I finally got around to reading Party in Search of a Notion...that article in The American Prospect that I got a bad taste in my mouth over based on a extract.

Michael Tomasky reminds me too much of Joe Taylor...Open Source Politics is void now or I'd link you directly to his ignorance...the text of the OSP post is also here; I think I saved the original OSP post with comments.  I suspect Joe was a college freshman at the time...I suspect (assuming he's still politically active and actually trying to learn something) he would reach the point where he was capable of writing something like Party in Search of a Notion.

Maybe I'm assuming The American Prospect has more impact in progressive circles. I know that, as a DLC organ, it is attended to by bloggers on the political left, and that leads me to believe the mythology the article presents has a good chance of gaining traction.

After reading this article and the first two parts of 'a path-breaking and challenging new study on how progressives and Democrats can close the “identity gap,” ,' I'm inclined to leave this to the wonks. It is obviously not intended for my ears.

I have deleted three attempts to explain why that bothers me using language of varying levels of social acceptability. Directly speaking I find factual fault with a few statements.

Liberal governance is about demanding of citizens that they balance self-interest with common interest. Any rank-and-file liberal is a liberal because she or he somehow or another, through reading or experience or both, came to believe in this principle. And every leading Democrat became a Democrat because on some level, she or he believes this, too.

Like that one.

Actually, I should have no complaints here. I've long said the mainstream won't give up anything unless they (it?)  themselves benefit. Mr. Tomasky provides support for my assertion.

Immigration policy can’t be chiefly about the rights of undocumented immigrants; it needs to be about what’s good for the country. Similarly with civil-rights policy -- affirmative action, say, which will surely be up for review one day again when a case reaches the Roberts court.

But he denies that there are, in fact, issues particular to particular populations.

Much of the work done by these groups, and many of their goals, are laudable. But if they can’t justify that work and those goals in more universalist terms rather than particularist ones, then they just shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Take such a position and Black turnout will drop like a rock over an event horizon. Do you think you'll gain enough white votes to make that worthwhile?

Worst of all, it won't even work with white folks.

In addition to the idea that diversity enriches private-sector environments, affirmative action has been the most important single factor in the last 40 years in the broad expansion of the black middle class, which in turn (as more blacks and whites work and live together) has dramatically improved race relations in this county, which has been good, as LBJ would put it, for every American.

You're trying to get a buy-in from the guys who were attracted to The Party That Hates Blacks...defending affirmative action programs by saying it helped Black folks (i.e., the perceived competition). Hopefully this was written before the current  explosion of xenophobia began...by now he should see how useful proclamations of how illegal immigants inevitably become middle class turned out to be. Take a lesson, Mike.

Too damn complex.

I while back I gave Howard Dean the best advice he ever fucked up (not like he saw it, but..)

I would like Mr. Dean and every Democratic candidate running for every office in the nation to please, please include white people when you run down the list of ethnicities you want to help out. If you don't say it the wingnuts assume you're excluding them. Or will claim you're excluding them, favoring minorities at the expense of the NASCAR dads (alias Angry White Men, who are, by the way, still angry for some reason). And the hordes without number that react rather than think end up opposing you because you didn't say their name.

And what does he go and say? Do I need to repeat it?

Come on, Mr. Tomasky.  You're supposed to be a progressive...do you really mean this?

Much of the work done by these groups, and many of their goals, are laudable. But if they can’t justify that work and those goals in more universalist terms rather than particularist ones, then they just shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Because as a wordsmith, I can do that...and I know my ability to do so doesn't make my case stronger than all those of people without that particular skill set. It just feels a lot like what Republicans have done to Democrats.

And if you actually read this and think to yourself, "they have no where else to turn," you may regret it. Because Black folks may not be willing to vote against a Democrat for a Republican but we damn sure will vote against a DLC candidate in the primaries. Because we are an important part of the Democratic base...as important as white evangelicals are to Republicans.

And I'm going to point you to, of all people, Steve Sailor.

And, increasingly, the Republican Party has become a covert exercise in identity politics for white men. A peculiarly ineffectual exercise because of the Republican determination to camouflage this fact by promoting policies that obviously do white men no good.

Democratic policies benefit white guys to the degree they are progressive. Why aren't you talking to them about that?