Liberal Bloggers Brace For Victory?

I'll express some thoughts in the next post about this topic, as I have had some thoughts wandering around the old synapses as of late.

Naturally, I'll post some shorter thoughts throughout the following article about the so-called Netroots. It's an important subject; far more important than than even the people at its center realize.

Obama's Prospects Pose New Concerns for Netroots

By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 21, 2008; C01

AUSTIN, July 20 -- "Yep, the way it's looking, we might actually win this thing . . ."

That's Markos Moulitsas talking, a.k.a. "Kos" to everyone here at Netroots Nation, the four-day liberal blogapalooza that ended Sunday at the Austin Convention Center. He's got a head cold, which explains his hoarse, strained voice, and by "we," he means the Netroots and their candidate of choice, Sen. Barack Obama. If the Netroots can be compared to high school -- still maturing, somewhat cliquish but definitely a community -- then Obama, as the presumptive nominee, had been voted Most Likely to Succeed.

That's a very good analogy. It certainly rings true in my experience. As an independent with many ideas and beliefs that one would certainly consider liberal, even progressive, with others most would consider conservative to moderate, I constantly get verbally whacked in the comment sections of blogs from both ends of the political spectrum. I don't know much about party politics, but it seems to me that insulting people, whom one does not know in the slightest, based on one comment, doesn't do much for one's cause, whatever that might be. It's never wise for either political party to insult a politically involved independent. The blogosphere still has a long way to go if it is to reach its potential as a political tool.

Hardest Worker and Best Dressed honors went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who kicked off Saturday morning's program with a freewheeling 40-minute "Ask the Speaker" session. ("Damn, Nancy looks grrreat in that pantsuit," a blogger was overheard saying.) Most Popular would go to Al Gore, who brought the crowd of more than 2,000 conventioneers to its feet with his surprise appearance, repeatedly asking bloggers to visit WeCanSolveIt.org, home to his new group, the Alliance for Climate Protection.

True, Pelosi looked good in her pants suit. She also, from a number of pictures I've seen, looks a bit haggared; an appearance one develops while experience term stress. Anyone wonder why? I do.

I seem to remember Bill Clinton saying that that he wanted to base his ex-presidency on that of Jimmy Carter. I have no idea what Bill is doing with the exceptions of raising money for his presidential library, campaigning for his wife, flying around the world with and sharing sailing weekends with G.H.W. Bush and pulling in the big bucks with speeches. Whatever his causes, his ex-presidency, so far, looks nothing like that of Carter. Seems it's Gore, whose ex-vice presidency is one of service to not only his country, but for the entire planet, who resembles Carter, in the years after holding high office in D.C. Good on Mr. Gore.

Both men have my highest admiration.

But Obama, who leads Sen. John McCain in recent national polls, is Topic A among the Netroots, his fate somewhat married to theirs. Five years ago liberal bloggers made a name for themselves at a time of defeat; Republicans controlled not just the White House but both houses in Congress. They craved a fight, and President Bush was their punching bag.

The liberal, democratic bloggers weren't the only ones who wanted a fight. I was one angry-as-hell individual. I was ready for a freakin' fist fight.

But these are changing times, and Obama, in his calls for getting past blue vs. red America, and in his recent positions on issues such as telecom immunity, is somewhat of an enigma. With the Dems taking back Congress in 2006 and the prospect of an Obama victory come November, many in the influential Netroots are left in a precarious, ambiguous position. The question is, who needs whom: Does Obama need the Netroots, or vice versa?

Kos, never one to mince words, is blunt.

"It's not a question of who needs whom. Fact is, the Netroots are not going to be the decisive factor," Kos says, fidgeting with his iPhone as he sits on a lounge chair at the Hilton, across the street from the convention center. "But having said that, we're an activist set of people: We're engaged, we give money, we put boots on the ground. That's why when many of us had a genuine disagreement with Obama on FISA" -- Obama voted for a bill that provided retroactive immunity to telecom companies -- "we let him know about it."

