What is this new movement?
[Matt Stoller of MyDD is visiting TPMCafe this week to discuss the Netroots and generational politics.]
Over the past nine years, a series of shocks to the country have radically changed the contours of our political debates. In the 2000 election, the Presidential debate involved sweater hues and snowmobiles, ‘lock boxes’ and ‘fuzzy math’. Virtually nothing in that election prepared any but the most cynical political observers for the massive security failures, electoral fraud, the creation of the beginnings of a police state, the loss of two wars one of which was sold under false pretenses, and the destruction of a major American city – all tragic events which have not only occurred on the watch of some very bad people without adverse consequence, but have all increased the power and wealth of those same people. America is a very different place in 2007 than it was in 1999.
This series of events has done something specific to a relatively apolitical white liberal class that had been somewhat absented from the public debate since the early 1970s. It made us angry, and has created a movement.
Beginning with the Clinton impeachment in 1998, identity liberals who had voted but not really gone beyond that in their direct political activity began to sign petitions, give money, and engage in activism. As the shocks not only got worse – the impeachment was followed by what was essentially a legal coup in 2000, the attacks of 9/11, and then the disgraceful Democratic complacency during the Iraq debate in 2002 – liberals began to not only vote but use innovative political strategies to take and institutionalize power.
In 1998, the betrayal by the Republican Party elites of the democratic process led directly to the formation of the large membership organization Moveon, which was dubbed ‘Moveon’ because the country needed to ‘move on’ from impeachment. In 2000, the election and recount saw the creation of the early liberal blogosphere, with such sites as Media Whores Online, Bartcop and Talkingpointsmemo popping up to follow the debates and criticize the lazy press coverage of the campaigns. The betrayal of our Democratic elites in 2002 over Iraq saw Dean rise and in parallel, the creation of the activist blogosphere, most notably DailyKos and Atrios. During the 2004 election, the Kerry campaign and its insularity led to the creation of Drinking Liberally, Democracy for America, and a huge number of local groups that are still operating, including the so-called ‘silent revolution’ of liberal activists taking over state parties through grassroots organizing in at least ten states. Since 2004, the New Organizing Institute, the Democracy Alliance, the blogs, the National Security Network, and Actblue have sought to reconstruct how the Democratic Party manages its finances, its people, and its internal dialogue.
The innovation, and I’ve written only of the internet piece, is institutional in nature. Moveon didn’t end after Clinton survived – today the group is more powerful than ever. Dailykos is now the town square for a significant slice of identity liberal activists. The 2004 election loss made us stronger – the Social Security fight was won through a coalition of these internet groups and the more traditional Campaign for America’s Future, and we saw in the 2006 elections a massive impact from local bloggers who are now equipped with video and better community software. The innovation isn’t over. The net neutrality and media consolidation fights saw the first mass leftwing public action in communications policy in decades, as well as organizing-based policy (which sits in contrast to a more traditional liberal technocratic elitism). We are on the cusp of dramatic civic innovation, as the set of debates around free software, open source, security theater, and free culture become mainstream. There is a genuine attack on the mass media going on, and the top-down business elites have as of yet been unable to quell it through quiet regulatory deal-making, the way they conquered radio in the 1930s, TV in the 1950s, and cable in the 1980s.
Is this a movement? Well pundits seem to think so. I’m always struck by this column from Nick Kristof, written in December of 2003 about the Democratic primary.
Watching presidential politics lately, I've been thinking back to when I was 13 years old and had my heart broken for the first time.It was 1972, and I was antiwar and infatuated with Senator George McGovern. But as I handed out McGovern leaflets in Yamhill County, Ore., I was greeted as if I were the Antichrist. Soon afterward, Mr. McGovern was defeated in a landslide.
As Howard Dean will probably be, if the Democrats nominate him.
While the analogy to 1972 is rather silly, Kristof uses it because it’s the only way he knows how to describe a political movement from the left. Many of us are in the same boat - how do we think about a new set of power dynamics, institutions, and leaders? Or is this just a repeat of the 1960s, with a .com attached?
This is a big question without one answer, so I'm just going to outline a few areas where this movement differs substantially from the 1960s left, in composition, social structure, and strategy.
1) Race: Whereas we are the reaction to Impeachment and Iraq, the New Left and the counterculture were reactions to segregation, McCarthyism, and the civil rights struggle. The direct action model - protests, sit-ins, civil disobedience - of the civil rights movement activists in the fifties and early sixties created a model for the activities of the left in the 1960s and 1970s, the antiwar marches, the burning of draft cards, and the manipulation of mass media through the creation of conflict. It also created an inherently multi-racial coalition, and a strong sense of racial and cultural identity. The forces that have pushed us into action by contrast are not as obviously racially tinged, and so the multi-racial coalition has not yet developed (though there are signs that it might be starting to). We saw no coordinated political organizing around post-Katrina New Orleans, or around wiretapping, both issues that have resonance among both the new progressive movement and within the African-American communities. The immigrants rights marches happened without participation by the new progressive movement, despite aligned incentives of the two groups.I should note that I'm not suggesting that the 1960s multi-racial coalitions were healthy or sustainable, just that they existed, and today they don't seem to. And I'm not suggesting that race isn't important today.
2) Age: If you pull the civil rights community out of the mix, the 1960s and 1970s left-wing movement was largely youth-driven. That is not the case today. According to Blogads, 81% of progressive blog readers are over 40 years old, though there is a healthy spread across age groups. According to Pew, Dean activists concentrate heavily in the 45-64 age bracket. In other words, this is a multi-generational movement. One of the legacies of the 1960s is the cultural understanding that political activism is something done while young before you start your 'real' career' and activism becomes unsustainable. These new activists have real careers, and are participating in new political institutions that allow them to be politically effective in a sustainable way. Activism isn't for the young, it's for the active.
3) Economic Risk: To prepare for this post, I did a quick and dirty poll on the MyDD progressive blog about health care insurance. I wanted to know whether the millions of uninsured was really penetrating into the community of activists that I talk to on a regular basis. About 30% of the respondents said that they had insurance and weren't worried about their personal situation, whereas the other 70% either had insurance but were worried about losing it or simply were not covered. The 1960s left assumed that America was post-scarcity, that economic risk was a problem we had overcome. This created a different incentive model for building a movement, and a disconnect between activists and classes within American politics that had status anxieties. If the revolution didn't work out, jobs with good benefits were easy to find, and risk was much lower. This is not the case today with the new progressive movement activists. Health care is a serious concern, not just in a vague moral sense but in a clear personal sense of being at risk. All age groups are today being threatened with economic deprivation, whereas in 1971 it was only a relatively narrow demographic band that was threatened with being drafted.
