Somerby

Being human, we’re all inclined to put our thumb on the scale when we review events around us. But we don’t see how we can build a real progressive politics out of posting embellished complaints. Going a bit further, it seems to us that progressives will be poorly served by adopting the tactics of the kooky-con right (something this writer at the Huffington Post seemed to advocate this weekend). Increasingly, our politics is going to feature battles between the haves and have-nots. For progressives, the other side will increasingly be better-connected and more powerful. In these future debates, the most powerful tool we’ll have on our side will be an insistence on traditional standards of fact and logic. We will never be able to out-bullroar the tribunes of the rich and the powerful. Our view? When we head down that tempting road, we commit ourselves to future defeat.

We don’t know Harwood, and we’re not major fans. As noted, he’s competent, bland, conventional, predictable—but no, his isn’t a right-winger. On Meet the Press, he went after Bennett for the whole segment. But then, there was nothing surprising about that. In fact, Meet the Press had not assembled a panel of “right-wingers” that day.
On the liberal web, we often brag that we represent the “reality-based” community. In the future, progressives will continue to find themselves at war with well-funded dissemblers—tribunes of powerful upper-class interests. Our view? Aggressive embrace of “reality”—of the traditions of fact and logic—will constitute our best hope for success. It’s always tempting to overstate—and being human, we all end up doing it. But for progressives, it’s a road to defeat. There they go again, we should say, when tribunes of the powerful do it.