He's got that right, in a way. The people of the Netroots will not decide who the next president is, by voting on election day. Nevertheless, the Netroots are having more of an effect this year than we did in 2004. I can't say that that is because of anything the bloggers are doing differently than we did then. More likely it is because there are more small community news aggregators than there were 4 years ago. More people are getting at least some of their news from the blogosphere. The biggest reason the Democrats are facing victory (unless they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, again) is George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their gang of constitutional and international criminals.

Though his site, Daily Kos, is arguably the liberal blogosphere's most popular hub, Kos is not the Netroots. He's just at the center of the quad, with other blogs filling the rest of the always packed, often clangorous hallways. And with each passing year, the crowd gets bigger, the tent wider.

At the first confab, then called YearlyKos and held in Las Vegas, some 1,200 attended, most of them blog jockeys who knew each other only by their online names. Last year at least 1,500 attendees made the trek to Chicago, including all but one of the eight Democratic presidential candidates, who sat down for a 90-minute forum. Among those present were bloggers, pols and their minions, policy analysts and think tank reps.

This past weekend, those same types showed up, plus tech firms such as Wired for Change, hawking an online product called Salsa that helps groups engage people through e-mail lists. There's no denying that the gathering has crossed the mainstream threshold when swag bags, complete with El Sabroso Salsita salsa chips, were handed out alongside condoms from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

As in any community, as in many high schools, Netroots can appear both self-segregating -- black bloggers at one table, Latinos at another and gays at the next -- and not diverse enough. After the Q&A session with Pelosi, in which the first questions asked were about impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the FISA bill and abstinence-only education, some black bloggers complained that they weren't enough questions about rising gas and food prices.

The "black bloggers" are right. There are people all around me who can't tell you who their senator is, let alone what "FISA" means. But they do understand that gas prices are breaking their economic backs. High fuel prices, food prices, the housing/credit crisis, the healthcare crisis (and there is one; a huge one) and other main street issues are issues that effect the largest percentage of the voters and do so in a very obvious, non-deniable ways. They sure as hell know what corporate welfare and political cronyism are. They have seen it in action, at least since Katrina, when over-worked, over-extended people started paying attention, en masse.

I'm not saying that FISA isn't important. It is immensely important. So is accountability! Nevertheless, those issues will not put Obama in the White House.

"It reflects a bit of skew," Cheryl Contee, a member of the convention's advisory board, says of the questions to Pelosi. Contee, who is black, runs Fission, a social media consulting firm. "Folks in the convention have to keep in mind that not everyone who considers themselves a part of the Netroots is here, and many of them aren't as concerned about, say, FISA or impeachment. They want jobs."

Amen!

Obama's standing here, especially with big-name bloggers such as Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, has proved complicated. Two years ago, frustrated by bloggers' reaction to two Democratic senators who voted to confirm John Roberts as chief justice, Obama wrote a posting on Daily Kos:

"According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists -- a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog -- we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party," wrote Obama, who voted no on the Roberts confirmation.

Last year, at the height of the primary campaign, Obama often placed second behind former senator John Edwards in the monthly and unscientific Daily Kos straw polls. In October, he fell third behind Edwards and Sen. Chris Dodd. When Obama examined former president Ronald Reagan's legacy earlier this year and said it "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," a blizzard of comments hit blogs, many of them critical.

This describes the kind of knee-jerk, unthinking reaction easily found on either side of the political fence in this country. Obama was absolutely right in what he said. Reagan did change the political landscape in the U.S. and in such a way that there is no going back and in a way that Nixon and Clinton did not. Not all U.S. presidents should or could be transforming presidents. Those kinds of presidents only come along every 20 year or so. They are transforming personalities who recognize a movement among the people before anyone else does. Perhaps that is because they agree with the basic tenets of that movement; a movement born out of a great necessity of the time. I believe that Obama is going to be a transforming president.

A few weeks ago, after Obama's upcoming vote for the FISA bill provoked angry comments on his own social networking site, My.BarackObama.com, Obama posted an explanation on his blog. "Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker," Obama wrote.

