I found your description of political handlers to be fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to write that out. Your description will prove useful, I think, in several of my classes. When I try to explain the sophists in the Platonic dialogues, who taught folks how to debate and win at debates, I always have pointed to political handlers as the modern equivalent. Your little report makes that so clear. I find it marvelous in a dreadful sort of way to see that there are about ten major sophists current in our modern political life, like so many a modern Gorgias, Protagoras, and so forth. And then just like with the ancients, you have a whole little industry springing up about them (for the sophists charged a lot of money for their valuable input, then as now).

How strange and sad.

My best wishes to you as you try to make your way through your work environment. It makes my hair stand on end to think of having to endure it.

You probably didn't misunderstand my earlier proposal about a General Strike among progressives. My last post dealt more with the idea of a strike among consulting firm employees because it was a response to a question about handlers. But I don't think a consultant strike would be possible without a larger, more general strike among progressives.

Progressives have more power than they know. Any party depends on volunteer labor and most of the people who do that volunteer work for the Democrats are part of the party's progressive base. Moreover, progressives donate a lot of money and a lot of votes. We have potential leverage if we can overcome the problems of collective action.

Likewise, the consulting business is parasitic on the idealism of a lot of progressives who staff their offices. Few people would be willing to put up with the unbelievable hours if they were motivated only by their often meager salaries. A lot of the consultants' employees are more progressive than the consultants themselves -- and those employees are not the ones whose views are being biased by the prospect of making millions of dollars in the business.

That said, without a larger movement it would be very hard to get enough of the consultants' employees on board. But if Al Gore and Howard Dean teamed up they could start such a movement. (By the way, think about what a dream ticket that would be. If they got started in January 2008, by July there would even be a chance they could engineer a convention draft.)

With their stature, Gore and Dean could recruit key members of the party elite. Wary potential recruits to the movement would be much more likely to sign a Progressive Contract anonymously and have enough confidence in the integrity of Dean and Gore to reveal their identities to them confidentially, which would make it easier to recruit even more members of the elite. As I said earlier, the whole thing could snowball.

Dean and Gore could ask people to make anonymous commitments that they could then use to recruit others. For example, if you told Al Gore that you would hypothetically join a general strike against consulting firms and he were able to tell you that he already had the commitment of x number of other members of your firm, you would be far more likely to commit to going public with your commitment than you would be otherwise. You could commit on a contigency basis -- as long as some minimum percentage of your firm was on board you would be on board too. But you would be able to know this before sticking your neck out.

Likewise with officeholders. They could tell Dean and Gore in confidence that they would tentatively join their movement and wait until they knew there was a critical mass of their colleagues before they too went public, putting their own Leadership on notice.

Obviously this is a lot of talking out of my ass. I haven't thought it through and I don't know if it could really work. But it might work. I didn't intend to sit down today and write a manifesto on Glenn Greenwald's blog. But this is an idea I had, and I thought it would be worth raising in this forum.

@jkalos

I have often found your posts thought-provoking; but this evening you have reminded me of the rare moments in my higher education that I thought the whole endeavor was actually worthwhile.

Utterly disillusioned by journalism school, which for reasons that I not only found mystifying at the time but find downright dangerous today was completely subordinated in its mission by the vast majority of students who were pursuing advertising and public relations, I ended up majoring in history because of professors like you.

The only thing we humans all have in common is our gift of reason, and my perspectives were challenged, but by no means formed, by what I learned from teachers who understood that powerful truth.

I have spent the subsequent 20 odd years continuously exploring, evaluating, and building upon what I learned back then, and am constantly hoping others would join me in this journey, indeed even Shooter.

But your ability and evident desire to reach even the most resistant and difficult among us shows me that you really have found your calling, and your students are lucky indeed.

Thanks for your efforts.

Just to clarify myself, as well...

I'm generally not in favor of 3rd party votes, for many of the same reasons you already mentioned. And, our current system of voting doesn't really allow them to be viable.

Still, the kind of scenario you paint is very tempting. And the promise of confidentiality that requires some kind of critical mass or tipping point, before implementing the strike (both professional staff and volunteers), might be worth considering, and just the key to make it possible.

As for Gore... I held out hope for quite awhile that he would be a candidate this time around. Finally, though, I realized that since he's been right about so many other things (since 2000), we would just have to trust him to be right about whether or not he should run in this election.

Already, he appears to be having the kind of impact on the climate crisis that he wants to have-- without having to be president. And upstaging GWB, for good measure. Can't argue with those results.

Do you have any thoughts about Dodd?

Finally, all the best to you in this election cycle... it is sure to be a stressful one. Make sure that you eat well. ;~) Since you probably won't get enough sleep.