4) Institutional Takeover: With the exception of labor, the 1960s left did not build or take over political institutions and convert them ideologically. The anti-authoritarian impulse of that time came about for good reasons - the institutional fabric of liberalism could not be trusted, and new institutions fell prey to the distortions of mass media and cults of personality. The George Meany-led AFL-CIO was not a particularly good ally for the New Left, as it was fiercely pro-war and had strong McCarthyite tendencies. Corporations were better towards white-collar employees, with good pensions, benefits, and salary increases. The Democratic Party was led in part by Dixiecrats, and the Republican Party still had strands of being the party of Lincoln. Urban machines were still strong, and racist. And youth culture was under attack by all of these groups, with successive political leaders either killed through assassination or betraying their young constituencies. It's not a surprise that the left of the time saw little value in institutional takeover, and retreated to the private and academic spheres, where liberal values could be practiced without constant and losing conflict and the development of harmful cults of personality.
By contrast, the new progressive movement is responding not to the failure of functional institutions on the left, but to the lack of them. Sure there are single-issue groups, but they are not particularly effective with direct mail and foundation fundraising chains hanging around their necks. As we've seen most obviously with the Alito fight, they have lost the capacity to engage meaningful in the political system and so we do not work through them. In addition, the internet as a medium radically reduces the cost of organizing small groups, and increases the capacity for genuine public discourse. Mass media, pop culture, and drugs are no longer the conduit for movement communications, with their distortions and perverse effects on leadership creation. The new progressive movement is also composed of experienced professionals who have worked and succeeded within institutions, either corporate, cultural, or academic, and so they do not have a reflexive disdain for authority but a willingness to experiment and build sustainable containers for ideological realignment. As a result, the Democratic Party is not seen as corrupt, but as a vessel for change if it can be vectored in the right direction.
From here?
Movements tend grow and expand outward, taking over a country, or they become stunted avant-garde 'what if's in the history books. This will be no exception, and it's not clear if there is we can build the alliances, funding, idea generation, or diversity to successfully govern the country the way the New Right did from the 1970s onward. The puzzling piece, which suggests that it might be possible, is how innovation on the right basically stopped in the 1990s with the development of the Drudge Report. The last bit of incremental improvement for them is perfecting micro-targeting, which while nifty is nothing but a strategy first developed in the 1970s for direct mail. The right-wing blogs don't organize, don't innovate, and reflect the larger structure that was put into place over the last thirty years by right-wing organizers who made their bones in the 1970s. As a result, there is no right-wing Moveon, no right-wing Actblue, or Free Culture movement. They have no new ideas, whereas our ideas are expanding into social systems that generate new streams of revenue, information, or just get lots of organizers to a bar to drink and network.
Is there something about this moment in history, and the medium dominating it, that suggests that progressive organizing can genuinely take power? I think so. The incentives are there, as we're being threatened directly by a set of elites and our interests are now aligned with those of other disempowered groups. The tools are there. The internet, unlike the direct action organizing of the 1960s and the mass medium of the time, allows for civic engagement to be a sustainable part of one's life, as well as clear communication among small and large progressive groups and individuals. And the culture is there. When Stephen Colbert performed before the White House correspondents dinner, the right-wing and the elite pundits decried him as offensive. The millions on youtube, ie. a significant slice of the public, thought otherwise of their own accord. We're at least part of the silent majority this time, only we're no longer silent.
Comments (76)
Matt, I hate to tell you this but you look like a drag queen in that picture. :(
January 15, 2007 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
That is funny. I'll see about getting another pic.
January 15, 2007 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
Gay bashing!
I think he's cute...
Thoughtful article too...comments after cold shower
January 15, 2007 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
A couple of things. As I pointed out when you spoke about this on MyDD and as you say here, the New Left basically retreated after the 1970s, they either gave up turned Republican (Kristof etc.) and now I wonder if it was because of the lack of economic risk. Their dream didn't pan out so they decided to take care of themselves and it by and large worked for a lot of people in that movement. Today there is very much a sense of "if we don't win this world is in deep shit" underlying the movement and so I'd say that it will take much more for the new movement to go away. The only other option if we utterly fail is to either acquiesce and give up or begin a violent revolution.
I think institutions are starting to come around to the idea that we all need to work together. Both already established ones (labor) and the netroots and that's pretty hopeful. Pure iconoclasts don't accomplish that much after all.
Also for those who don't look at your post link, 66% of the respondents to that poll were insured.
January 15, 2007 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can a political movement succeed in the absence of a charismatic leader? A Ronald Reagan? A Bobby Kennedy? A Pericles?
January 15, 2007 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
How would you compare this not to the the New Left of the 60s, which gave us many of the more aggressive Conservatives such as Gingrich, Armey and Horowitz to name three, but the woman's sufferage movement? It was thought that giving the vote to women was going to change American politics. In the end it only marginally did. As it turned out women tended to vote more or less as men did.
I am a bit skeptical that a new technology will in and of itself change the political climate. If anything I increasingly think it will lead to frustration as it does not lead to the sorts of changes that those on the net dream of.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
January 15, 2007 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reagan and Kennedy and MLK had more than charisma - they had a message they weren't afraid deliver regardless of the personal cost.
The only passing connection we have with charisma these days seems to be Obama and he seems to be conflicted on whether he's going to stand for something win or lose or if he too needs to be focused grouped first to find out what message he is going to deliver.
January 15, 2007 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not sure the netroots is so much a new political movement as it is the exploitation of new technology by existing movements.
The current anti-administration movement seems to have fully embraced the internet because its voices were not being heard in the traditional national print or broadcast media. The number of writers from the left seem to be rising but only since the November election.
There are a number of successful and active right wing blogs. They aren't nearly as effective or powerful as the left wing blogs, but give them time. As the right wingers feel empowered by talking to each other, heavily censored talk radio and unidirectional cable "news" may tank. At that point everybody on the right will want to be Bill O'Reilly or George Will.
On the left there are a million voices. All of them slightly different. All of them compelling. None of them as dominant as the DailyKos would like to be.
To me the interesting thing is the development of local and state blogs. Eventually I think they will empower a new generation of state and local activists. In the process they will reinvigorate local politics like nothing since the rise of local newspapers. The eclipse of state and local policies related to the decline of state and local newspapers, television and radio news organizations will give way to a new dawn.
Ron Byers
January 15, 2007 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Daniel, there already has been a plethora of disappointment since 1998. But eight years later, people are still plugging away, and the elections of Jon Tester and Jim Webb are quite encouraging.
P.S. I didn't think of myself as a liberal in 1998, or even 2000. Now I do. I consider myself an economics major (I graduated in the early 80s), mugged by neoconmen.
