Keep it real if we want to be the reality-based community

The Daily Howler has some important things to say about liberals (if you prefer, progressives) not going off half-cocked with unsupportable accusations -- in this case about reporters and pundits who say something not to our liking while trying to stay in the mainstream:

Increasingly, our politics is going to feature battles between the haves and have-nots. For progressives, the other side will increasingly be better-connected and more powerful. In these future debates, the most powerful tool we’ll have on our side will be an insistence on traditional standards of fact and logic. We will never be able to out-bullroar the tribunes of the rich and the powerful. Our view? When we head down that tempting road, we commit ourselves to future defeat. . . .

. . . . On the liberal web, we often brag that we represent the “reality-based” community. In the future, progressives will continue to find themselves at war with well-funded dissemblers—tribunes of powerful upper-class interests. Our view? Aggressive embrace of “reality”—of the traditions of fact and logic—will constitute our best hope for success. It’s always tempting to overstate—and being human, we all end up doing it. But for progressives, it’s a road to defeat. There they go again, we should say, when tribunes of the powerful do it.

I have one major disagreement with this, however. The emphasis on the future is completely misplaced in my view. We already are facing right-wing extremism that is extraordinarily well-funded, and have been for at least a decade. We see it in the way we liberals and progressives are ready to regurgitate right-wing talking points about candidates who get voted in (or who might get voted in) to represent the only hope for any countervailing force against right wing dominance, which happens to be the Democratic Party. Don't think we aren't susceptible to being swayed by what the mainstream media decide is news, too, whether it's Gore's "problems" with the truth, or Gore "going over the top," or Kerry's windsurfing (as if it's some elite pastime, which strikes me as totally weird), or Hillary's marriage or her "ambition." Friends, when you find yourself bemoaning the lack of "excitement" in any of such candidates, each of whom is light years more competent than George Bush (who somehow became the candidate you could drink beer with), you are under the influence of the powerful right-wing message machine. It may be filtered through the supposedly liberal media, but that only makes it even more insidious. When you see it, attack it!