Yesterday's schism over the best direction for political progressives continued today with divergent manifestos. On the progressive side, BooMan, whose powerful vision of A Road Toward a Progressive Majority captures what I see as the true spirit of the netroots:

We don't like the DLC strategy of backing off women's rights, of talking about Dan Quayle's phony family values. But our presumed nominee for 2008 is Hillary 'DLC' Clinton. Fuck her. If we can't sideline her candidacy we are worthless. But we can sideline it. And the first thing we need to do is to demonstrate to the Democratic politicians that we can get them elected. They don't need to spend 30 hours a week on the phone raising money from the Chamber of Commerce or bundling from the financial services corporations. If they respond to our concerns they can raise money more painlessly.

The reason Democrats have tacked to the center is not because they have forgotten what they stand for. It's because they haven't been able to raise the money to stay in power any other way. Howard Dean's campaign for the nomination, and his campaign for the DNC chair showed an alternative path. Lots and lots of small contributions from ordinary Americans of modest means are better than a few large donations by the power brokers. Why? It's less time-consuming and taxing on the candidate.

When we become a more attractive source of campaign funds than the alternative (spending 4 hours a day whoring on the phone) we have our voice heard first. The people, average Joes and Janes, suddenly have more clout than some lobbyist for the soy bean industry.

Money is power. No amount of idealism or reform legislation can change that. If we want to make the politicians in Washington stick up for the little guy, the little guy has to figure out how to stick up for their representatives when they are besieged by maximum contributions from the Exxon/Mobil managerial staff going to their opponent.

But before we can replace the traditional power brokers we have to show results. We have to show our model actually works. And we can't do that if we don't believe the model can work. And we aren't the only game in town. The power brokers are busy at work trying their own strategy which involves recruiting anti-abortion candidates, of soft-pedaling our support for affirmative action, women's rights, gun control, gay marriage...

Plain talk with some plain truths.

Also today, Kos offers up a post of his own, almost as if he sought to illustrate by example the ills BooMan sees:

Defenders of certain groups will be quick to charge, "Kos attacks NARAL, so he's 'anti-woman'", or "Kos attacks HRC, so he hates gays". Fact is, those groups were created for a governing system where progressives had some measure of power, and those constituency groups could lobby for their causes in the halls of government. If I hated choice and gays and the environment and every other progressive constituency group I would applaud the status quo, because it is surely and inexorably leading to their demise.

That formula doesn't work in today's political environment. And we won't have a governing majority until the energy expended in pursuing pet interests gets redirected toward getting Republicans out of power and getting Democrats -- even some of the imperfect ones -- elected to replace them.

The latest -- or perhaps primal -- "pet interests" that upset his dream of Democratic glory? Environmentalists.

Our thesis is this: the environmental community's narrow definition of its self-interest leads to a kind of policy literalism that undermines its power. When you look at the long string of global warming defeats under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, it is hard not to conclude that the environmental movement's approach to problems and policies hasn't worked particularly well. And yet there is nothing about the behavior of environmental groups, and nothing in our interviews with environmental leaders, that indicates that we as a community are ready to think differently about our work.

Translation: The Democratic Party's abandonment of environmentalism is validated because environmentalism has failed to win support.

Meanwhile, Kos' gunnery sergeant, Armando, has what he considers a brilliant new plan:

I just watched the press conference held by the Dem Congressional Leadership -- Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi, with invited guests Missisippi Democratic Congressmen Gene Taylor and Bennie Thompson, and I must say that Taylor was incredibly good. Just outstanding.

Certainly, Reid and Pelosi were fine and made good points. I did not get to see Thompson. But Taylor was off the charts good. Really unbelievably good discussing the issues. He discussed details with great intelligence and charisma. He really struck me as a guy who could make his points in common sense human terms and could lay out real understandable criticisms that would surely be meaningful to the common man. An outstanding performance.

So here is a proposal -- let Gene Taylor be the principal Democratic spokesperson for Democrats on the Katrina response by the federal government.

So who is this Taylor? Why he's one of those anti-choice Democrats Markos loves to say will endorse a pro-choice agenda. He's one of the Democrats for Life.

But that doesn't stop the Kossack cheerleading squad from cheering for any Democrat, as long as they don't actually register Republican. suse sees even brighter prospects:

He is tremendously pro veterans and military families and is very concerned about health care for our vets. And I think he's not happy about what this war is doing to the military.

Mississippi won't elect a Barbara Boxer or even a Frank Lautenberg but Gene Taylor would vote with the Dems much of the time and is a vast improvement over any Southern Republican.

I agree with Armando that I love to see him up there as our Southern spokesman against the likes of a Haley Barbour or Trent Lott.

A Clark/Taylor ticket wouldn/t be out of the question either - how about Army/Navy!

Oh for fuck's sake. But face it, folks. This is the dKos vision: win at any cost, no matter what the values. Put a bunch of Republicans in cheap Democrat suits and call it a victory.

Excuse me while I throw up....

Okay, I'm back, to share this final thought: Blaming failure on the only people who actually engaged in battle is a foolish, cowardly and/or craven tactic. Let's face it -- reproductive rights, healthcare, environmentalism, workers' rights, care for the poor have all failed because the Democratic Party abandoned those causes. Kos' attempts to blame advocacy groups in those areas for these failures amounts to blaming the victims.

Grassroots implies roots. Netroots implies roots. The roots are our progressive values. Without them, we stand for nothing ... and end up chasing phantoms who really aren't of this reality-based world.

About author

media girl also blogs at other places.