Hypocrisy Cuts Both Ways, Or, Falling Out Of Love The Progressive Way...

Well, it seems Blanche Lincoln managed to survive the challenger of this week's Progressive Golden Boy, Bill Halter. Not that it really matters, most likely either would end up toast in November. In any event, some progressives aren't happy with the Obama Administration for supporting Lincoln and some of the Obama drones aren't happy with progressives for supporting Halter:

A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas.

"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."

Beyond noting that this sort of wastage couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people, it's worth mentioning that there's some serious progressive hypocrisy in this mix. A perfect example is this bit of nonsense from the mighty KOS - Markos Moulitsas - himself:

The GOP establishment tries to nominate electable candidates, and gets sabotaged by the teabaggers. We're trying to nominate electable candidates, and we get sabotaged by the Democratic Party establishment. We won in Pennsylvania, lost in Arkansas. You can't win them all. But make no mistake -- we made the politically smart move.

Of course, the reality of the matter is that Markos Moulitsas is just as much a part of the "Democratic Party establishment" as Blanche Lincoln.

Lest we forget, when push came to shove during the fight over health care reform, Markos - and the vast majority of self-identified progressive activists - happily did the "Democratic Party establishment's" bidding. Markos happily ignored the implications of Obama's PhRMA deal when told to, and dropped single payer... as instructed.

And lest we continue to forget, Markos also made a point of slagging Jane Hamsher on TV when she refused to do the "Democratic Party establishment" bidding on single payer.

Evidently this sort of thing boils down to keeping some self-esteem as well as a bit of street cred for the so-called progressive activists such as KOS. Markos and the Usual Suspects want to believe - quite desperately, it appears - that somehow the Great Progressive Sell-Out never really happened. They want this to be the fault of someone else. In other words... 

When we sell out, it's pragmatism. When they are pragmatic, it's a sell out.

Good luck with that, Markos. 

Comments

[richard mcenroe]

Well, don't worry, Dennis, you can tell Kos he apparently always has a home in California. The mean old teabaggers weren't able to sabotage the GOP drive to put up'electable' candidates... which apparently includes a woman who has never voted but did campaign for Barbara Boxer running as governor, and a woman running against Boxer who sold embargo'd technology to the Mullahs of Iran through a shell company like some fat Belgian arms dealer out of a Frederic Forsyth novel...

[Eric Blair]

Meh. It's California. It's a weird place.

[richard mcenroe]

It's 70 electoral votes and nearly 1/4 of the country's total population. I know it's a bitch of a commute for Steele and Cornyn but they could pay a LITTLE attention...

[just passin by]

OT, but I think you'll get a laff from this one...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/08/rage.obama/index.html?hpt=C1

Obama can't express his "rage" over the BP oil spill because it will scare all us racist white folk too much.

I wish I spent my HS years beating up the journalism kids...

[bilejones]

Both Kos (an ex-CIA guy[is one ever truly Ex-CIA?]) and Huffington are examples of the Democratic Establishment heeding Lenin's dictum: "The best way to beat the opposition is to lead it".

These are strange times in American politics what with Sarah Palin, a woman who's now written more books than she's read, rapidly becoming a king-maker on the right. Yeats' Rough new beast is slouching toward Washington D.C. to be born and it ain't going to be pretty.

[aelfheld]

Republicans and their ilk may be as whorish as the Democrats and their ilk, but it's the Democrats who try to drape their hypocrisy with piety.

[Christopher]

What I'd like to know is what the union laborers think of $10 million being spent on political candidates, and if they even got to vote internally as to who they wanted their money to support.

[Andrew Stern]

What dey're fuckin TOLD ta think, ya gotta problem widdat?