True Confessions of a Right-Wing Toady
I'm obviously a fan of what's sometimes known as the "progressive blogosphere." Look at the links to the left of these words, and you'll see a handful of sites that have a distinct and consistent take on the issues of the day. Even better, the proliferation of community sites with a strong liberal perspective has allowed wave after wave of new, heretofore totally unknown writers to find audiences, informing and inspiring and entertaining as they go. It's good for progressives, and I think it's even good for democracy.

Unfortunately, the echo-chamber tendencies of these sites have some less pleasant side effects too. One, which I wrote about a lot in the wake of the catastrophic defeat last November, is that we as participants leave ourselves open to delusion. There's a clear selection bias at work, and we tend to, as the old song goes, accentuate the positive and eliminate--or at least rationalize away--the negative. Another is the enforcement, or attempted enforcement, of a rigid ideological conformity that's often expressed in very ugly ways.

So it was when I wrote a diary entry on Daily Kos last week titled "Why I'm supporting Bloomberg." As the New York City mayoral primary was just concluded, and already my e-mail box was filling up with requests from the likes of John Kerry himself to send money and support to newly minted Democratic nominee Freddy Ferrer (unofficial motto: "It Takes a Hack"), and the front-page proprietors of dKos were similarly throwing brickbats at "so-called Democrats" who were lining up behind Mike Bloomberg, I figured I'd at least try to set out my arguments, with a little history and background thrown in. I don't want to recap the whole piece here--I thought it was pretty good, and the link is just a few lines up--but basically my points were: I voted and volunteered for Mark Green four years ago, I was really bummed when Bloomberg won, but I think he's done a very good job on balance and I like that he's free of the usual cronyism and political debts that dominate urban politics; and Ferrer, based on his history, his allies, and his campaign to date, IMO would likely be a failure in City Hall.

Here's the first comment I got in response:

Bloomberg Is A Traitor (3.16 / 6)

Therefore so are his supporters.
He is a Republican now.
Furthermore he detained American citizens en masse unlawfully (against court rulings issued in advance) for the Republican convention.

A vote for Bloomberg is a vote for Republican hegemony, and as a fellow New Yorker, I detest you.
I can't say you have no right, but I can say you are a rightwing toady, period, end of story.
Ferrer is competent, you have no excuse.

And it kind of went on from there. Someone else declaimed that I was betraying my country. More recently on dKos, having rejoined this argument in another thread, I was told I should re-register as a Republican. There was very, very little substance offered on behalf of Ferrer.

Most of the complaints follow two themes: "Bloomberg equals Bush," and "Bloomberg mistreated the RNC protesters last summer." (There's also, as the comment I cited above implies, a bit of irrational "thou hast betrayed me" scorn for Bloomberg's apostasy in running as a Republican; to me that's not worth engaging with, for the simple reason that "there's no Democratic or Republican way to fix a pothole"; at the local level, party label doesn't matter very much.) The second, I guess, has some validity. But frankly, I don't think any mayor, of either party, would have done much different; four years earlier in Philadelphia, Ed Rendell (a Democrat) was similarly criticized.

And to be even more blunt--because we're on my turf now--I suspect a lot of the protesters were looking for the outcome they earned. The cops might have been dicks, but I doubt many of them wanted the extra paperwork and general effort of arresting a bunch of mouthy white kids.

Should they have been treated so harshly? No. Should they have been given a Central Park permit? Yes. But in the grand scheme of things, I fail to see how this is all that big of a deal.

Then there's the Bush charge. It's based on, one, Bloomberg's campaign giving to Bush and the Republicans; and two, that the city hosted the RNC last year. That he contributed to Bush certainly bothers me; I gave a lot of time, money and effort to beat that prick, and it rankles me that my mayor worked against me. In the full context of Bloomberg's philanthropy and a lifetime of political giving, however, the theme of his 2004-cycle contributions is pretty clear: it's "DON'T FUCK OVER NEW YORK CITY." Given the deep bias against our claiming a fair share of state and federal budgets prevalent in Albany and DC, I understand it even if I don't condone it.

As for the RNC, though I myself protested their presence (and--I remember--wrote repeatedly here and elsewhere about how much it bothered me to have them exploiting our tragedy, given their policies), I'm also glad they dropped however many millions into our local economy. If these self-righteous "liberal" jerkasses want to pick up all the schoolteacher, sanitation worker and cop salaries paid for by Republican delegate spending last year, then I'm happy to talk with them. Otherwise, they've got no beef.

Not to mention that Bloomberg, like any smart mayor, wanted *both* political conventions in the city last year. Terry McAuliffe and Ted Kennedy put the kibosh on that one, I think it's fairly safe to say to the detriment of our results last November. Remember, the Democrats had their convention first, as the "out" party; if they'd held it here, they could have made any number of powerful political points: how everyday Republican policies hurt the city they'd come to exploit; how Bush used the tragedy of 9/11 to push a terribly divisive partisan agenda and a war waged under false pretenses against an "enemy" that hadn't been involved with the attacks; even how (as Bloomberg noted in his address to the RNC) the Republican thugocracy distributed homeland security money based on political calculations rather than an honest assessment of risk.

But that gets me pretty far from the thread. And the thread is that these "Better Dead than Republican Red" arguments leave us arguably as badly off, in terms of supporting the public interest, as those on the other side. That so many of those bloviating the loudest don't actually live here--and clearly know nothing about Ferrer, or the deeply corrupt borough-based Democratic machines--just adds another layer of insult.