Lessons in the Obvious (Updated)

An interesting post from David Neiwert, who's always been one of the more clear-eyed commentators on the Internet, about Patty Murray's victory in Washington and what it means:

But there are more important lessons to be drawn from this. The first and most important: Murray won not by running away from progressive Democratic values -- unlike the Blue Dogs and other Democrats who got wiped out Tuesday night by trying to proffer up Republican Lite agendas -- but by avidly embracing them.

She campaigned with President Obama. Moreover, she sturdily defended her work on the health-care reform and Wall Street reform bills (both of which Rossi wanted to overturn).

It's what most of the "professional left" have been saying for a while: if you're going to run as a Democrat, be a Democrat. The Rahm strategy was a failure from the beginning: electing DINOs might give you numbers, but it's not going to give you votes in Congress. And it's not going to give you votes in the next election. If Republican and right-leaning voters (and those who are really, really unhappy with your record to date) have a choice between a faux-Democrat and a real Republican, what do you think they're going to do?

That idea gets a strong second from Alan Grayson, who, sadly, lost to a loon (the biggest disaster of the election, as far as I'm concerned, but then it's Florida -- what did anyone expect?).

Alan Grayson, the defeated Democratic congressman of "die quickly" fame, went on the offensive Thursday, telling reporters that the Democrats' "appeasement" of Republicans cost them the election.

In an appearance on MSNBC and an interview with Salon.com, Grayson argued that the "enthusiasm gap" that prompted millions of liberal voters to stay home Tuesday happened because the Obama administration and congressional Democrats did not fight hard enough for progressive values.

"Our strategy for two years has been appeasement, and look where it got us," Grayson told MSNBC. "I think Democrats want to see a fighting leadership, they want to see a fighting president — somebody who actually accomplishes good things for constituents."

Duh.

(Here's a recommendation for Grayson from Dan Savage. Sounds like a good idea to me.)

Update: And an excellent analysis from Kerry Eleveld at The Advocate:

The turnout and voting patterns were a symptom of the fact that during his first two years in office, President Barack Obama and his White House delivered nothing short of a true progressive’s most fiendish nightmare: He governed from the middle but failed to enlist enough GOP help to tag them with partial responsibility. Then he simultaneously left the substance of his centrist policies to be framed by the right, who naturally painted his initiatives as dangerously liberal and even socialist in nature.

The result of that toxic formula is that progressives didn’t get much of they wanted and yet the population as a whole has been left to believe that America has jumped off the liberal deep end.

The thing is, it's not like all of this is Monday-morning quarterbacking: we all knew this, we've known it for a while, and we've been talking about it. Obama would rather listen to Republicans, for some reason.