Spare me from bright young things

John Emerson at Seeing the Forest looks at the battle for the Democratic Party’s soul:

Recently some of the bright young Ivy League things of the Yglesias sort confessed, with no apparent embarrassment, that they had initially supported Bush’s ill-conceived Iraq War primarily because they had been unwilling to be seen on the same side of the fence as the anti-war hippies they knew. Kevin Drum has expressed regret that Robert Scheer is writing for the LA Times (and has his doubts about Bob Somerby too), Brad DeLong went ballistic when Barbara Ehrenreich was given some column inches by the New York Times, and the usually-astute “praktike” made a dismissive remark about Greg Palast on a comment thread somewhere. This whole tendency was eloquently summed up by the commentator “Petey” on Yglesias’ comments: “Screw the Hippies”.

The goal is to cleanse the Democratic party of any smirch of anti-war sentiment, thus giving the American people only a choice between two different war policies. I find it hard to list the number of ways this is wrong.

First of all, I think that American military policy, at least as long as Bush is in office, is the big political issue of our time. War is a serious question and our answer to the question shouldn’t made on the basis of election demographics. If war is the wrong choice but the American people want war, we should get to working changing their minds. Contrary to Petey’s belief, one of the functions of politics is to define issues, rather than merely finding out what people already think and doing that. (Petey’s cynicism is amazing: when I mentioned that even the “new European” Poles mostly oppose the Iraq War, Petey’s brilliant response was “How many electoral votes does Poland have?” I find that response to be hideously corrupt. You have to win elections to do anything, but the big questions shouldn’t be used as bargaining chips like artichoke subsidies and shrimp imports.)

This is the crux though: for people like Beinart, like Kevin Drum or Matt Y., what matters is the political game rather than the outcomes it causes in the real world. These people don’t really care about the US workers made jobless through Bush’politics, the soldiers and especially the civilians killed in his wars, they care on whether or not the political game is played well, they care about their own little spiteful revenges on all those imagined bogeymen who make the Democratic Party so …embarassing to a bright young thing on his way up inside the Beltway. Caring about these things isn’t cool, fighting for principles is not smart or realistic.

What is needed is very much a purge within the Democratic Party, one in which people are put against walls, lose their cozy jobs and appointments and blood flows. Only then will the Democratic Party become a good opposition party, when it becomes clear you either oppose or get fired, make a stand against Bush or lose your seat.