Regular visitors to Daily Kos will already know that Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (aka Jerome and Kos) have had an old-tech moment, authorized the felling of a few trees, and published a book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben has written a newbie-friendly essay about the book and about the possibilities of Web political activism implicit in the story of the Dean campaign and the increasingly sophisticated Web-based organizing structures Kos assembled during that campaign and then in reaction to the old Democratic Party establishment.
McKibben is not entirely uncritical of the Kossaks. He recognizes that they have become focused on winning, and his reflections on that shift among American liberals are nuanced. Mainly, though, he is an enthusiast, and the fast survey he does of the left blogosphere (American section, of course) in part 2 of his essay is a useful introduction to the best-known and most influential sites.
To me, the lessons still come through most powerfully when they emerge from a careful, dogged narration of events, as here:
The reason the Dean campaign collapsed in Iowa, the authors argue persuasively, was largely that the new kind of campaign he was assembling threatened so many powerful people, from rich donors used to the kingmaking power their money gave them to "media advisers" unhappy at seeing their conventional wisdom ignored. Jerome and Kos tell the story of the series of TV ads that helped turn the polls against Dean; they were sponsored by a mysterious new group called Americans for Jobs and Healthcare and they showed, among other things, the face of Osama bin Laden in order to argue that "Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy." A few months later when mandatory financial reports finally emerged, it turned out that the ads had been financed by supporters of John Kerry and Richard Gephardt and organized by the "disgraced, corrupt former New Jersey senator Robert Torricelli." All in all, the backers of the ad had given more than $8.7 million to the Democratic Party in the previous few years. Dean made plenty of political gaffes on his own but he had been eliminated by powerful Democrats.
Interesting. Majikthise wrote a pretty scathing review of that book, which might also be worth a read.
Actually, we used 100% recycled for the book. Majikthise ("The book doesn’t provide any real evidence that these [special interest] groups are harming the party"), where could one start?
hi skdadl,
Interesting post, it's like turning over a rock and seeing all the slimy critters scrurry about. The slimy critters being the people with the real control over american political parties and who gets nominated.
I've been pondering that situation for us here in Canada now that Harper has come up with his accountability package. Assuming it goes through as it now stands (no corporate/union contributions and limit of $1000 by individuals), I wonder what role/influence the canadian blogosphere might have in directing contributions to favoured politicians/parties.
For being one of the most internet connected countries on earth, I don't think canadians in general give much of a damn about bloggers. Not as much as in the US anyways... Maybe we still trust our MSM too much. Anyways, your thoughts on the subject would be great. Thanks :)
Patrick,
Some of those slimy critters are Markos and Jerome, who are sexist control freaks and pretty much just like the folks they are critiquing. It takes one to know one.
Idealistic Pragmatist, thanks for the splendid link, which helped me as I was thinking about how to respond to Jerome from the pov of a Canadian lefty.
Jerome, sorry for the cheap dead-tree metaphor, which was tired to begin with anyway, and I promise to retire it.
I was going to tell you that the Canadian left are facing a different kind of puzzle when the focus is winning. We already have a (moderately) social democratic party up here, plus a population conditioned by the American pop media to think of our Liberal party as vaguely left ... ish ... So superficially, the "winning" strategy here is pretty obvious and is now being argued more and more strenuously, even by old-time socialists and social democrats: yield to the blandishments of the Liberals (left-ish section). (For American readers unfamiliar with the Canadian Liberal party, just think Rockefeller. The Rockefellers learned much of what they knew from Mackenzie King.)
When I read Majikthise, though, I realize that our pickles are not so different after all. She writes: "Kos and Armstrong are primarily interested in professionalizing the party through think tanks, paid operatives, and a new breed of internet savvy media consultant. I wanted to hear about how new technology might enable ordinary citizens to assert unprecedented influence over politics and the media from the bottom up."
Yeah. It's curious: I've just been watching the meltdown of a left organization along that fault-line, and I gotta admit, it is exactly the same damned fault-line.
Hi, Patrick. Maybe it's our weather, but Canadians have been more wired than anyone else for a long time, I believe (way back through the phone age), so we have to keep thinking of the potential, don't we. I confess that, right now, it is the research potential that interests me a lot more than the fund-raising for anyone. Canadians mostly don't know how the two big parties work, how interchangeable they are. I think that tracking the story of our democracy, how far short it is falling right now, is the more important first step. Not a "winning" strategy in the short term, I admit.
And gee: good to see you, Melanie.
Oh, let's break out the black and white cats...
