Burnt Orange Report

Ideological Warfare

By Byron LaMasters

I'd say that there's about five or six blogs that I try and read on a daily basis. There's a lot more that I read every few days, or that I should read on a daily basis (and with the semester over, and having settled down finally for the summer, hopefully I'll increase that), but right now it's about five. As for Texas blogs, I read Off the Kuff and Greg's Opinion, and for national stuff I'll check out the Daily Kos, Political Wire and Atrios. So it interested me when Greg wrote a post yesterday entitled "Kos Idiocy Strikes Again" as a reaction to Kos's post yesterday that it is "Time for the DLC to Die". Greg also has a follow-up here.

The whole deal stems from the clash between Howard Dean and Al From, the head of the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council). Al From's protoge Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrats Network embraced the Dean campaign and the blogosphere while the DLC attacked Dean and his approach. For more background read this Joe Klien article.

I tend to take the middle ground on this one. I don't hesitate to call myself a liberal, even if some of my economic and foreign policy views range the Democratic spectrum (on social issues I'm an admitted unabashed liberal). Both Kos and the DLC have made their share of mistakes and misstatements, but I think that both are worthy contributors to the party. Obviously, Kos's comments about the deaths of the American contractors were inappropriate and ill-advised. I think he should have apologized more forcefully for the statement, and it's hard to be too critical of campaigns that disassociated themselves from him. Still, Kos has a large following, and has done tremendous work in organizing online progressive activists. As for the DLC, they ruthlessly hammered Howard Dean in the primary, and it worked. The DLC line was repeated throughout the media that Dean was angry, undisciplined and unelectable (just search "Howard Dean" on the DLC website). For this, many Democrats hate the DLC, blaming them for helping derail the Dean candidacy. On the other hand, if Dean couldn't stand up to his detractors within the Democratic Party, how the heck could he have stood up against the Republican attack machine? In retrospect, I'm glad that Dean isn't the nominee. I supported him, I gave him money, but in the end Dean failed to connect with middle America, which caused me to begin doubting his candidacy as early as last fall. John Kerry has united the Democratic Party - something that I'm not sure if Howard Dean could have done.

While Greg notes that the DLC is helping John Kerry with various aspects of his campaign, in some ways the DLC doesn't really get it either. Unlike Rothenberg's New Democrat Network (NDN), the DLC has refused to embrace the Netroots. I don't have a problem with moderate-to-centrist Democratic groups. We need them to win. But they need the Netroots to gain legitimacy among the Democratic base. Denouncing the Internet, like this anti-Dean diatribe last year only serve to alienate the DLC from the grassroots / netroots base:

The Internet may be giving angry, protest-oriented activists the rope they need to hang the party. The vaunted new medium for grassroots political organizing may in fact be contributing to the Iowafication of the nominating process, disproportionately magnifying the voices of the activist groups with the loudest, most combative, and populist voices.

The effect has been like two currents flowing together: Caucuses like Iowa's are briar patches where born and bred activists flourish. They are run according to complex procedures, and they exclude independents. The arrival of the Internet has provided a powerful set of tools for activists to get organized well in advance of the already front-loaded nominating season -- a period when, almost by definition, activists are the only ones focused on politics. Using the Internet, Dean has achieved a virtual mind meld with those activists by capitalizing on their visceral hatred of President Bush and disdain for moderate Democrats. When all is said and done, the new dynamic could lead Democrats right into the hands of President Bush, who wants nothing more than a liberal Democratic opponent.

Except the DLC was wrong. Iowa didn't "disproportionately magnify the voices of the activist groups with the loudest, most combative, and populist voice". Instead, as the DLC wrote post-Iowa, that it was a "vote for hope over anger":

Now the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party has spoken: Iowa was a landslide victory for hope over anger.

The word "stunning" hardly does service to the performance of Kerry and Edwards in Iowa. Up against all of Howard Dean's endorsements and organization, Kerry and Edwards each won more delegate shares (the arcane measurement used to judge success in Iowa) than Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt combined.

The Dean campaign proved two things. First, that the Internet can be used as an extraordinary organizing tool. It can raise millions of dollars from grassroots activists and can dilute the power of special interest money. It can also organize thousands of volunteers to get involved in their communities and neighborhoods. Second, the Dean campaign proved that the Internet alone won't win elections. Thousands of out of state volunteers and $50 Million won't win an election without a message the connects with average voters. So who gets it?

Simon Rosenberg. He's a moderate Democrat, and his New Democrats Network is a moderate Democratic organization, but he's willing to incorperate the new methods used by Kos, MoveOn.org and the Dean campaign as means to broadening the appeal of the party. His latest project is a comprehensive outreach program to Hispanics, which was profiled by kos earlier today.

Anyway, I'm hoping that we can put aside these ideological fights until after November 2nd. Greg is right, they still exist, but we had that debate during the primary season, and the debate will continue on November 3rd. Obviously, some will continue the debate (just ask Dennis Kucinich), but fortunately John Kerry is a unifying figure within the Democratic Party. He wasn't my first choice, Kos's first choice, Greg's first choice or the DLC's first choice, but he's a candidate that all of us can accept (If the nominee were Howard Dean or Joe Lieberman, uniting the party would be significantly more difficult, even if the primary was less about ideas and more about who has the best profile, temperment and campaign to defeat George Bush). Speaking of John Kerry, I finished the Boston Globe biography and I'll post a report in the next few days.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at May 25, 2004 07:58 PM | TrackBack