I admit that I have not read the FISA Bill in its latest incarnation. If Russ Feingold thinks it stinks and must be fixed in future and Hillary voted against it, my guess is that the new FISA Bill isn't all that better than the last one. Nevertheless, it can be fixed, but that won't happen during a McCain administration.

"Think about it: Netroots was born at a time when the Democrats were in opposition, and it's learning how to be a force of good when the Democrats are in power -- and could have more power next year," says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network. A speaker at the confab, Rosenberg is a bridge of sorts between Official Washington (he worked in the first Clinton White House) and New Washington (he wrote the foreword to "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics," which Kos co-authored).

How hard can this be? Anyone who has the power to do so should hold their elected officials feet to the fire. They should also pick their battles and realize that if democracy is to be ressurected in America and the constituion restored, D.C. (and the country) must move toward concensus governance. If that takes a multi-party system, as I believe it will, bloggers need to be prepared to lead the way in making that system a reality and stop clinging to the two major political parties, neither of which seem to stand for anything these days..

Adds Andrew Rasiej, also a speaker at the convention and founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an online think tank that analyzes how the Internet affects politics: "For most everyone in the Netroots, the main goal right now is get Obama elected. Period. Now how the Netroots and Obama move forward after November, if he is elected, is another issue."

The mood between Obama and the Netroots has warmed in the past few months. Obama, who's on his first overseas tour since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, sent a 10-minute video greeting to the conventioneers.

"We've had some disagreements in the past, and we'll have some disagreements in the future," Obama says in the video. "I promise to continue to listen to your concerns, take them seriously and discuss them respectfully."

....and again, the loudest voices are heard.

The audience claps warmly, and among those watching are Edmundo Rocha, of Houston, and Manuel Guzman, of Tucson, Ariz., Latino bloggers who recently launched The Sanctuary, a site written by a multi-ethnic group of bloggers concerned about migrant rights and immigration reform. The group sent a list of detailed, pointed questions to Obama. They're still waiting to get adequate responses, they add.

"I've been waiting to see just how much he's going to involve the Netroots in the way he thinks about policies," says Guzman, who voted for Obama during the primaries but says he was "disappointed" with Obama's FISA vote.

Obama is a senator right now. If he isn't who we think he is after his inauguration that will be the time to be more than just disappointed.

"The Netroots are not going away. It's only going to get bigger," Guzman continues. "We're all learning to live with each other."

Let's hope so.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

An Autocratic Netroots?

Published on Sunday, July 13, 2008 by Center for Media and Democracy

The War, Dems, MoveOn and The Uprising
An interview with David Sirota

by John Stauber

Sheldon Rampton and I could see it coming soon after the Democrats took control of the Congress in 2007. In March, 2007 we pointed out that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with the support of MoveOn, was advancing legislation that would fund the war in Iraq while giving Democrats PR cover, allowing them to posture against it while the bloody, brutal occupation of Iraq continues. We were attacked at the time by Democratic partisans, but unfortunately our analysis has proven correct and today the war in Iraq is as much of an interminable quagmire as it was when the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in January 2007.

Democratic political activist, columnist and author David Sirota has also strongly condemned this failure of the Democrats and “The Players,” DC’s professional partisan insiders such as MoveOn. On May 24, 2007 he wrote: “Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history. … That will make May 24, 2007 a dark day generations to come will look back on - a day when Democrats in Washington not only continued a war they promised to end, but happily went on record declaring that they believe in their hearts that government’s role is to ignore the will of the American people.”

This month, more than a year later, the Democratic controlled Congress once again gave the Bush Administration funding to continue the Iraq war well into 2009. David Sirota now has a new book out: The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. In it he expands on his criticism of the Democratic Party and its partisan, professional antiwar activists in the leadership of MoveOn.