January 15, 2007 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cute? He's a hottie. That's why I frowned. :)
January 15, 2007 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the most powerful way that the new progressive movement can shape American politics for the next generation is to rebuild confidence in the American electoral system. A telling sign is that 1/3 of eligible voters think its not worth the effort. Gerrymandering, legislation via campaign contribution, professional lobbyists, "secure" paperless balloting, etc, all contribute to the erosion of our democracy.
The trouble starts when people start to belive that their vote does not matter. As soon as that attitude sets, then the more motivated--and typically extremist--voting block takes the reigns and promptly drives us off a cliff.
January 15, 2007 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kristol rather than Kristof?
Tom
January 15, 2007 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Daniel,
I agree with you that a technology can be used by anybody, and in that sense it is apolitical. The technology will reflect the views of those who happen to dominate it at any given time. At the present moment, it strikes me that the liberal blogosphere has a middle-class orientation.
This is just my perception, and it is entirely likely that I have missed something, but it seems to me that liberal bloggers are more interested in bashing the racism of disadvantaged whites than they are in creating a movement to develop a sense of common interest between disadvantaged whites and black people. I would not be surprised if John Edwards is working on some such program, but my impression is that right now he is doing it on his own, and that not very many people have picked up on the possible significance of that for the Republican Southern Strategy. I don't read all the blogs, and I may be quite wrong. I would be happy to be set right. Perhaps if Edwards' program picks up momentum the liberal bloggers will welcome it with great enthusiasm. But I am not sure how the technology will contribute very much to that.
I don't think you are saying that women shouldn't have been given the vote, so I will not go there. I think what you mean is, for example, that women voters have not succeeded in making the United States a less bellicose nation.
Perhaps the influence of the suffragettes has been subtle. My maternal grandmother was an activist with a group that was allied with the suffragettes, and she worked all her life to encourage young women to go on to higher education. Also, one of my great-aunts (an amateur poet) worked outside the home when it was not common for women to do so. They were very independent-minded women, and I think they may have felt their isolation. Grandmother was regarded by some as an oddity, and my aunt's poetry was rather somber. Women today do not have to be that independent-minded to do what Grandmother and my great-aunt did. So the women's movement has made some difference to women, and perhaps that is the main point.
January 15, 2007 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I disagree with your premise for Part 4, that "with the exception of labor, the 1960s left did not build or take over political institutions and convert them ideologically." The New Left was quite responsible for Gene McCarthy's insurgent candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, one which may have had a chance to succeed had not Robert Kennedy entered the campaign later -- splitting the antiestablishment vote (pro-war traditonal liberals, and there were some, and Democratic moderates threw their support to Hubert Humphrey). Richard Nixon's election provided liberals with a stronger role in the Democratic Party, throwing their support behind George McGovern in 1972 and, to a lesser degree, Jimmy Carter in 1976. The New Left influence didn't last, of course, for a variety of reasons, but there was a brief time when a political institution -- the Democratic Party -- was converted ideologically by largely youthful activists from the '60s.
January 15, 2007 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well the movement can be making American government accountable to all of the American people just as much as it is accountable to corporate America. As long as it is more important, for example, for insurance companies and health care conglomerates to make obscene profits than it is that all of the American people have access to affordable high quality health coverage I think the progressive movement will continue with it's renessaince because that is what it is all about. We are going to have to fight off the accusations of "class warfare" and the cries of the "S" word (socialism). But fighting the government's attempt to favor corporate/big money interests, which continues and deepens the inequality in wealth distribution, over the interests of "we the people" defines "the movement" for me. The government's attempts to help rich people make more money not only will not solve our problems it will make them all worse...
Ellen mentioned can there be a movement without a charismatic leader? Probably not but a strong enough movement will produce such a leader(s) as earlier movements did with MLK, JFK and RFK. A strong movement that has a message that the interests of the average American is more important than the holding true to the intangible concepts inherent in "free markets" can succeed in producing such a leader and finally lead to progess...
January 15, 2007 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reagan had a message? The only message I heard was "it's ok to be rich and want even more".
Hoppy in Sacramento
January 15, 2007 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
As far as I can see, it boils down to one word: money. Can the netroots come up with significant amounts of cash to counteract the big-dollar donors and DC insiders?
While there was some progress on this front in 2006 (for which much credit must go to ActBlue), I see no flood of $100 contributions into the DNC for example - the flood which was going to allow Dean to move away from the insiders.
This is a fundamental problem and I don't see it going away.
sPh
January 15, 2007 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I am a bit skeptical that a new technology will in and of itself change the political climate. If anything I increasingly think it will lead to frustration as it does not lead to the sorts of changes that those on the net dream of."
I think you raise a good point here.
It doesn't help that media/pundocracy has been pushing the meme that the internets activism doesn't work since Howard Dean's scream and are quick to describe every lost battle as the war lost. If this negativity is internalized and expectations of instant political gratification become the norm, greater levels of frustration could lead to greater indifference and disappointed apathy.
But a countering factor is the reality that "public opinion" has undergone radical changes since the early days of the Iraq war on many fronts and the internets were and to a great extent still are practically are the only avenue available for dissenting viewpoints and activism for those so inclined.
The gaurdians of the status quo are seeing the erosion of their ability to control the message and massage results. It's going to be a Long War and I don't see that the majority of those participating in it as unaware of the challenges ahead.
Perserverence will further.
January 15, 2007 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha, mugged by neoconmen.
January 15, 2007 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reagan was charaismatic and had a message Hoppy and you encapsulated it very well. It didn't matter that Reagan's message was only a succession of strawmen being set up about the ineffectiveness of government administered social programs...but the way he did it played well.
Reagan: You should keep your money and help out others, or not, as you see fit.
Sadly it tapped into the part of the American Dream that panders to our society's collective greed.
January 15, 2007 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's keep our eye on John Edwards. It may be premature to draw a conclusion, but it looks like he is trying to turn the Republican Southern Strategy on its head. His populist message is coupled with a strong outreach to the black community. This is significant, because populism in the past has sometimes been contaminated by racism.
January 15, 2007 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apropos of "S-words", a problem, to which I don't have a by any means complete solution, is separating the economic scare of "socialism" from the societal characteristic of something for which we don't have a good name -- "social democracy" is fairly well understood in Europe but not here.
If anything, social democracy (I'll use the term here) is conducive to the creation and growth of small business. Small business has tended to be the driver for "interesting" job growth, with wealth generation.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 15, 2007 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Leaders don't matter! That people think they do only reflects the utterly degraded character of American democracy.
We've fallen so far that George Bush really thinks he's an elected king, "the decider." We vote between two hand-selected candidates picked because they won't offend anyone who matters (the top 1%) and then the President gets to rule for the next 4 years, regardless of what anyone might think about it.
