Soviets

If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.

-Nikita Khrushchev

Oh criminey. Your basic Donk is a bland enthusiast for a bland Utopia, but certain segments of the progglesphere, having made minor footholds in the traditional media and third-tier connections with a couple of campaigns, imagine themselves on the vanguard of a great revolution. One Chris Bowers is one of the worst of the lot. He has read one Richard Florida book and several articles in the Atlantic monthly, and now he makes Gladwellian pronouncements on the Zeitgiest which have the twined characteristics of bombastitude and wrongness. Clearly a bit of an egomaniac, he makes the error of any good Bolshevik foot soldier: he presumes that the revolution is designed to benefit people like him. He lists three ways in which Obama is going to change the Democratic Party, and unsurprisingly pride of place goes to the notion that "the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types." Smell you! The Creative Class is a term dreamed up by Richard Florida, a social-science huckster who peddles the notion that the "knowledge economy" is going to keep post-industrial urban America afloat on a sea of noncorporeal money dreamed up by lawyers and architects and programmers and the urban bohemians who are gentrifying your neighborhood even as we speak. This idea, quel suprise, appeals to lawyers and architects and programmers and the urban bohemians who, ah, hell. These folks are a small slice of the population, and characterized by numbing self-involvement. Hey, I'm a fag who works in the arts and gentrifying an urban neighborhood, and I'd love to think that this means that the country, world, and universe revolve around me, but since not, not. "It [the Democratic Party] will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class." Is it going to beam them into your fillings? Seriously, rich donors have more money and the white working class has got more bodies. What the fuck do you have, a laptop? The Revolution will not be Webcast, putz.

Item two predicts

a shift from the more corporate and triangulating policy focus of the Democratic Party in the 1990's, and see it replaced by whatever centrist, technocratic policies are the wonkish flavor of the month. It will all be very oriented toward think-tank and academic types, and be reminiscent of policy making in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. A sort of "technocratic liberalism" that will be less infuriating than DLC style governance, but still not overtly leftist.

You've got to love that "overtly leftist" part, as if the go-along netroots that Bowers is hep to is some kind of International front. "Yes, let me just put down my Althusser and make a paypal donation to the Obama campaign. All done!" Clintonian governance was, of course, decidedly "wonkish"--wherefore that word, wonk, anyway? It just produced results these fuckers disagreed with, although you don't hear fags like me getting too uppity about the fact that welfare reform and the hollowing-out of housing subsidies made it all that much easier to swoop into urban neighborhoods and fuck with cheap real estate, for example. DLC governance was corporatist in its outlook, sure, but what's Obama got beyond the same old schtick about ending "tax credits" to companies that "ship American jobs overseas." What and ever, my friends. Legislation will originate where legislation has originated for years: in the legal departments of affected industries and their respective lobbying arms.

Item 3:

A long-standing Democrats [sic] approach of transactional politics with different issue and demographic silos in the party shift toward an emphasis on good government (goo goo) approaches. We will see lots of emphasis on non-partisanship, ethics reform, election reform instead of on, say, placating labor unions, environment groups, and the LGBT community by throwing each of these groups a policy bone or two.

Personally I'm aiming for a demographic bathhouse. Gah. What does this even mean? Good government in the classic American-civics sense is representative of the desires of the voting population, passing laws vital to their interests and well-being. "Good government" as an abstract concept is just the sort of who-moved-my-cheese corporate-lingo hoodoo that the "creative class" spends its days benchmarking against industry-standard best practices in order to find new synergies and define markets for the coming challenges ahead. "Obama will encourage the party to twaddle its thumbs on transparently vacuous procedural reforms with a vaguely moral patina so that no one notices Rome burning." Awesome plan.

Finally, Bowers advises:

Overall, instead feeling like Blue Dogs, Joe Lieberman and media pundits are running the party, it should feel kind of like PIRG, but a bit more right-wing, academic and well-to-do. In other words, PIRG without seeming like DFHs run the show. That should be an upgrade from the 1990's, but expect quite a few times where progressives will need to take oppositional stances.

Oh, yeah, the famous progressive "oppositional stance." Sets my knees a-tremble. Jesus Hell Christ. The food in this restaurant is so bad, and the portions are so small!