(Image via Shutterstock.) This Buzzfeed article is, despite its best intentions, not really about a dispute on the Left in how to best use its resources to promote a progressive agenda among Latinos.  Although, to be fair: it does look like that there’s that kind of dispute going on right now. The short version is that Democracy Alliance (which is neither particularly democratic, nor an alliance) has set up a Latino outreach group called One Nation Forward (which, of course, does not particularly want us to be one nation, or to move forward, backward, or indeed at all) to presumably receive DA’s funding.  In response, several existing Latino groups are complaining that they’re already out there and set up, so they should get the money.  Simple enough, yes?

However, the reality is a bit more complicated.  What’s actually going on right now is just the natural jockeying and sniping that takes place when advocacy groups realize that there’s going to be too much bread, and not enough butter.  Which is a good way of imagining the strain that these groups are all going to be suffering from in 2017.

I think part of the confusion here is that Buzzfeed allowed itself to be fixated on the advocacy group LIBRE, which is of course very much dedicated to promoting a conservative agenda among Latinos.  So it’s natural, if a tad naive, to assume that the Other Side has advocacy groups out there who exist primarily to serve a constituency.  But that’s not how the Professional Left works.  The Professional Left creates advocacy groups who exist primarily to exist.  Because groups that exist have salaried positions, and travel budgets, and neat business cards that you can give to other people in order to prove that hey, you clearly have intrinsic value. Actually solving any of the problems that a group is ostensibly there to fix? A distinct second place. Or possibly third*.

In light of that, this controversy becomes a lot more comprehensible.  The truth of the matter is: even the Democrats – at least, the ones that don’t bliss out on reciting Permanent Democratic Majority until their ears start bleeding – understand that they’re going to have to do everything perfectly to win the next Presidential election**, and the Democrats are not doing everything perfectly. Under those circumstances, it only makes sense to prepare a lifeboat for all those people that will be suddenly expelled from the government’s feeding trough.

Well… all of those people that you care about, which means: all of those people who are a part of your faction.  And the groups who are not in that faction?  Well, they understand the score, too – and they know that the best way to make sure that they don’t get frozen out in 2017 is to start making a stink in 2016. And, obviously, not for any sort of noble reason; the pie may be shrinking***, but they’re still going to try to keep their slice the same size. As the philosopher once said: and so it goes. And so it goes.

Yeah, I know: all of these people need real jobs. But, really: do you really want them in the regular work force? It’s not like they have a good track record of actually doing things…

Moe Lane

*And now you know why progressive-controlled cities are now largely wretched hives of scum and villainy. The old-school machine Democrats at least understood that one does not eliminate one’s waste products in the same place where one consumes food; the New Left, on the other hand, has been assuming that the actual grownups would fix any problems that cropped up.  This is now a problem, since most of those grownups died of old age about twenty years ago.

**This is typically the point where I am expected to utter some sort of self-critical bitter comment about how the GOP can always screw things up because we’re the Stupid Party of Stupid Stupid-heads, or something like that.  …Forget that noise. That kind of thinking is a bad habit that encourages failure.

***Think of this situation as… Peak Cash Flow.