When the Democrats do X, Y, or Z, we always have these blogging voices to tell us why - to explain why it isn't as bad as it looks, that there is some deeply complex method to their madness that will make sense to us someday soon - if we can just control our reflexive urge to criticize.  They tell us to be patient.  To understand.  

If only they could curb their reflexive urge to defend, no matter how egregious or flagrant or craven the actions and policies coming out of the administration or the Congress, and get back to keeping Democratic feet to the fire.  Instead, they give them pass after pass after pass - after all, the Republicans are always worse!

If they're not going to be voices of accountability, if they're not interested in putting their little mainstream and quasi-mainstream gigs at risk, then let them stop masquerading as progressives, stop trying to somehow rehabilitate the liberal identity by passing off center-right, New Dem ideas and policies as progressive.

I got to remembering the other day that when my mother had her stroke in 2003, she initially presented with what is called left-side neglect; essentially, she was unaware of anything that was going on to the left of the brain's mid-line: if you stood on her left side, she didn't see you, if you put something in her left hand, she couldn't feel it - it was as if that side of her body didn't belong to her.  Thankfully, almost all of that resolved, but applying it to the New Democratic Party - and these New Establishment Bloggers - it is as if they have a terrible case of left-side neglect: they don't see us, they don't hear us - it's as if we aren't there at all.

And these New Establishment Bloggers, who could be confronting the New Democratic Party head-on, so they couldn't be ignored, and would see and would hear, seem to have developed a pretty bad case of left-side neglect, as well.

It's why I seldom read the bloggers listed: they just don't speak for me, and it irritates me beyond belief that not only do they consider themselves progressive, but they have been part of changing what it means to be liberal or progressive in the eyes of others.

Leaving those of us who are truly liberal, in the best sense of what that is supposed to mean, marginalized and invisible, dismissed and discounted as not mattering.

In my opinion, policy and legislation have suffered for that - which means the people have suffered for that.  

It was suggested to me by a number of parties this week that I should give some explicit account of why the blog has turned in what you might call a more "neoliberal" (though I don't really like the term) direction of late. There's a couple of reasons. One is simply product differentiation--I don't think just writing the same posts as Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein and Jon Chait is what the world needs from me, but we obviously all have similar political opinions. The other is the point I've made before, namely that with the passage of the Affordable Care Act the long struggle to expand the scope of the welfare state is largely over. [emphasis supplied]

But the Yglesias's of the world are just as important. Although they don't come down on the progressive side on every issue, that is in fact their virtue. They bring much needed perspective and credibility to progressive positions. Simply put, the moderates that everyone is fighting over in the middle tend to respect those folks. My conservative friends think highly of all of the people sited, in much the same way that I have a grudging respect for Frum.

These "new establishment" types are key to the progressive success. Will we always agree with them? No. But should we support the contribution they are making overall? Certainly.