I had the opportunity to appear on Laura Flanders’ show today with Micah Sifry and continue the ongoing debate over whether the grassroots are or are not empowered, are or are not unhappy, and are or are not disengaging from the political process overall.
I’m not sure we broke any new ground, but it did give us an opportunity to identify the issues and our differences as well as the areas in which we agree. What I see as important going forward is finding a way to accommodate idealism with grassroots pragmatism in order to form a message of cohesion and unity for the midterm elections.
Stuart O’Neill has a post up analyzing the content of our debate. I think he’s right — I was speaking of practical politics, Sifry was speaking of dream politics. It’s worth reading his post to get a sense of the possibility of where the two philosophies converge.
Here’s the entire video, including the segment with New York OFA director Geoff Berman, who was not allowed to participate in our debate (DNC orders), but had some interesting insights nonetheless. I’m not sure why the DNC barred Berman from engaging directly with us. It was disappointing, as I’m sure he would’ve had some great perspective in the context of the debate.
Major props to Laura Flanders and the wonderful people that work with her for what I consider one of the most fair and balanced presentations of the debate I’ve ever seen on TV.
What do you think? Where do we go from here? With midterm elections right around the corner, engagement is critical. Indeed, without it conventional wisdom will prevail. With participation and engagement by the supporters who elected Barack Obama, a stronger and better Congress is within our grasp.
