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.
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