Or as Bush put it:
And the media's job in this rosy world is to provide "consensus" around the policies of the leader.
This is the system that we are successfully challenging. And the job is to challenge it every day.
We will have a functioning democracy when we get involved on every major issue every day and demand that our representatives actually represent us! And when we brutally cut short their careers when they don't!
January 15, 2007 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whereas we are the reaction to Impeachment and Iraq, the New Left and the counterculture were reactions to segregation, McCarthyism, and the civil rights struggle.
I don't know how one would go about proving such a thing, but I have an alternative theory: the New Left and the counterculture were reactions to the Better Comics Code. Go to a library and take a look of Federic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, and read the notes that readers have left on the flyleaf's (presuming that it is an old copy). I would argue that that had more truck in radicalizing America's youth than just about anything else. I love grafitti, but the only other time I've read graffiti with the gravity that's on Wertham's book was on the walls of the johns in the Oakland Army Terminal - written by G.I.s whio were waiting to be shipped-off to Vietnam.
Is grafitti a social indicator? Yes, I think it is.
Neoboho
January 15, 2007 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fact that Reagan was able to con so many people set the stage for W's "conning of America".
Tom
January 15, 2007 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very good points Howard. The negative connotations in the word "socialism" has been one of the most imposing strawman the RW has had at their disposal to further money interests in America. There is socialism being practiced in America as we speak on behalf of corporations and wealth. And the latest in the countless examples is taxpayer subsidies to big oil. Not only are the American people paying at the pump we are paying through the taxes the government collects from us. Why as a nation should we have to subsidize these corporations? We have been told that we have to or there will no longer be jobs for us...economic blackmail.
And this while the RW claims that this corporate socialism somehow represents the upholding of "free market" principles. The American people have been sold a bill of goods...the markets in this country aren't free. The corporations have made sure that they hold onto firm control of what they have by what amounts to bribery of public officials. We do need a new way. One that encourages economic growth by promoting true competition in the market and not the anti-competitive laws that have been passed on behalf of wealthy only for the benefit of the wealthy. Small business has always been the key to economic health in America. But for the last 20-30 years small business has been crushed by big money/corporate interests who are only interested in limiting competition by monopolistically controlling the markets.
Social democracy is a good enough name for me...maybe "free market democracy". It would be something new seeing adherence to "true" free market principles has been missing from our society for a looooooong time.
January 15, 2007 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I listened to John Edwards' speech in New York that he gave the other day. It gave me a shiver up the spine. I'm willing to swear that I heard Robert F. Kennedy speaking again, just with a different accent.
If he can keep that up, Hillary is in trouble that money won't buy her out of.
January 15, 2007 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see two trends which are not moving in the same direction. The internet is providing a new dynamic as witnessed by the three articles on today's NY Times. One was on the impact of YouTube on the movie studios, one was on an interaction between a reporter and a frequent commentator to his NY Times-sponsored blog, and the third was on the ongoing fight between a blogger and a Disney-owned rightwing radio station.
This shows that the internet is starting to be taken seriously by the old line media. Thus a sign of political activism (perhaps even mostly liberal).
On the other hand most people are not generally disaffected. There is a current discontent over the situation in Iraq, but this does not reflect deep issues with American society. Economic issues polled at about 7% as the primary concern that voters felt the new congress should deal with. I don't even think abuse of civil liberties was on the radar screen.
So to hope that the energized left will translate into a strong populist movement seems unlikely to me. Even though many people are unhappy, they are not sufficiently unhappy to get up and do anything about it. Can an energized minority change the economic and social trends that have been in place since Reagan? History tends to show otherwise (see the fate of the first Populist movement as an example).
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
January 15, 2007 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that new technology isn't a cure-all. But I also see that the right-wing hasn't been able to use the internet for much beyond a larger megaphone to spread the talking points the leaders glean from the think tanks.
Red State was supposed to be the right-wing dKos. Never happened. They all seem to want to talk to spread the latest propaganda, but they don't talk to each other and they don't seem to discuss how things happen politically. They are all attempting to be PR experts with a big baf of propaganda, and none of them want to bother with political science, group building or digging out the truth behind the propaganda.
The new technology can be quite effective, and at the moment it seems to be ours. I don't know why, but that shouldn't stop us from using it.
January 15, 2007 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know if it's a movement or not.
I'm a relative newcomer to political activism and advocacy.
I can say that over the past cycle I voluteered for my first campaign, worked in a field office, phone banked, wrote letters to the editor, etc.
I contributed to Blue america, MYDD, FDL, and 4-5 candidates. Total contributions over $2000.
I'm 38. A former CEO turned consultant. I don't know if that's typical.
And these guys, especially Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, Howie Klein, Jane, Christy, Josh and Duncan have GRABBED me. I trust them more than any other source out there. I would stop what I was doing, and make a call, write a check, write a letter, walk a block ANYTIME THEY ASK.
Does that make it a movement?
January 15, 2007 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't really see that much similarity, since the New Left was hierarchical in many respects which the netroots are obviously not, the SDS, and YAF had a leadership structure which was far less organic, and more ideological than what the blogosphere will ever be. Earthday wasn't exactly a goal of the new Left, nor were women's and gay rights.
I think what will always be similar is the conservatives fear of change and the progressives fear of limits to personal freedom of choice in the pursuit of happiness.
We have not stepped into the same river twice, nor is the same foot the same foot. The direction remains the same, but the speed is accelerated. Ultimately we may find that both movements are a convergence of events whose time to be addressed had come, and the expression of the people within those movements fit their own times.
Perhaps the similarity is the expectations of a more rapid response from the institutions that govern us. Even so, there is a more direct dialog that the elite has yet to adjust to.
It ain't easy being the Presidents buddy, but I'll adapt.
January 15, 2007 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mass media, pop culture, and drugs are no longer the conduit for movement communications, with their distortions and perverse effects on leadership creation...
As the Colbert and YouTube incident demonstrates, today the media of the new progressive movement *is* a mass media, and part of pop culture.
Sure there's still an NBC News and Fox Television and the other corporations that create "culture," but more and more we are creating our own, or taking the products of the entertainment industries and mashing them up into something very different. Conversely, the entertainment industry has grown more and more dependent on the culture of the net (including bloggers), to promote shows, build a fan base, etc. (See:Lost.)
Anyway, I think, in terms of the culture within which the netroots exist, the real question is, whether or not we can "hold on" to this culture, or can it/will it be co-opted by other forces (for example, advertising, journalism, political organizations, etc)?
Dissent Protects Democracy.
January 15, 2007 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does the age range Stoller cites mean we're broad based or just too old to galvanize change and will fade quickly, just as only an older demographic watches the evening news?