Defining the LPC as Rockefeller Republican is, to me, just approaching the 'Liberal Tory same old story' warhorse from a different direction. Sure, we're not nominally socialist or quixotically prone to departing the mainstream of Canadian opinion out of a sense of our own purity; but we reflect the non-American postwar consensus of state participation in society - with our own Pearsonian/Trudeauean twists. We are persistently left of Canada's centre, especially on a youth level, and the people I've met in the party are varying shades of progressive, which is all I ask for in colleagues. I'm comfortable as a social democrat within the party; more comfortable than if I had to put up with the eye-crossingly frustrating ideological intolerance of the NDP's left.
But Jason: Rockefeller Republicans learned a lot from Mackenzie King Liberals. (See King's Industry and Humanity, 1918.) I thought that would make you proud.
WLMK and Nelson Rockefeller are not what I'd call political contemporaries; if he learned anything from King it would have been while he was still in short pants, and King was dead and buried years before he was governor or VP.
And of course, the notion that the LPC is defined by its King political complexion is sort of an NDP touchstone... I'm reminded of the Cranberries' "Zombie" every time I hear the NDP trying to run on a '30s platform of evil Liberal-Tory ruling class hegemony.
Nelson? Did I mention Nelson? Jason, WLMK - and his effect on American labour practices - go back a long long way before Nelson, even before Willie's book.
You have to give the Rockefellers credit, though. They were quick studies, and have been in favour of being nice to the peasants ever since.
And hegemony? Did I say hegemony? Do I use bad words like that?
I think you've got the NDP touchstone wrong too, Jason. The one that I know goes like this: "Courage, my friends, 'tis not too late to build a better world."
Happy Easter, Jason.
Whatever their failings, as McKibbon points out, there is a chance to transform the power structure of party politics somewhat.
But the bloggers seem more willing to conform to the traditional power brokers than to make the brokers conform to them.
And then whoever swallows who, the Democratic Party remains the same putrid, imperialist, corporate party that it was before.
An NDP touchstone, not the NDP touchstone; and Rockefeller Republicans are Republicans of the mold of and led by Nelson, not Jon D. or his Canadian troubleshooter.
Happy Easter to you too.
I'm comfortable as a social democrat within the party; more comfortable than if I had to put up with the eye-crossingly frustrating ideological intolerance of the NDP's left.
Considering that Liberal governments of the 1990s presided over more and deeper cuts to social programs even than Mulroney and his colleagues, your comfort zone must be large indeed.
Mulroney was new-right, but he was also inept; I'm glad he was, but holding him up as a merciless slash-and-burn artist on the mould of Thatcher or Reagan is a bit of a false comparison.
But do I consider Chrétien-Martin to be Thatcherites or neoliberals? Hardly; I consider them to be people who took office with the deficit at 35 billion - billion with a b, that. I don't contend that their choices in downloading costs and so forth are immune from monday morning quarterbacking, or that they didn't have serious costs we're still dealing with; but the fact is, you can't just whistle 35 billion dollar deficits into nothingness with "tis not too late to build a better world." I'd suggest you ask Bob Rae, but suppose his actions were tainted by inner Liberal deviationism. Ditto Alexa?
I'm well aware I'm maundering at a hostile jury here, and I don't mean to actually be offensive or obnoxious, just set out my own views, since I feel them strongly:
When I talk about people I'm uncomfortable in a party with I'm thinking of soi-disant 'radicals', most advocates of "no justice, no peace", and people who place their own personal romanticism and uncompromising (literally) idealism above the utilitarian interests of bland but effective progressive politics. I am put off by people willing to fight a civil war in order to 'take over' the whole Canadian political spectrum left of the Conservative Party; I think it's an irresponsible attitude that can only be justified with an unrealistically comic-opera-villain interpretation of the Liberal Party.
I have no real problem with the provincial parties, although don't quote me on that - but 'taking over from the Liberals,' an explicitly avowed intention? Have the advocates of this view studied the history of political parties? The federal party, to me, only accomplishes anything substantive when it forms a coalition majority with the Liberals; as a smaller fraction it merely focuses the Liberals attentions on the centre (since stealing NDP voters is hard work) and makes it more likely that the third of Canadians that are truly conservative can hijack political power.
Now, I'm not posting blog messages that the NDP ought to dissolve or something, any more than I harass christians just because I'm an agnostic; I'm smarter and more respectful of peoples views than that. But, that doesn't mean I think every well intentioned view is helpful.
On rereading, I suppose I ought to clarify that there are times when 'no justice, no peace' is an apt slogan, and that its terms are maleable. But that maleability - and its potential to mean rather monstrous and retrograde things, as when it is casually applied to real violence - poison it for me, even if it originally referred to the stifling 'peace' of conservative conformism and gradualism.