we squarely look the problem in the face, recognize our own responsibility in enabling the relationship by voting again and again before finally packing our suitcase and leaving the keys by the door?

Beyond the sexism, what this election season has opened my eyes to, in shocking ways, is the sometimes astounding class prejudice and bias that premeates the progressive blogosphere and political media.

It is simply impossible to keep the promises the Democratic party makes to "ordinary" and "invisible" Americans, or to have them believed, if too many of its most powerful and influential members, the people who set the terms of debate and most publicly represent the party and/or progressive ideology, actually don't know much about, harbor unacknowledged prejudice against, aren't willing to or have no opportunity to engage in conversation with, and simply don't have genuine respect for, the people they claim to want to represent.

Elite liberal's tendency to often not know the difference between patronization and respect, between analyzing the "other" and being willing to learn from them, between claiming the right, expertise, etc., to control the process and inviting others into the process, is what gave Reagan's famous liberal-bashing quip (about the scariest words in the English language), "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." its power.

Seeing, in the course of this campaign, the mask slip, and the real hostility and disdain some (many?) affluent and/or highly educated liberals actually feel for, and the misunderstandings they harbor about, this country's working class has helped me better understand why certain Republican arguments have power.

With union power lost, there really is no voice for working people in the political conversation. While women, with the exceptions mentioned above, on the other hand, rarely have a chance to speak except as victims and objects of pity.

One of the things that astounded me in the course of this campaign was all the descriptions of my generation of women as "bitter" and "angry." But I, and all the other women I know, are actually quite pleased and proud -- of everything we accomplished personal lives and the public realm, of the doors we opened, the obstacles we overcame, the important work we did, the unforeseen conditions we adjusted to and conquered, the contribution we have made.

It has been simply incredible to see the conversation surrounding this election be one in which more often than not my generation's lives work and accomplishment, far from being respected, has instead been negated, dismissed and portrayed in ridiculous far from reality terms and cliches.

Say, for example, instead of writing or calling  our reps regarding FISA, we had created a binding document that said these people will give X amount of money to the DCCC if they remove Telecom immunity from the FISA bill.

I'm not sure if such a thing is possible or even legal.  It seems like such a thing might skirt the edge of legality, or go beyond it.

But since the blogosphere is very good at raising money, it would be great if we could find a more direct way to use that ability on individual votes or issues.

They may not win THIS time around (as they're going up against well-funded, well-known Incumbents), but they're building relationships in the Community, getting their messages heard, letting people know there IS a viable alternative and will be better prepared when they run NEXT time.