That there is no left wing/liberal counterpart to CPAC is damned significant

[cali]

they have clout in their party. they have lots of it. the left has little clout in the democratic party. Of course, the wingnuts are well funded and have a lot of astroturf beneath their feet.

And most on the left aren't batshit crazy.

[Capt. Obvious]

1. We had the Oscars

About the best you're gonna do unless conglomerates suddenly discover their inner lefty.

[cui bono]

21. LOL

Hollywood didn't even come out to save the Hollywood sign! That's Hollywood history right there and Hugh Heffner had to save it.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/27/hefner-saves-hollywood-sign

[House of Roberts]

2. Fighting Bob Fest comes to mind.

I'm too far away to go to it. Then there's Netroots Nation.

[Wait Wut]

3. We have Netroots Nation.

Not a close match, but pretty significant. I lost touch with it over the past few years, but still get invites.

http://www.netrootsnation.org/

Edit: Being held in Detroit this year.

[TeamPooka]

36. um yeah. The difference between NN and CPAC is that people show up at NN

and make sense when they talk.
That doesn't make as good TV as the nuts at CPAC do

[Wait Wut]

38. LOL!

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

We have sexy nerds, they have screaming, drooling baboons.

(Disclaimer: I use the term 'sexy' in the non-physical sexy way. Smart is sexy. I have no excuse for the childishness of the rest of the comment. )

[Fantastic Anarchist]

4. Totally Agree ...

... but then the Democratic Party as a whole isn't really a Labor Party, so why would they have a need for us filthy Leftists apart from election time?

[reddread]

7. DLC needs the liberal wing to blame after their failures

Very Important Position.
ankle braces with ergonomic handles highly recommended.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

9. You get ankle braces?

Damn, you're lucky.

See, this is how they divide us!

[reddread]

18. 100% co-pay Im afraid n/t

[fleabiscuit]

30. LMFAO!

~eom

[DonViejo]

5. Americans for Democratic Action don't count any longer?...

They were a pretty big deal in the 60's and early 70's. Don't remember hearing anything about them in recent years though

Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is an American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA works for social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research and supporting progressive candidates.

History The ADA grew out of a predecessor group, the Union for Democratic Action (UDA). The UDA was formed by former members of the Socialist Party of America and Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies as well as labor union leaders, liberal politicians, theologians, and others who were opposed to the pacifism adopted by most left-wing political organizations in the late 1930s and early 1940s.[1][2] It supported a strongly interventionist, internationalist foreign policy and a pro-union, liberal domestic policy. It was strongly anti-communist as well.[2][3] It undertook a major effort to support left-wing Democratic members of Congress in 1946, but this effort was an overwhelming failure.[3][4][5]

James Isaac Loeb (later an ambassador and diplomat in the John F. Kennedy administration), the UDA's executive director, advocated disbanding the UDA and forming a new, more broadly-based, mass-membership organization.[6][7] The ADA was formed on January 4, 1947, and the UDA shuttered.[4][7][8]

Founding members included:

Reinhold Niebuhr
Hubert Humphrey
John Kenneth Galbraith
Joseph P. Lash
Walter Reuther
Eleanor Roosevelt
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Wilson W. Wyatt
Over its 60-year history, ADA played a role in many major American movements—civil rights, women's rights, opposition to the Vietnam and Iraq wars—while supporting legislation that resulted from these movements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Democratic_Action

And while I'm thinking about it, what about Move-on.org?

[Chan790]

25. Does either hold a 1000+ attendee yearly political conference?

If they do, it'd be the first I'm hearing it.

CPAC literally takes over NW DC. It's everywhere and it's huge and you can't ignore it, either the conference itself or the content which comes out of the conference.

Yes, we should do the same thing...but nobody is organizing it...and I suspect if someone did, it would have schismatic issues from the outset.

[JI7]

6. it's the same reason right wing talk radio does well while liberal talk radio doesn't

just because of the differences in views/thinking things that work for one would not work for another.

for liberals it's more about individual issues. so people will support organizations based on the specific thing they stand for. it's more effective this way anyways because they can still get money from those who don't consider themselves to have a certain ideology .

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. I think it's more fundamental than that. It's a liberal vs conservative way of perceiving reality.

