Group Buy

by tristero

Greenwald has merry fun eviscerating Brooks but as enjoyable as that is, I was struck by his roundup of stats about the unpopularity of Congress, even if though I’d seen them before.

Many Congressional Democrats, sez Glenn and I think he’s right, have embraced and are acting upon the pundit consensus of what they should do, not upon what this country actually thinks. Meanwhile, polls consistently report less than 20% approval rates for Congress’ performance. And polls consistently report that the blogosphere, whose opinions about the war and the direction of the country are considered too outre for serious consideration by the likes of Brooks, are quite in sync with huge numbers of Americans, if not the majority.*

What to do? The answer is obvious and straightforward, although it will take some time for significant influence to be felt. That is to funnel as much money as possible through an organization like MoveOn to the Democratic Party in general and also to specific candidates.

Control the money and you control the party. Again, whether or not MoveOn is *the* organization is less important than making sure that the Democratic Party and its candidates realize that their income comes from people who expect the party to act as representatives of the country, not David Brooks’.

I cannot urge you enough to donate in the coming election cycle. AND to donate through an organization rather than directly to the Democratic Party and its candidates. The Village clearly likes that the United States is a democracy about as little as James Dobson likes the Bill of Rights. You want to change things? Aggregate the money and demand accountability. And make sure there’s lots of money in that aggregate. It’s that simple.

Both democracy and a civil government are much better ways to run a country than High Broderism or theocracy. I think it’s worth paying for a good government, given that buying a government is the system we currently use. But we must spend our money wisely. That means that even large donors must use aggregators. It’s called a group buy, and it works.

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*For what it’s worth, the opinions of the American people, that great unwashed mass of quivering, ignorant, humanity, are echoed by some of the most knowledgeable and experienced experts on foreign policy in the world, several of whom have been known to shower at least once a week.