Friday, December 18, 2009

Taking Time Out To Salute Greg Sargent

I really enjoy Greg Sargent's Plum Line blog and even though I don't comment there as much anymore, I still check all of his posts out every day. The last few days I have been trying to avoid political commentary since Joe Lieberman successfully made all of Senate leadership and the Obama White House his bitch, but I was still compelled to read his posts because they are usually so informative.

Well today he has a post up that should be used as a bludgeon against all of the conventional wisdom promoting, concern trolling, Villager assholes who like to try to throw the netroots and the left under the bus without ever addressing their specific concerns.

It would really be nice if certain Beltway journalists could get it into their heads that the Senate bill’s critics on the left have actual substantive differences with the bill’s proponents, and are not motivated solely by “ideology,” whatever the hell that means.

Ronald Brownstein, for one, is
actually trying to claim that Howard Dean opposes the bill because he’s a “wine track” Democrat who doesn’t lack insurance and hence has the luxury to indulge in ideological struggles.

Brownstein writes that Dean and the “digital left” are able to “casually dismiss” the bill because “they operate in an environment where so few people need to worry about access to insurance.” He adds that for these critics, the debate is “largely an abstraction” and merely a crusade to “crush Republicans and ideologically cleanse the Democrats.”

Brownstein doesn’t meaningfully respond to any of Dean’s substantive policy objections to the bill. If he did, he could no longer claim Dean’s critique is purely “ideological.”


Brownstein isn't likely to forget that ass kicking any time soon, nor should he. All I can hope is that Sargent hasn't burned any bridges that hinder his work going forward. It is so damn ironic that the better you do your job as a journalist the harder it is for you to advance in the Beltway. Better to just set up strawman and copy down Republican talking points and then find yourself a featured op-ed columnist.

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