“Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.”
— Pres. Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 2010
There seems to be a lot of heat under America, particularly America’s virtual political nation — its progressive blogs, websites and online magazines. In the days of the long drawn out battle over health care reform, progressives feel Democrats are not doing enough, fast enough.
At sites like Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and Huffington Post, progressive bloggers ranging from Alec Baldwin to everyday Janes and Joes like you and I have been literally screaming disapproval at the President, Democrats in Congress and each other.
Never a political party to let unity ruin a good argument, diaries and threads on these sites were devoted to: telling Obama what to do; telling Obama to fire Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Treasury Secretary Tim Gethner (which I think he should anyway); telling Obama he’s a sellout and a traitor to the left; telling other progressive blogs that THEY are traitors to the left. Not only that, but accusations flew about special SWAT teams of bloggers from radical progressive (Neo-liberal) sites allegedly disrupting the blog discussions of other progressive sites with opposing views about current events.
In a 24 hour news cycle, a story that captivates mainstream media for more than a few days means it has ‘legs’. When bad news with ‘legs’ happens to Democrats it appears that in political blogs, Democrats panic quite openly. And when they panic, all the news watches. After the Massachusetts election where Republicans were crowing the loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to Republican Scott Brown for hours on end and into the week, one would think after visiting their political websites that progressives, moderate and neo, had literally lost their bleeping minds.