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
January 15, 2007 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not clear if it makes it a movement, but part of what's going on is the resumption of politics as an everyday activity by a whole new set of people.
January 15, 2007 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are a number of successful and active right wing blogs. They aren't nearly as effective or powerful as the left wing blogs, but give them time. As the right wingers feel empowered by talking to each other...
Maybe it is a question of time. But I'd bet there are psychological and other factors that could shed light into why the right's approach to the netroots hasn't worked, and if it really could ever.
Is there something about the ideology of the right that would prevent them from flourishing online? Is a guy who gets his marching orders from Rush Limbaugh really going to be all that interested in the netroots?
Dissent Protects Democracy.
January 15, 2007 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
If all of this moved you to get involved then the answer is...yes. And it is growing...
January 15, 2007 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The New Left ideas about participatory democracy had a huge impact on the Democratic Party, beginning with that 1968 Chicago Convention. The same convention which forced Humphrey on the party at the hands of Mayor Daley's cops and machine pol's -- also created the McGovern Commission, later the Fraser McGovern Commission which re-wrote the nominating rules for the party. It forced either open caucuses or a primary on all state parties, as well as modified proportional representation and gender balance, -- with the immediate result being that in 1972 Daley and his hand picked delegation were not seated at convention. Making Howard Dean Party Chair -- and adopting his 50 state plan is a direct descendent of the Institutional Change accomplished in 72, when the Sergeant at Arms was told to remove Daley from the Convention floor, and take away his credentials, and the wake of all that. And the push to do it tracks into all the debate about Participatory Democracy which takes you right back to Port Huron. It was not necessarily the personnel of the New Left, but it was clearly many of their revised ideas that took root in the Democratic Party as an institution and remains viable.
I believe there is much to question about some of the institutions that emerged out of 60 Politics and the New Left. For instance, I believe it is correct that too many environmental groups focused too much on DC offices and representation -- were too controlled by foundation funding sources, and did not invest so as to create a membership movement with influence over the national program. The same can be said for something like NARAL, which did not invest in recruiting younger women into the Choice movement, and instead focused on the dead end of playing Capitol Hill politics. Too many Feminist Groups did not question their upper-middle class nature, and why they could not expand and include working class, racial and ethnic women.
We should not fool ourselves about who is and is not included in the Net World. For it too is segregated by the digital divide. Who has access, who has the capitol to buy and maintain a home computer, who has the schooling to prepare to make video, blog, all the rest?
January 15, 2007 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. For many reasons.
But there is also a change in the type of dialogue. As you know it's now more direct.
I respect you more than most people I have ever "met", because I have watched you put action behind words for years now. And yet, we can still have a one-on-one here and on mydd etc.
I'm just a dope. An cynical armchair critic in the middle of nowhere, but between the direct access and the transparency, I have been conscripted.
It seems to me that type of loyalty/reinforcement/feedback just wasnt possible before. It certainly never grabbed me.
January 15, 2007 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are two great American speeches of the 20th century: FDR's First Inaugural ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself") and Reagan's "The Speech" for Goldwater-Miller ("You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.")
And that's how political movements are born.
January 15, 2007 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you've hit most of the key points of difference between the movements. A few quibbles--few in the anti-war movement had any involvement in the civil rights movement. By the time that SDS got rolling, whites were being eased out of positions of authority in civil rights organizations. While there were whites who really dedicated themselves to the cause, there also were paternalistic liberals who wanted to run things. The anti-war movement (as a mass moevemnt, not the endlessly splitting leaderships) had amuch more organic relationships with the women's movement and the environmental movement. Labor is harder to categorize--Meany wasn't everything; there were fascists like Hoffa and democratic socialists turned liberals like Ruether and the younger generation of workers in many industries, like car making were far more militant than the older generation. I'd suggest you quit liestening to "colleg boys" and talk with real labor people. The New Left was dominated by kids from elite institutions, and never became a true mass movement. Non-elite campuses never had the level of activism of Berkeley or Columbia. Radicalization of even the mass of college students tended to come only when something happened locally (check-out Michener's book about Kent State as an aexample; the Kent was full of my peers' older brothers & sisters, not exactly activist material until May 4, 1970.
McGovern vs. Dean = no comparison. McGovern was a horrible candidate and thoughtful liberals were able to admit that, typically after the election. McGovern picked up some pieces of the RFK campaign and took advantage of the vaccuum left by the disillusion with Humphrey & Co. McGovern did advance a grassroots approach, but it had more in common with Common Cause (an ultimately elitist group) than with any mass movement. Dean was truly something new and he took advantage of new technology and he really has a view of the future, whereas McGovern, at base was a run of the fill liberal. Dean is typical of many of the 2006 winners--moderate to conservative on some issues, but identified clearly with the Left on others (such as the war in his case).
Netroots and Liberal "mainstream": The New Left turned its back on the Old Left and effectively helpd shrink lefty institutions even beyond what McCarthyism had accomplished. The democratic socialist and pacifist groups barely exist any more. The netroots tend to disagree on tactics rather than substance with conventional liberal groups--the one issue stuff, the static messages and funding bases, the willingness to lavish resources on token Republicans who produce nothing of legislative worth, etc. Although netfolks generally seem well-educated, I think there's much more exposure to the insecurity of our current economic system than has been present in the liberal mainstream. Those folks are college boys (and girls) who've never had to worry about much, esp. the ones who are boomer age. Their lack of connection to working people has enabled a lot of right wing pseudo-populism. The women's movement would have become a much more potent force if it had stayed focused on broad pocketbook issues. the environmental movement pays only lips service to the disparities in exposure to environmental toxins and degradation--too bad, it could be a much broader and more successful movement.
The netroots enables participation of many different kinds whereas liberal organizations tend to have astroturf-style membership based; you buy a membership, but you don't have much opportunity to participate.
The wingnuts may not have the same netroots, but they have a formidable noise machine, plus the fundies. The thing that threatens them more is the lack of any intellectual heft in the current generation. Most of the under-60 and certainly under-40 wingnuts are living off an infrastructure and legacy they never had to build. Read Pearlstein's book about Goldwater---it's amazing was somehow affiliated with the Goldwater race; Bork, Buckley, Schafly, etc. Other than than the neocons, the entire wingnut "braintrust" was part of that and they're all in the dirtnap and senility zones, now. There's no one to generate new ideas, just their no-talent kids and characters like Newt "flight of ideas" Gingrich. The drawback is that the hangers on and crazies attached to these people could easily coalesce around something even worse--think our current President, for example. The exhaustion of the Right is good in places, but could also be a lot of trouble.
