Actually, they only view primary challenges as purges when they come from the left.  I didn't hear any of the aristocrats complain about Ed Case's challenge to Sen. Akaka, nor when Henry Cuellar beat Ciro Rodriguez in 2004.  

So not "especially when they come from the left" but "only when they come from the left."  

To be fair, I still view myself as residing in the "racial middle."  Sort of like how Justice Stevents said awhile back that he still views himself as a "conservative."  It's just that the GOP has gone so crazy that now makes all these labels wrong from a relative standpoint.  :)

I find your ideas intriguing Chris.

Ha! I got the joke!

That was funny, Chris.

For what it's worth, I think that America is centrist.  So are MoveOn, MyDd, DailyKos, and many other outlets on the Internet.  After all, people like us floated Jim Webb and Jim Tester and they are conservative in many ways.

What separates us from the establishment types is not ideological spectrum but the effort to educate and agitate American voters about their own interests.

Protecting the middle class is centrist.  Properly educating our children is centrist.  Taking care of the elderly is centrist.  Preserving the life on earth is centrist.  Owning up to defeat is not only centrist but courageous.

And that is the main difference between activists and the party establishment.  We are courageous and they are risk averse.

Therefore, we have every reason to claim centrist for ourselves but not as a lousy compromise.  Rather centrist has to reflect the genuine interests of all Americans.  

Something about the belief that the "dirty fucking hippie wing" of the party is hostile to religion might fit in this list as well.

• Would rather be powerful in a minority then distribute power to gain a majority


• Buys into a perspective that campaigns are events that should be approached by trying not to lose


• Would rather stockpile money that earns modest interest in the bank than invest in scalable models that would ultimately provide greater resources


• Believes that it made perfect sense for a fundraiser to run the DNC and thought highly of Tim Roemer's bid and Harold Ford's attemped coup


• Believes Bush will negotiate in good faith and feared Democrats acting in Solidarity on Social Security


• Are more worried about what their enemies think than Democratic voters


• Exhibits frustration at the decline of the DLC


• Worried that McCain-Feingold would destroy the Party but not letting us remain beholden to big business


• Believes that Joe Klein isn't a complete dipshit

"Thinks that dissenting from the great, all-powerful left makes you a rebellious, cool "outsider.""

Does attacking fictional versions of Noam Chomsky qualify?

How about mocking the lone member of the Progressive Caucus running for president?

to the post that said we were all

a bunch of effete, idiotic computer geeks living in their mother's basements

Time to break out the survey data and introduce dumbass to the real world.  Or so I thought before it got troll-rated into oblivion or whatever.  

Great post, Bowers.  Looks like it attracted its own "Exhibit 'a'".
.

Fundamentally, these are people who believe that they saved the Democratic Party from itself in the 1990's and early part of this decade, even though outside of presidential elections it was the worst electoral run for Democrats in seventy years.

I would agree that this belief implicitly describes a major perception fault-line dividing the predominant party/progressive activist elite and the new emerging activist leadership.

This has been described before many times but to put it in the simplest (Brooks-ian)terms: there are the children of 1972, the children of 1992, and the children of 2000. The children of '72 transformed the country culturally but were inept at the nuts-and-bolts of electoral politics and were oblivious of a conservative counter-revolution happening in less-urban parts of the country. They have been stuck in the attic by the children of 1992 for about 20 years, but were let out (with conditions) by the children of 2000.

The children of 1992 have nothing but contempt for the children of 1972, holding them responsible for the catastrophic presidential defeats of '68, '72, '80, '84, and '88. They currently dominate the party leadership and they hold as articles of faith the perception that modern America is basically a center-right nation that only votes for Dems if Dems confine their progressive message to pocketbook topics and embrace a basically conservative posture on crime and national security issues.

The children of 2000 basically see the modern political environment as one of perpetual crisis engendered by conservative  over-reach. It's the sense that conservatives have gone too far that fuels their outrage in general and deep frustration at the children of 1992 specifically. The feeling is very similar to a sense of betrayal, that the children of 1992 let conservatives over-reach on their watch and without really trying to stop them and never having apologized for their failure. The children of 2000's acute sense that things have to change have embraced the proud posture of the children of 1972 and allied with them generally  while studiously (but perhaps not sustainably) avoiding too much of a public emphasis on comprehensive philosophy and ideology.

Personally, I find it hard to forget the dark years of the eighties especially the 1980 massacre in the Senate where a generation of liberal giants was swept out of power and no one saw it coming. The party was genuinely in dire straits then. However, I see the current environment as being fundamentally different -- a discrete evolutionary step beyond -- from anything else post-WWII.

What you've done so well here, Chris, is to show that to the Democratic aristocracy, the main enemy isn't Republicans, but the Democratic left. Helps explain why they let this country go to hell - they thought it was more important to make common cause with conservatives to help defeat the left than it was to make common cause with the left to defeat conservatives.

I like that, but I wonder whether there's evidence to back that up. Are there really measurable differences in terms of information and attention across the ideological spectrum?

This is a great list -- so great that I'm quoting on my blog.

The difference, after all, is about establishment insiders vs. grassroots outsiders -- we simply want fair & affirmative representation of our views/interests, something that Democratic Party establishment insiders have simply forgotten how to do.

Won't read this post, or catch The Simpson's reference in the Michael Bloomberg joke above.

Bwahaaha!

Good post.  

This was funny: "The last thing we need is a repeat of 1972, which will undoubtedly happen is they are not in charge of the Democratic Party anymore."

With Clinton's recent move to the right on Iraq, 2000 might be a better analogy. It won't matter whether its Nader or the yippie pig (nominee - Chicago 1968 - Youth International Party -- Grant Park) brought back from retirement.  If we have two pro-war candidates, it will not be pretty.    

I'll take "Who is Rahm Emmanuel" for $500 please...

It didn't take Obama long to become one of the aristocracy did it?  Though I'm guessing you mean all of the current presidential front runners...

Is a list made so detailed as to envelope every non-netroots Democrat. Doesn't seem particularly well researched or justified to me. More like a list of netroots grievances. I agree with the general netroots sentiment on maybe 75% of those points, but some of them I strongly agree with as well. And I read MyDD and DKos on a daily basis and am far from a "low information voter".

Has anyone here ever considered that people are just...how do I put this...different? Unique in their life experiences, opinions, and moral perspectives? It's rather annoying to read "yeah, all these people who don't hold our ideals are just 'low information' [read: "stupid fucking morons"] voters" ad nauseum. It's intellectually lazy and ego-maniacal.

...for Lanny Davis. Somewhere a limp Al From (yes, that's redundant) is smoking a cigarette...