The challenge of coalition politics: A blogging think-aloud, part one

This post is an experiment. In recent weeks, I've read a series of articles and blog posts that reflect debates among Democratic activists that could have a pivotal effect on the party's ability to appeal to the constituencies it needs in order to win elections this fall, as well as in 2008. However, rather than tease out all of my thoughts on one post here, I'm going to try to develop those thoughts in three related posts that I'm writing on three different blog sites.

Here, I want to write about the challenges that confronted an earlier generations of progressive activists: the conflicts over suffrage and abolition in the 19th century, as well as the conflicts between African American and Caribbean civil rights leaders in the early 20th century. On BlogHer, I plan to write about the controversy among glbt activists provoked by Jasmyne Cannick's controversial argument that concern for the needs of undocumented workers should take a back seat to the struggle of gays and lesbians for the right to marry. Cannick experienced a torrent of criticism from other prominent glbt activists, but she is not the only African American activist whose response to the immigrants' rights movement has been less than enthusiastic. At the Daily Kos, (where I've got to fix the typo in the name of my new diary), I'm going put up a post about their < vigorous discussion about African American representation at the Yearly Kos annual conference.

I'm going to split the posts this way in the hope of eliciting a range of comments that I'm not likely to get by posting everything here. I'll try to get everything up in the next 24, and I think that I'll have some useful data for a wrap-up post after all is said and done. (And I think I'm going to share that on Prometheus 6 as well. I'm feeling my way toward something here, and I think this process will help me sort it out.