January 15, 2007 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the post Stoller quoted Kristof, and I am fairly sure he's not a Dem.
January 15, 2007 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Conservatives tend to be extremely hierarchy-oriented. They seem to crave a leader and a chain of command before they believe anyone will tell them what to do. Without directions from the hierarchy I suspect that their anxiety rises rapidly. People become conservatives because they see the world around them changing rapidly so that the changes threaten their established lives. They don't know who to trust or how to deal with the changes. People in a situation of total chaos they cannot cope with as individuals like soldiers in wartime have to grab onto the hierarchy because they know nothing else will protect them.
The Internet is the essential "anti-hierarchy." So are Liberals and Progressives. They tend to make their own decisions regarding what they are going to do. Individual autonomy works with people like this, because they don't need to have someone give them permission to do things. They just need (reliable and accurate) information they can use to make their own decisions. Working without much specific guidance does not increase their anxiety, but working without information does. The internet is a tool for getting information, not orders. Those of us who don't like what we are told are pretty good a using Google. Give liberals the info and they trust their own abilities to make their own decisions. Like cats. They trust their own decisions and they don't feel constrained to follow the herd or ask permission to do things. Guidance helps, but the individual has the final decision what to do about it. Doing something they feel is stupid just because someone orders it or everyone else is doing it is not the Liberal way.
I don't think that people can learn to use the internet the way we do and still remain conservative. Without guidance and permission from on high, conservatives will become paralyzed by anxiety. If they cease to be tied up by anxiety they will either become leaders of conservatives or they will become liberals. Most of them will not be able to do it.
That's my best guess regarding the difference between conservatives and liberals who use the internet.
January 15, 2007 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The point of a movement is it persuades the public. Reagan was elected by repeating the stuff that the right-wing machine had been preaching. Sure, he was a charismatic face but he was a front-man. Like Bush.
Those strawmen you write about were handed to him by a well-funded infrastructure of think tanks and messaging organizations. The public had been prepped to hear what he was saying.
The right's infrastructure created demand, and Reagan was the product.
Now the progressive movement needs to start reaching the general public, talking about the benefits of progressive ideas, and creating demand for progressive candidates.
January 15, 2007 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you force your way into a system with the intention of participating in it and not overthrowing it, you become part of the system. Thus politically, women have fallen into the camps that were already there that were made by men.
The thing with blogs that I've seen is that race truly isn't thought of. Only words. Maybe bloggers assume everyone is white when they read their comments maybe not. But the Lefty Blogosphere is about being able to see through the lies of the Bushies and their allies and enablers. Because a large proportion of the people who fail to see that are poor whites who happen to live in a certain region, they come in for a lot of a abuse and conversely attention.
Blacks (and now Latinos) don't need the help of the blogosphere to know that George Bush/the Republican Party hates their guts and lies to them a lot.
Finally the internet currently skews to people who aren't disadvantaged or at least are minimally advantaged (in popular parlance, I happen to think a lot of people are disadvantaged and don't realize it) so it's always more difficult to try to have a conversation with people who aren't well... there to put it in simplified terms.
January 15, 2007 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, I don't think we truly know, given some of the social phenomena enabled by the Internet and other new communications technologies. As many of you know, I think the traditional mass demonstration is fairly useless in the US political system. It takes too long to set up, loses focus, and is vulnerable to lack of coverage in a single place.
In contrast, recent changes in the Filipino government came from demonstrations, focused on a single issue, to form in a few hours. These were enabled by cellular phone-based text messaging.
The Filipino mass movement increased responsible citizen participation in government. There is the danger, of course, that demagogues could form instant protests using similar mechanisms. Are these techniques stabilizing or not? We don't know yet.
"Netroots" may have an advantage in being slightly more deliberative than the "flash demonstration."
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 15, 2007 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have heard your thoughts before, and I agree when you are talking about the current crowd of "dittoheads," but Berry Goldwater was a conservative. I doubt he was paralyzed by anxiety absent permission from on high. He was representative of a whole generation of conservatives, many of whom are dead or in retirement homes. No, don't confuse O'Reilly or Limbaugh fans with the entire universe of conservative thinkers. The sons and daughters of Berry Goldwater are the conservatives likely to feel as empowered by the internet as their liberal counterparts.
Ron Byers
January 15, 2007 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know Rick. I seem to recall that the Moral Majority was very broad-based and grass roots, and became a very significant movement.
I think the differences in net organizing are probably more due to how far high-speed internet access has moved into rural communities than to any deep cultural differences between left and right.
January 15, 2007 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt,
Interesting piece. This type of thought process is beyond the right wing political movement. First the right wing movement works in one or two dimensions at best. Your thought string started here is one of four dimensions.
Our advantage is one of multi-dimensional links to our movement. The Colbert speech at the Press club was an excellent example. It was a four dimensional comedy speech, the intended audience was you-tube, and other replays, not just the press club bubble heads. The concept of four dimensional irony or satire is a very powerful political weapon.
It is the multi-dimesional element of our political movement that is it's most effective tool. The permutations and combinations of distribution is why the movement is making leap frog progress. The old Republican guard will catch up, but net nuetrality will be the law, at least for the next 30 month's by the time they begin to realize how far behind they are. (Thanks to Jon S Adelstien and Micheal Copp.)
The advantage we have with net nuetrality can not be overstated, the internet must not be turned into television with topdown distribution. The user needs to navigate from the middle of content, that is equal in nature. This one advantage should give the movement a distinct advantage for 2008. It will allow for the blogeshere to continue to expand it's influence.
I am including a piece I wrote from a Private Blog { A blog not accessible from the internet, but passed be email thru peer to peer methods}. The concepts discussed mirror some of your thoughts
Subject: Private Post Post blog .....72 pep talk...
Date: November 4, 2006 10:10:46 PM PST
To all the coordinating minds at Talking Points Memo, your experiment in four dimensional political tactical response and process is having a significant impact on the outcome of the 2006 mid term elections. The concept of collective consciousness, and groupmind dynamics has been used by marketers for nearly 85 years, they brought us bacon, eggs, and the hot breakfast. Somewhere along the line a group of pioneers, explorers, and yes pranksters discovered another way to tap the power f the groupmind.
Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and the Grateful Dead community first used this power to stop the Vietnam war. I will not go into the specifics of what happened in the 60's and 70's, but the fact is LSD a CIA experimental drug opened different unpredictable forms of mass communication whose impacts on societies groupmind are not well understood. That being the case, this new form of mass communication has always been very difficult to predict it's impact, on election cycles.
