Glenn Greenwald on the “mindless tribalism” that has deflated meaningful liberal advocacy with regard to Obama’s supreme court nominee:

Perhaps most revealing of all: a new article in The Daily Caller reports on growing criticisms of Kagan among “liberal legal scholars and experts” (with a focus on the work I’ve been doing), and it quotes the progressive legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as follows:  ”The reality is that Democrats, including liberals, will accept and push whomever Obama picks.”  Yesterday on Twitter, Matt Yglesias supplied the rationale for this mentality:  ”Argument will be simple: Clinton & Obama like and trust [Kagan], and most liberals (myself included) like and trust Clinton & Obama.”

Just think about what that means.  If the choice is Kagan, you’ll have huge numbers of Democrats and progressives running around saying, in essence:  ”I have no idea what Kagan thinks or believes about virtually anything, and it’s quite possible she’ll move the Court to the Right, but I support her nomination and think Obama made a great choice.”  In other words, according to Chemerinksy and Yglesias, progressives will view Obama’s choice as a good one by virtue of the fact that it’s Obama choice.  Isn’t that a pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism?  Democrats love to mock the Right for their propensity to engage in party-line, close-minded adherence to their Leaders, but compare what conservatives did with Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers to what progressives are almost certain to do with Obama’s selection of someone who is, at best, an absolute blank slate.

One of the very first non-FISA posts I ever wrote that received substantial attention (uniformly favorable attention from progressives) was this post, from February, 2006, about the cult of personality that subsumed the Right during the Bush era.  The central point was that conservatives supported anything and everything George Bush did, regardless of how much it comported with their alleged beliefs and convictions, because loyalty to him and their Party, along with a desire to keep Republicans in power, subordinated any actual beliefs.  Even Bill Kristol — in a 2006 New York Times article describing how Bruce Bartlett had been ex-communicated from the conservative movement for excessively criticizing George Bush — admitted that personal allegiance to Bush outweighed conservative principles in the first term and that “Bush was the movement and the cause.”

To say that ”Democrats, including liberals, will accept and push whomever Obama picks,” based on the rationale that “Clinton & Obama like and trust her, and most liberals (myself included) like and trust Clinton & Obama” — even if they know nothing about her, even if she might move the Court to the Right — seems to me to be an exact replica of what I described four years ago.

I had a similar dustup with Yglesias on Twitter over Audit the Fed, after I voiced objections to the deal negotiated by Bernie Sanders.  Sanders’ deal limited the amendment to a one-time audit that can only go back to December 2007.  Yglesias responded by saying “possibly Sen Sanders knows better than you what’s good for progressive causes.”

This isn’t Tiger Beat magazine and it’s not a popularity contest, it’s about oversight of the Federal Reserve, which prints our money. It’s insane that bankers like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan can know what the Fed does, and have a hand in its decisions, but Congress can’t.  Tell that to a couple of people.  See what their response is.  Most people don’t know that this is the case, and when they hear it, they are disturbed in the extreme.

It’s a legitimate concern, and Yglesias’ response seeks to  delegitimize substantive critique in favor of assurances offered from those we “like”:

I saw last night on Twitter that this led to Jane Hamsher denouncing Sanders as a sellout, which I noted led to a bit of a credibility mismatch between a veteran progressive legislator and a media entrepreneur whose specialty niche is never taking yes for an answer on anything.

Yglesias doesn’t want to discuss the pros and cons of one amendment over another, he wants to engage in ad-hominum attacks and then let Dean Baker do his thinking for him.  This kind of argument assumes that pedigreed elites should play the role of paternalistic caretaker and decide for the public what is right and wrong, and we shouldn’t bother offering opinions that might differ than those he believes have more “credibility.”  I respect Dean Baker.  I seriously doubt he wants to be pulled in as an excuse to stifle a substantive discussion.  He would address the issue on its merits rather than invoke a cult of personality, especially around himself.

As Glenn says, this is mindless tribalism in the extreme.  It isn’t critical thinking, it’s fawning authoritarianism.  And it has basically crushed any organized progressive opposition to the policies of George Bush that the left formerly disdained.  The White House has merely to use its considerable influence to line up liberal validators in Veal Pen 2.0, and it obviates the need to actually pursue the agenda that Obama campaigned on in order to keep people like Yglesias happy.