Don't Know Much About State Politics… The Progressive Blogospheric Information Disconnect

I am still perplexed to discover the extent to which many progressive Californians who became incredibly well informed about national politics during the Bush years still remain almost completely in the dark about politics here in their own California, politics in which they have a palpable opportunity to make urgently needed change through their personal efforts.

If nothing else, I would hope that an awareness of the impacts on America's national destiny of California's vicissitudes and present woes -- as one of the dozen largest economies and most influential media and content sources on the planet if nothing else -- would lead progressives here to better educate themselves about the unique problems in our state and our very real, unique chance to have a voice in implementing progressive solutions to those problems. As California goes, so goes the Nation.

The present budget crisis is an opportunity for real progressive change (eg, the call for a Constitutional Congress to eliminate the arcane 2/3rds provision and require instead the usual majority for budget and revenue legislation). But California's own corporate-media Villagers are throwing up a fog of superficialities and misinformation (eg: "You can't trust anybody in Sacramento! No taxes! Let's cut, de-fund, and dismantle the government instead and then expect government to function anyway after we dismantle it and when it doesn't insist you can't trust anybody in Sacramento!" repeated ad infinitum in defiance of sanity while the State burns literally around our ears), zombie narratives that could very well disable any chance for progressive engagement in this historical moment. And too many timorous and under-principled Democrats are falling for and enabling the Villagers's line here.

We are seeing again and again here in California, especially in the years of the Davis recall and surreal Governator epoch, what looks all too ominously like the same sort of Democratic capitulation despite deeply dissatisfied progressive constituencies in the face of failed right-wing ideology and mainstream media vapidity that defined the peculiarly painful epoch between the Clinton Impeachment through the Illegal Bush Supreme Court Selection to the cheerleading for the immoral illegal Iraq war and looting operation.

The Netroots and an archipelago of p2p savvy progressive organizations actually managed to turn that tide (although a progressive verdict on the Democratic majority and Obama Presidency remains in these early days very much an open question, whatever our hopes, whatever our work), but what has taken place on the national stage clearly remains to be done here in California at the state level where one might have thought it would have been an easier feat to accomplish in the first place.

It's not too late, certainly. The budget crisis remains a real opportunity for progressives to spotlight the structural idiosyncrasies of our Constitution and the role of the bad behavior of right-wing anti-tax zealots and obstructionists in the present crisis as well as to propose genuinely progressive solutions to the crisis that include progressive taxes in the service of a government that actually works for everybody in the State. The Villagers have not yet managed to secure their preferred right-wing narrative for the crisis and the failure of the diversionary band-aids of the failed special election. Democrats can still embrace their actually progressive constituencies and provide leadership to solve our shared problems in an equitable way rather than shaking in fear of facile anti-governmental rhetoric Californians already overwhelmingly rejected long ago as evidenced, among other ways, in our National Senatorial and our Presidential picks.

You can be sure that progressives will be blamed and conservatives rewarded for the failures caused by conservative obstructions of progressives solutions unless progressives insist on making what is actually happening clear to the people who suffer the results. So far, progressives are failing both to implement solutions or to defend their perspective or to explain what the problem is. This looks like a job for the emerging progressive California Netroots -- here's hoping they (we!) can pull off the job in time.