The internet, was just a dream of a group of "Artistic Hackers" who came of age as the second generation of explorers, pioneers, and pranksters, who wanted to harness a new drug free collective conciseness dynamic. They dreamed of a way to harness the coming Outer-net, or as Pete Townsend described the "Grid" in the Lifehouse project. People like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Willie Bova , ({who redefined the concept of the coming "Outer-net", in the late 90's}), all those from Sun Micro systems and the others who produced the WWW, the tool for which you have taken as your method to take back the American experiment in Democracy thank you, for your bold efforts in this midterm election. while we will win this battle for the American experiment in a Republic Democracy, it is just one battle in the coming years to take back America.
With the early battles, of the victory in the Social Security bamboozled debate Talkingpointsmemo.com defined a new form of four dimensional response to political warfare. This distributed model of collective political asymmetrical distributed thought process will produce a superior result to Karl Roves divide and conquer siege America, majority of the majority cult that has ruled America the last 6 years.
The polls will look close the coming days, the pollsters and old media want a horse race, it brings ratings, it brings extra ad revenue, it brings eyeballs. Don't mistake the familiar psycho-babel from the usual suspects of talking typing heads in the next 72 hours. A Tsunami of Accountability is coming. A change is coming, America has HAD ENOUGH. Keep up the good work, collectively we can harness the power of the "Outer-net" for good, not evil to awaken the great American citizen from their fear induced nightmare, that began 1-20-2001.
Your role in this awakening is historic, don't ever forget it. You have harnessed the power of the "Outer-net" to ride a Wave of new enlightenment, that will change Americas future and restore Dignity, and Liberty to our Republic.
Keep typing
J Marcus Campbell
Private Post Post Blog has been an experiment to assist your efforts, I hope it contributed to the team.
January 15, 2007 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why bad mouth McGovern? He would have been a helluva lot better President than Nixon.
Tom
January 15, 2007 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm thinking of William Kristol's dad Irving who was an old leftist turned right-wing. Kristof was not really involved with the New Left. He was too young, although obviously he was a 13 year-old McGovern supporter.
Tom
January 15, 2007 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
To me, it reads like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King combined. Edwards is not only literate, but he is on a mission.
January 15, 2007 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two points I think are important -
The internet really is a different kind of medium. All the major media of the 20th century - print, radio, movies, TV - tended by their technical nature to concentrate content creators while wildly expanding the masses of content consumers. The web, as it has evolved to this point, gives the potential of a mass audience to any one of those in the audience. Where the Republican Party and corporate business interests have been adept at exploiting the hierarchical nature of established media, they have no advantage on the web. I have high hopes, and some recent evidence, that the liberal left will be able to wield the emerging internet based media especially if it continues to supplant the old.
I don't know how valuable comparisons between today's liberal left with the New Left of the 1960's are because I believe the driving energy behind that movement was the particular demographic reality of the time. In 1970, the adage "Don't trust anyone over 30" had the force of the 52% of Americans who, like me, were under 30. By comparison, in 2005, only 41% of Americans are under 30. The political and generational conflicts of that time are inseparable. They also do not have an analog today.
January 15, 2007 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd argue that Barry Goldwater was a member of the wealthy elite (he inherited his stores) and was conservative because he feared losing his status. It's not quite the same as the Christian Right, which is the group that is lower class financially and highly conservative.
I agree that he was not the type of conservative I was describing. He was the Bill Buckley type. But most conservatives are not that type. These are the guys at the top of the conserative food chain.
At first glance I'd suspect these guys are conservatives because they reject the dominant views of the masses after WW II. But they are not sufficienlty numerous to make the net an effective tool in the way liberals have. The leaders and the led in conservative circles are often not the same kind of people. Then there are Drudge and Limbaugh who are the types I described above. They still want control very much, and that is the key that makes hierarchies so attractive - especially for the leaders who are at the top like Barry Goldwater.
Again, I am speculating. Don't think I am wrong, though.
January 15, 2007 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is very well put, and I think that my own idea was in some ways not well formed.
Maybe I should say that if middle-class liberal bloggers want to contribute to a genuinely biracial populist movement, they should be willing to consider the possibility that some of Bush's supporters are not beyond redemption, and it may actually be possible to split them off from the Republican party. John Edwards probably understands how to do that better than most of us do.
I remember from the 1960s that upper-middle class college students used to insult working-class policemen by calling them "pigs." Nowadays the assumption among middle-class liberal bloggers seems to be that Bush supporters are racist Neanderthals. The conventional wisdom would seem to reject the notion that there could ever be a workable alliance between poor blacks and Bush supporters.
The conventional wisdom may prove to be right. My impression, however, is that Edwards is trying to appeal to people just like the people that he grew up with. At the same time, he is making a very strong appeal to blacks. Edwards is a smart man, he knows those people, and he knows how to talk to them. In some ways, poor blacks have more in common with Edwards' natural constituency than they do with middle-class liberal bloggers, both in terms of their religious beliefs and their financial frustrations.
I don't know if Edwards can pull this off, but if I am reading him correctly, and if he can do it, it would be a major upset of the Republican Southern Strategy. It would undo everything the Republicans have accomplished since Nixon.
There is a point of view that liberals should write off the South, and that point of view makes sense in its own terms, which are, however, entirely based on what has happened in the past. The past is generally the best predictor of the future, but we have to consider the possibility that the right person at the right time might be able to change the fundamental dynamics of the politics. Dr. King did it, but Dr. King was the greatest American of all time. I don't know if anybody else could do it. We need another Martin Luther King, but that is a tall order
There is, of course, a big "maybe" to everything that I am saying. The campaigning has hardly begun, and the pessimists may be right. I think that Edwards' campaign is taking a very interesting turn, however.
January 15, 2007 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then why is there no right-wing site comparable to dKos? Or Firedoglake? Or this one? Smaller but similar. Is there a right-wing site like those community sites but smaller? If there is, I haven't seen it.
Granted Liberalism and progressivism are urban phenomenon, and conservatism tends to be rural and suburban. But enough right-wingers have high speen connections to create one or two of the community type sites if they could create them.
The cultural differences are based on psychological differences, in my opinion. People who are psychologically rigid and faced with a chaotic environment will be attracted to groups with a strong hierarchy. It's the difference between "moderate" Southern Baptists and "Conservative" Southern Baptists.
The Moral Majority was pretty much evangelistic and fundamentalist, believeing in Biblical Inerrancy. At least here in Texas.
Oh, and the Mega-Churches are also evangelistic and fundamentalist and they are an urban phenomeonon.
January 15, 2007 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
A few differences in the conditions in which each movement emerged:
War & Draft -- tens of thousands of Americans drafted and deployed to the Viet Nam kill zone --many returning dead, maimed and traumatized-- was arguably the most compelling motivation for 1960's political activism. There's no substitute for having "skin in the game," and no comparable motivation exists today.
