Establishment without Conspiracy

Last time, we discussed the unconvincing attempts by Jacobin executive editor, a certain Mr. Ackerman, to assert a conspiracy to lose by a cabal within the Democratic Party rather than allow a progressive to win. This particular conspiracy theory bothers me, not because I don't believe there are unsavory corporate types in positions of influence within the Democratic Party who play act at being an opposition party but just want to maintain the status quo and personal gain, but because I don't think they are as powerful as the far left would like to believe. And well, the cabal is either a shadowy group working in secret or they are real people we can see and hear, with names and positions or public office. If they have names, use them, tell me and all the other naive Democrats out there who have faith that we can push towards a more fair, just society who exactly are the bad guys. It is lazy to just say "the establishment" is conspiring against Bernie, or rigging things for Joe Biden or whoever.

Be more like another executive editor of a left-leaning periodical, David Dayen, and break down the dynamics of the establishment. If you are an actual journalist, you can do better than the left wing authoritarian follower's version of "both sides do it" and be more specific. We, the naive flock of Democrats who have faith in our party to advance democracy and justice, need specifics to understand better what is clogging the pipeline of reform and what we can do to remove the calcified blockages. Mr. Dayen of The American Prospect does more than wave his hands and say "they" won't let Progressives win, he gets into the details. More than that, he actually links to other sources that can elaborate on the concepts and ideas he is explaining. Even if sometimes those links are to other articles he and other good faith Progressives have written.

I may not be as far out in a cornfield as DGBG, but I'm also a single shingle blogger without the means to subscribe to every newspaper and paywall-protected news magazine, and only a master's from a Midwestern university to help guide me. And they, Driftglass and Blue Gal, have each other, and a network of like minded detectives of politics to work with. We all have limited resources and politics is a realm of constantly-updating, every changing, facts and information. It's so important to stay informed because, more than ever, politics affects us and our day-to-day lives. People like Seth Ackerman, with actual paid positions and titles at news outfits, have a responsibility to aggregate, analyze, and then break down the complex news cycles for all of us who lack those resources. I write in my spare time, I do research with Google in that limited time and really depend on professionals to get those details out to the public.

So I don't have time for the assumptions and leaps of conspiracy that Mr. Ackerman throws out there, even when I understand and agree with the larger ideas. In my next post I will explain how Mr. Dayen does a better job of elucidating exactly what the "establishment" is within the Democratic Party and why it is a far better way of understanding the challenges faced by reformers and those naive enough, me for sure, to think we actually had a team on our side for fighting republicans for power.