Remember "the reality-based community"? The fact that it was coined by a republican as a pejorative directed against liberals is significant.

The ability of an organization to craft messaging and implement policy is enhanced when your audience is only casually interested in reality and truth.

[Marr]

17. +1

[rrneck]

8. We need more embarassing batshit crazies.

Somebody will get called an extremist, but we don't have any real extremists to take the blame.

[sibelian]

10. It coms from spending colossal amounts of time finely slicing

cigarette papers' width slices of semantic and political value off terms of reference and finding miniscule points of order over every single fucking topic.

Which isn't surprising. Hard core lefties are political geeks in an obsessively truth-seeking way that hardcore righties aren't, entirely.

[Rex]

12. The people that control the Democratic Party like the bubble they live in

and HATE it when liberals bring up facts and the way things are. We will NEVER have much impact on a party that doesn't want to come down to earth with the rest of us and live in reality.

[Phlem]

15. ...

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

-p

[Rex]

16. Thank you for making my point.

nt.

[bigwillq]

20. Exactly

Great post.

[Rex]

24. Thanks! As you can see...someone came along and made my point for me!

One day...moderates and centrists that HATE liberals will have to come back down to reality and face it with the rest of us living day to day...week to week...month to month.

[Scuba]

13. There's no left version of ALEC either ....

Should be promoting legislation to protect voting rights, labor rights, etc.

[reddread]

23. maybe if there was a forum section for organizing instead of organ grinding?

somewhere that foreign interventionist cheerleaders werent considered economic/democratic activists with full name calling rights.
somewhere that focused on what we can do to support the ordinary Democratic Party voter, and not the oligarchic Democratic Party
exploiter?

[The Wizard]

14. CPAC

is a Klan rally in a cheap disguise.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. Conclusion: Kitsch patriotism, racism, mysogeny, and fear sells better than equality, peace,

and free thinking.

[OnyxCollie]

34. It's not so much that those things sell better,

it's that those things are mechanisms with which to exploit groups better.

[1StrongBlackMan]

37. It is the "Free Thinking" part ...

that hampers the ability for the left to come together.

For us on the left, whatever point of the spectrum of the left, it is far more important to be "right", even if standing alone, and losing elections; than "not being right" and standing with a crowd that wants most, probably not all and probably not on the same time table. But this is a relatively new phenomena i.e., how the Democratic Party came by the Big Tent Party identifier.

[bigdarryl]

22. What the hell is NETROOTS they all get together every year

[Chan790]

29. I don't think of Netroots in the same way.

It's always struck me as more technocratic than Democratic. That is to say, it's arguably part of the problem of the left rather than the solution to any of the left's problems.

It doesn't push the agenda in the same way. CPAC bullies the GOP where it wants to go. Netroots really takes it's lead and agenda from the party and the heavyweights of the institutional Democratic base...much in the same way OFA and MoveOn does. I'd be skeptical of a conference put-on by either.

Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm down on Netroots...it's just not the liberal CPAC.

[JaneyVee]

26. Because corporations won't sponsor leftwing events

And most likely the left wouldn't accept corporate sponsorship for the event.

[ProSense]

27. Netroots Nation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netroots_Nation

Elizabeth Warren spoke in 2010 and 2012

[Bettie]

28. We don't have a counterpart to CPAC because

We have many ideas and different ways of thinking. Different people and different groups, but all are respected (mostly, yes, we still have our internal arguments and moments).

It is easy to put together a rah-rah festival when everyone believes exactly the same thing with only minor variations.

We don't march in lock-step. We don't automatically believe that action A is good because one of "ours" did it.

We're not them and that is good.

But it makes it hard to put together a giant conference that covers everyone.

[stevenleser]

31. In addition to Netroots, there is the Personal Democracy Forum.

https://personaldemocracy.com/

[aquart]

32. Please don't ask us to be more like them.

They are NOT our role models.

[Cheese4TheRat]

33. Well, the left doesn't scare the corporatists in the Democratic Party.

Because who is the left going to vote for, the GOP?

You reap what you sew, and the left sews incremental rightward movement for fear of large rightward movement, and the right is perfectly satisfied with that arrangement.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

35. The myth is the "left" is too divided....

The DC Villagers like to believe people who want to save the trees are at war with people who want to save the whales.