Cold War -- the Cold War was a huge psychological and practical force in 1960's political activism. At the time, the US was not the sole superpower, the Cuban Missile Crisis was recent history, and plenty of Americans (rightly or wrongly) were unsure if the Western or Communist systems would ultimately prevail.
Many Americans remained wary of domestic political groups being willing or unwilling tools of Communist dictatorships; this was a huge obstacle to engaging people who were not already politically-inclined.
America's major external threat today is Islamic radicals who are so opposed to everything non-Islamist-radical that --despite the hysterical howls of talk-radio wingnuts-- few progressive netroots activists can be discredited as Taliban front groups.
Unresolved Civil Rights Issues -- In the 1960's, there were still sizeable numbers of Americans --especially in the Old South-- who held fast to their racist worldview and believed it would be possible to maintain an officially segregated society.
The end of Jim Crow and subsequent changes in attitude (plus the anonymity of netroots) make it more possible to engage people in some of the universal economic issues, regardless of race (something MLK famously tried to do with his white jailers from his cell).
It also is now more possible for any lonely progressives in conservative Old South communities (or anywhere) to contribute via the netroots when there are no local hands-on opportunities.
Rise in Latino & Asian Americans -- the demographic shift since the '60's, especially the surge in Latinos, has been tectonic. The center of gravity for race issues has moved from black-white segregation debates of the '60's to Latino, language, citizenship and border debates. There's a lot to consider on this, but I suspect that the ability of the netroots or any "netroots movement " to fully engage Latinos could prove its greatest opportunity and most potent legacy.
Speed & Access -- new information technology enables today's citizen activists (and citizen soboteurs) to follow events, check facts, influence the national debate, blow the whistle (think Macaca) and add their two cents in ways that were simply impossible in the 1960's. Not only do events change more rapidly, but netroots activists can *make them change* more rapidly.
Also, candidates who might not have been viable challenegers to establishmentarians (think Sen. Tester) can today get in the game with some blogging and an ActBlue page.
January 15, 2007 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Internet is the essential "anti-hierarchy."
This reminds me of the sales managers pep talk to his sales force but on an opposite point. The speech goes, "if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten!"
Today, liberal site tend to have a rolling conversation. If you do not have an affinity or understanding of the direction of the site a new participant will not join in. Even with understanding of the discussion, it takes a major commitment of time to just learn the process! Average individuals do not have the time or knowledge to jump into blogs cold in the numbers needed to make a change in the country.
How are new net participants being introduced to facts, history, and information to break out of the past propaganda? They are not! No technology is magic, how the technology presents itself through the interfaces to the recipient produces the new or “novel” change or solidifies and codifies existing prejudices.
Today the web does a poor job of introducing new thinking or concepts to users. Show me a site that says, “we believe this because of the following facts.”
We the members started here and these are the best of the posts explaining where we started, how we moved along the way and arrived here today, but as always we are open to new insights, please join us and contribute to this process.
Every one of good will welcome!
If we do not fall back and mentor to new members we are doomed to be a minority with no influence.
If we only talk to ourselves we miss the new and novel experiences of life and our boundaries are confining!
-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking
January 15, 2007 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
As someone who does marketing & other research for some of the better-known corporate-owned web communities, I can tell you that the digital divide is not even close to what it was when the term was coined some 15 years ago.
Take a click through youtube, myspace, liveleak, stickcam, etc. and you'll note the range of (esp young people) who have access and to and are quite fluent in net-related technology. Not that they're all involved in politics, but I think you underestimate the intelligence of folks who don't fit the "profile" of who is smart enough to access new technology on their own.
I'd also encourage you to read the 2006 New Politics Institute report "Mobile Media in 21st Century Politics" (along with much of the other info there):
http://www.newpolitics.net/node/88
January 16, 2007 5:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are posts up above lamenting the absence of a leader. I think they are subtly wrong. Dean was (and is) that leader.
They took him down. They being the media, and Kerry/Gephardt (see Crashing the Gate for the details on the latter). I'm not denying that his horribly wasteful and mismanaged Iowa campaign was not also responsible, but the DC elites wanted him gone in the worst way.
The netroots movement is a broadly based movement in opposition not just to Republicans but also to the entrenchment of corporate interests in the Democratic party leadership. It's a movement in opposition to the idea that the only way to get elected is to raise tens of millions of dollars from lobbyists and other organizations with their snouts in the trough.
The netroots movement's slogan is "people-powered politics." The base assumption is that what citizens want is not the same as what the people in the Beltway, elected officials, lobbyists, the DC media and the permanent bureaucracy want. The idea is that the internet enables all those disconnected individuals, previously cut out by institutional barriers, to connect, and form a powerful grassroots lobby.
The most striking thing about this movement is its resilience. Moveon failed. The impeachment happened. But Moveon grew. Dean lost. But the underlying movement grew. Bush won the 04 election, but Jon Tester also won.
The reason Joe Klein is so scared (read just a couple of his Swampland posts--the terror is palpable) is that his game is up. It's only a matter of time before a very large number of readers conclude that he just isn't very good at this, compared to commentary available for free on the web. Moreover, he's not good at this because he is part of an entrenched, enriched DC culture that has very little contact with America.
So now we have the bizarre situation of an incredibly unpopular president pursuing an even more unpopular bit of foreign policy that any sentient observer knows is not only unpopular but doomed to failure STILL being propped up by the national media. STILL making the Democratic elite incredibly worried about how they will be covered if they oppose this extremely unpopular president's, extremely unpopular, really stupid policy.
Talk about an opportunity for change. Let's have some Democratic primaries in 08. No more appointments from Chuch and Rahm. And those 21 20 republican senators up in 08? There will be fewer come January 09.
January 16, 2007 6:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
And that is really the power of the netroots: accountability. As in "macaca;" as in pestering the media over Lieberman's $387,000 petty cash loophole in campaign finance laws. Or going after Democrats who pull that cute distancing act from other Democrats so they know they're going to be held accountable before they become another Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller.
January 16, 2007 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Free Republic must have played a role in Clinton's impeachment. It was clear at the time that Republicans in the House had to vote for impeachment or anger voters, their voters. Lets hope the netroots become that powerful with the Democratic Party.
January 16, 2007 6:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thats really a good point about trust.
January 16, 2007 6:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed - I am far more likely to write a check for someone Atrios has recommended than based on the 3487th professional fundraising letter from Hillary (or even the 47th letter from Howard Dean). I did in fact contribute to Testor and Webb based on Atrios' and Kos' discussions.
sPh
January 16, 2007 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or will we become more important as the WWII generation dies off? Such high percentages of them voted out of a duty to vote.
January 16, 2007 6:37 AM |