NP: Sausage, Riddles Are Abound Tonight

There's been a considerable amount of rumbling on the far left about jumping off the Obama bandwagon if there's no public option in the eventual healthcare debate, to the point where some lefties have bought ad space to get their point across, and netroots icon Markos Moulitsas has called the public option "our Waterloo." There's even some talk of progressives throwing support behind someone else when the Democratic primaries roll around in advance of the next presidential election.

First off, the public option? Really? That's where you're drawing your line in the sand? This adds to my list of problems with the far left, in that they don't seem to know how to pick their battles. Due to the "always-on" nature of the netroots and the left-wing blogosphere, sometimes they seem dead-set on picking every battle. This strikes me as a poor use of resources that the netroots don't understand are limited and can't be crowdsourced, and it paints a picture of the exact same dogmatic recitation of ideology as the basis for constant political confrontation that the right engaged in for years. The sense I get is that, on that latter point, they don't much care, because I've heard Kos say, in effect, that this is payback for the way the GOP has behaved over the years, in a sort of "if they can do it, we can do it, too" sense that I obviously don't agree with.

I think Marc Ambinder said it well in his assessment of the state of the health care debate from earlier in the week, when he pointed out that "from the start, the least convincing argument made to the White House about strategy starts with the premise that compromising with recalcitrant Republicans is inherently bad." While I get how the right hasn't exactly been a willing partner in the debate, I don't think the White House can give up on them as quickly as the legions of second-guessers and amateur pundits would. Because while you can stamp your feet about the mandate of the 2008 election, the policy portion is only a part of that mandate. Many of us were also voting to reject the slash-and-burn politics that accompanied those policies, and that's what I'm starting to see as the progressive pitch a collective fit. All this does is further entrench the notion of politics as a red team vs. blue team game, and that has never, ever sat well with me.

Also, as a progressive rock fan, I'm as put off by the left's use of the word "progressive" as I was when I learned that when most people mention Rush, they no longer mean the power trio from Canada. But that's another issue.

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if we're approaching a massive fragmentation of the entire political landscape. I've been predicting a schism in the Republican Party for some time now, but hadn't thought about the possibility that the Democrats might meet the same end. As the combination of political niche marketing and reinforcement of those niches through social networking exaggerate the differences between subgroups within the current two-party scheme, the whole thing might go kablooey, resulting in a sort of re-organization of society akin to Neal Stephenson's future in The Diamond Age. The 2012 primaries might end up being a very significant time in American politics.