Eli, I hope you're not serious. Plotting strategy for the Democratic Party is far from the same as making appointments for the City Council. The Council is, one hopes, not yet an arm of the Democratic Party.

Eli, what's happening w/ the city council stuff is a political process that should be public. Seattle City Council Members are about to appoint a public official. Making that process as public as possible is a good thing.

The Democratic Party stuff is a different animal. Vetting sound bites and strategy on-line is different than asking a publicly elected body to makes its process transparent.

Switzerblog, the council is already an arm of the Democratic party, in the sense that everyone on the council toes (or is to the left of) the Democratic party line.

But that's not my point. My point is that non-transparency has the same utility whether it's being used by an elected official or a party apparatus. It allows people to make decisions without tipping their hand at an inopportune moment, and without a lot of dopes weighing in with contrary advice. Of course it also allows people with dubious motives and sketchy logic to hide their failings from the public. And this is where your double-standard runs into problems.

The ideas that compel us to demand transparency from our elected officials (that contrary advice might be a good thing sometimes, and that the benefits of open process outweigh the costs) are the same as the ideas that compel blogs like DailyKos, Americablog, and the Slog. With leaders like the Democratic party currently has, I would think you'd be in favor of opening up the political strategizing process to public scrutiny and debate.

And if you think that this fatally hamstrings our leaders then, yeah, why not let Steinbruek et al come up with their candidate lists in secret -- after all, we elected them to strategize on our behalf. If you believe strategizing is best done in secret, you should be in favor of them strategizing in secret -- and you should stop complaining about council members not releasing their lists ahead of schedule.

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