Sirota writes in his new book (page 82), “The absence of a full-throated antiwar uprising is tragic at a time when the country appears more skeptical of knee-jerk militarism than ever before. … When this particular war does eventually end, both AAEI and MoveOn will undoubtedly claim that their narrow, ultra-partisan Beltway strategies were the key. They are, after all, experts at media promotion, and such a laughable yet easy-to-understand story line will be fairly simple to sell in the same era that has seen politicians and television pundits originally lie the country into the conflict. But what will be little discussed is the possibility that … their strategies prolonged the Iraq War at a time when Democrats had the constitutional power of the purse to stop it immediately.” Sirota concludes, “The Players may actually not mind the war continuing, because it preserves an effective political cudgel against Republicans. Actually ending the war, after all, means less fodder for the next television ad.”

I recently reached David Sirota via email in the middle of his grueling months-long book promotion tour. He was “exhausted and tired from the tour” and “hiding out” over the 4th of July weekend at the home of his in-laws in rural Indiana, but he responded quickly to my questions.

STAUBER: What inspired your commitment to populism? Have you read the classic book Populist Moment about the powerful 19th century movements that were eventually done in by the banks and Democratic Party co-optation? And if so, what lessons do you take from it for 21st century populist progressive movements?.

SIROTA: My commitment to populism was originally forged from working with people like Bernie Sanders and Dave Obey - two very different politicians who, on economic issues, are populist to the core. My career has been one centered around the concept of social justice - and that probably was forged even earlier than my politics. I grew up in a progressive family, among progressive friends, and with constant progressive influences in my life - from school to summer camp. In writing the book, I studied a lot of populist history, including The Populist Moment.

STAUBER: You are a mainstream Democratic partisan who is embracing populism and in your book you criticize MoveOn, Netroots mavens like Markos, and other Democratic leaders for their single-minded partisanship. What sort of response has your advocacy of movement building received in those Netroots quarters?

SIROTA: I would hardly say I am “a mainstream Democratic partisan” - ask any “mainstream Democratic partisan” who knows me if I’m one of them, and they’ll say the same. I guess I have been “a mainstream Democratic partisan” at a few past moments in my career - namely, when I was the spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. But that was a two-year stint (and indeed a proud one) out of an entire career that has spanned working for Congress’s only independent, for Brian Schweitzer (hardly a typical Democrat) and as a progressive journalist. So far, the response to the book - and to the critiques in it - has been nothing but positive. As I say in the book, the Netroots is not a monolith - and I think people in that community have seen my writing as respectful and fair.

STAUBER: When the Democrats realized that the “gift” of the Iraq war — as Mario Cuomo has sarcastically called it — had given them control of the House and Senate in 2006, Pelosi and other leaders obviously decided to play it safe, not investigate this Administration for its many possibly impeachable offenses, and not force an end to the war by refusing to fund it. Apparently they hope that Iraq will play out politically in a similar fashion in the 2008 election and provide a Democratic victory. Do you agree with this analysis and whether or not you do, how do you view the failure of the Democrats and major collaborators like MoveOn to force an end to the war in Iraq after the 2006 elections that were such an anti-war vote?

SIROTA: Yes, I think Democrats are hoping that they can do nothing substantively to end the war, but get the sizeable antiwar vote in the general election nonetheless. The strategy is a predictable reflection of an unfortunate reality: namely, the reality that there in fact is no strong antiwar accountability system that is willing to use the election as an instrument of pressure. Instead, there are groups like Moveon.org that have built up an enormous capacity for pressure, but are using that enormous capacity as an appendage of the Democratic Party, regardless of whether Democrats use their congressional power to end the war.

STAUBER: MoveOn is not a movement although it wants to be perceived as one. It is a brilliant and effective fundraising and marketing machine, but 95% or more of their so-called members ignore any particular email appeal. These 3.2 million people on the MoveOn email list are the object of marketing and fundraising campaigns, but they have absolutely no meaningful or democratic control over the decisions of organization, there is no accountability from the leadership to the MoveOn list members, and those of us on the list are unable to organize and communicate amongst ourselves within the list because it can’t be accessed by the grassroots at the local or state level. MoveOn, the Democracy Alliance, and the various liberal think tanks that have arisen to fight the Right are clearly a force able to raise millions of dollars for Democratic candidates and launch PR and messaging campaigns, but none of them are about empowering a populist grassroots uprising. Or am I missing something?

