The current news is that the Leadership Forum this morning, which would have been attended by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Rahm Emanuel, and Harry Reid, will not be held beause our elected representatives still have some unfinished business in Congress. (After what we saw last night, though, maybe it's better to let most business remain unfinished.)
Anyway, let's move on to happier talk. General Wesley Clark delivered a rousing keynote speech Friday morning, repeatedly emphasizing the need to engage Middle Eastern countries in fighting terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, and injecting some badly needed rationality into our foreign-policy arguments that go beyond sixth-grade slogans like "They wanna kill us all!" And while it's fairly incredible that we STILL have to make this argument today, General Clark drew a clear distintion between supporting "the troops" and supporting the government's agenda that drove us into this war. He pointed the finger squarely at Bush for the Iraq disaster. He got a thunderous ovation. I attended a forum sponsored by Media Matters called "Left Behind by the Right" -- in which a panel of ex-conservatives (David Brock, John Dean, Air America's Cenk Uygur) described their disillusionsment and ultimate rupture with the right wing. Ariana Huffington would have been there, but unfortunately broke her ankle so she couldn't make it. Brock had the best story, describing a time in which he was watching Bill Clinton on TV with some right-wing friends during the impeachmant saga, and when the camera panned on Hillary, one of his hosts (a high-ranking constitutional lawyer) said, "Bitch!" He described that instance as one of his epiphanies -- right-wingers are about nothing but hate. Dean delved into authoritarianism, as he describes in his book "Conservatives Without Conscience", and mentioned that many of his friends in the legal and political communities, some of them Republicans, quietly thanked him for finally bringing the "A-word" to the fore. There was a net-neutrality/broadband policy panel after that. Don't remember all the names, but OpenLeft's Matt Stoller was among them, as was Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen. The panelists described the current state of the net-neutrality battle, explaining that it's a nonpartisan issue (Republicans -- at least the rank and file -- want a free and open internet just like the rest of us do), and discussing arguments over how we can win this war with the telcos. Most of the discussion revolved around how best to reduce a complex issue to bullet points the general, non-geek public can relate to. Lunch featured an interview with SEIU's Andy Stern, about the future of labor. Stern's a remarkably engaging speaker and storyteller -- I think I understand better why the traditional media avoids him like the plague. He talked about the union movement in China, which he said would surpass the American labor movement within a few years, calling the 2008 Beijing Olympics "China's Sputnik moment". He described the challenges faced by a labor force that job-hops much more often than its parents did, making employer-employee bonds a thing of the past, and tied the health-care debate to the changing dynamics of American employment. He believes that Hillary Clinton is sincere about wanting to reform healthcare, but won't endorse any Democratic candidate at this point, which is probably wise. Then we rolled into a media panel and some serious fireworks. Two traditional media figures, the Politico's Mike Allen and Time's Jay Carney, shared the stage with Glenn Greenwald, the brilliant Salon columnist, and Jill from Feministe (a superb blog I've just become aware of). Allen and Carney said nice things about blogs while offering tepid defenses of the traditional media's pro-beltway bias, but Greenwald laid into them (elegantly) by pointing out their failings on Iraq and on their overall insistence on quoting and featuring sources (such as Bill Kristol) who have been continually and fatally WRONG about issue after issue, most prominently Iraq. The audience lined up to question the panelists, and Allen and Carney got the brunt of the nasty ones. Carney fessed up to the media's lack of skepticism over the Iraq war buildup and stated that he'd do it differently if he got a do-over. I was ready to ask him the question that he DOES have a do-over now, called "Iran", and now's a good a time as any to start displaying this skepticism, but someone else asked that question a couple spots before me. The answers were unsatisfying -- the legacy-media panelists just talked in generalities about "we might do better" without really answering the questions. I hit a couple other panels, one on progressive issue-framing with George Lakoff, which was reasonably interesting if not terribly earthshaking. Then the netroots candidates in the event held a spirited cocktail party for the attendees -- Nebraska's Scott Kleeb was giving out white pine branches for planting (I got one). Donna Edwards couldn't make it, but a couple of her volunteers were there. Today's Presidential Panel Day. And Hillary Clinton WILL be around for her breakout session after all. Wonder what the mood will be after last night's vote... |
