Thom Hartmann points out, I think correctly to some degree, that the Democratic leadership suffer from battered-wife syndrome and need positive reinforcement.
However, as
Glenn Greenwald has excellently chronicled, the Democratic leaders already seek and get positive reinforcement from the Beltway political class.
Those are the same people as batter the Democrats, but they also give out lustily devoured positive reinforcements, many of which are handed out for defying the Democratic base. That’s quite a system to overcome by positive reinforcement alone.
Moreover, and this may be more important, to get the required numbers of citizen-participants in reinforcing the behaviors of the Democratic politicians, the citizen-participants have to be very angry and in a defiant mood. It is much simpler to organize around anger and defiance than around ‘Oh, that’s a good politician! Aren’t you a
good politician!’ wag wag wag wag.
So, I have my doubts about the predominantly positive approach and prefer to confront.
I think maybe Thom Hartmann is taking the analogy to battered wives farther than it can go. I can’t imagine a relation with battered wives as being all that analogous to a relation with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, et alia. It’s a good analogy, but a very, very rough one.
(And BTW if you are Thom Hartmann reading this, to hell with your pat-on-the-head ‘Well said!’ It makes me anxious how you give that out, as if I can’t depend on you to tell me when I have said something badly.)