SIROTA: I believe Moveon.org, the Democracy Alliance and the array of left-leaning institutions that have arisen in recent years possess a vast amount of potential for a progressive movement - but it is only potential at this point. That’s for many reasons - one of the biggest being the utter lack of small-d democracy. You cannot build a movement if you are unwilling to give up power to the rank-and-file.

STAUBER: Barring a military or terrorist attack that the Republicans could exploit, it seems certain that the Democrats will be able to win a solid majority in both the House and Congress this fall given the twin energy and economic crises, and the continuing war in Iraq. If Barack Obama loses the White House, do you see the Democratic Congress in 2009 any more likely to stand up to John McCain than it has to Bush on issues like this long, continuing war in Iraq?

SIROTA: No

STAUBER: I have read Obama’s autobiography and he is certainly an impressive person and thinker. However, his policies and political stands to date are rather mundane. If not for his opposition to the war before he was in the Senate, I doubt he would have defeated Hillary Clinton for the nomination. More recently he seems to have come under even more controlled management by his political handlers and pollsters, almost desperately trying to make his image as mainstream as possible. As a Democratic activist and a populist, how would you advise Obama right now?

SIROTA: Obama’s latest flip-flops are not moves to the “center” or the “mainstream” - by the empirical public opinion data on major issues, his moves are ones away from the center and from the mainstream. That’s not surprising - he has surrounded himself by Washington insiders whose definition of “the center” is radically different from where the actual center of American public opinion is. If he continues down this path, he will hurt his chances of winning the election. I would advise him to remember where mainstream public opinion is on issues like trade, the war and civil liberties is - and instead of going to the center of a corrupt Washington, go there.

STAUBER: If and when populist forces build an email list as big as MoveOn’s — and most of that list was built by MoveOn’s posturing as an ardent anti-war organization, which it is not - - and harness it for real grassroots empowerment, that is when we might see some exciting political developments that combine the Netroots and grassroots for fundamental change. I’d love to see a MoveOn-type organization that would actually trust and empower the millions of people on its email list so that the decision making, organizing and money benefit the grassroots and grow power from there upward, one in which the structure at the top is accountable to and elected by the members. It’s hard to have a political democracy when we don’t even have democratic organizations or movements. I’ve talked with some of the leadership of MoveOn about this, but they have no intention to democratize and will remain a top-down marketing and fundraising organization. How do you view this challenge of building a powerful new populist movement serves a movement rather than serving a Party or a small elite of decision makers who fund and run liberal think tanks?

SIROTA: It’s a huge challenge and gets to a deep psychological issue. Are we willing to think in movement terms, or are we going to keep succumbing to partisan terms foisted on us by a shallow media? Breaking free of that latter propaganda is no easy task - it requires a real commitment to grassroots organizing and education. That’s unglamorous stuff - the kind of stuff that doesn’t get you media accolades in the 24-hour news cycle. But it’s the kind of stuff that builds real power. I would say that if the institutions of the much-vaunted new progressive infrastructure are interested only in being celebrated in the short-term, meaningless media cycle, then they should do what they are doing. But if they are interested in actually building a movement that wields real power, they need to radically change from autocratic institutions looking for applause from Big Money, Big Media and big politicians, to democratic institutions looking to make meaningful change. There’s a reason why the labor movement continues to be the most durable and powerful movement apparatus in human history: it is fundamentally a democratic movement. Trying to build a progressive movement on an autocratic model is a concept that may change the deck chairs on the Titanic - but ultimately a concept that leaves everyone on a sinking ship.

STAUBER: What is the best way for people to find out more about your writing, work and new book?

SIROTA: The best link for my website is www.davidsirota.com and the best link to buy the book is at Powells: http://www.powells.com/biblio/0307395634

John Stauber is the founder (1993) and current executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.