People Powered Piffle

Over at the ex-righty blog Balloon Juice, John Cole frowns on the new moniker that has started to catch on around the left side of the blogosphere, “people power,” — as in, “This is a victory for the people powered movement!”

Here’s Cole:

“It is just so hokey, so faux-populist, so nauseatingly poll-tested. There has to be a better phrase/word.”

He’s right. The first thing you think of when you hear someone say they’re part of a “people powered movement,” is, what else would a political movement be powered by? Orange smoothies? Ferrets? Titanium alloys?

Of course, the lefties are trying to capture the whole, “We are proletariat fighting for you, against the bourgeois” meme without sounding like Commies. Unfortunately, they’re not really succeeding.

But, the real problem that the left has is that they discredit and ruin every name that gets attached to them whether it’s socialists, left-wingers, “the reality based community,” or progressives. As soon as enough people figure out that it means “liberal,” they have to come up with something else to keep people from figuring out what they’re really all about. The “people powered” pap won’t be any different in the long run.

Update #1: From the comments section:

“Let’s give them credit: it’s more credible than “reality based”. At least the Kos guys are, technically speaking of course, “people.” — TranslationService

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