It’s “All About Winning"
In a seminal piece posted on The New Republic yesterday, Jonathan Chait explains how activist netrooters are “The Left’s New Machine.”
While the activist netrooters serve the progressive cause, they have learned their strategy, says Chait, not from the Left of the sixties--but from the Right.
For the Left, ideology was all. By contrast, “ideology is not the Netroots’ defining trait,” Chait writes. “What unites them is a desire to replicate the successes of the conservative movement dating back to the 1960s. . . ..” He quotes netrooter Markos Moulitsas Zúniga: “’They want to make me into the latest Jesse Jackson, but I'm not ideological at all: ‘I'm just all about winning.’"
Chait then zeroes in on the “the netroots' incessant use’of the words “‘meme’ or ‘frame’” to describe ideas: “It is a formulation that assumes that establishing the truth about an idea matters less than phrasing the idea in the most politically effective way and repeating it as much as possible.”
Consider the difference between an idea and a “meme.” Memes are notions that spread easily. Like mass hysteria. Or the belief that the war in Iraq is a war against terror. Or the belief that Islam is the enemy. Or the “domino theory” (which justified the war in Vietnam). Ideas encourage people to think. Memes, like ads, PR campaigns and some (but not all) religions, are meant to cut off thought.
Here is a classic right-wing meme: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” It sounds right. It clicks shut like a box. No more discussion needed.
Those who believe in memes believe that what is important is not so much the substance of an issue, but whether you can sell it. At that point, politics begins to sound more and more like P.R. It’s all about packaging.
Chait goes on to talk about “the slight whiff of anti-intellectualism in some quarters of the netroots.”
Here, I think that his qualification “in some quarters of the netroots” is crucial. Often, Chait seems to be generalizing about all netrooters. But as Chris Bowers points out here: there are netrooters who recognize that “in order to achieve politically positive results, it is necessary to engage in political strategy that is based on solid ideas. . . . . Misinformed, poorly researched, and ill-conceived strategy is not helpful in creating positive political outcome.”
Nevertheless, Chait may well be right that “the prevailing sentiment” among many netrooters is “that political discourse ought to be judged solely by its real-world effects. The netroots consider the notion of pursuing truth for its own sake nonsensical. Their interest in ideas, and facts, is purely instrumental.”
In other words, ideas are important only insofar as being identified with a particular idea will help a Democrat win. The question isn’t: Is the idea important? Do we believe in it as a priority—even if it is complicated? Instead, the question becomes: Is this an idea that could bring in 60% of the male blue-collar vote? Could it draw the majority of Office Park Dads? Would they like the sound of the idea, i.e., will they respond to—and repeat-- the ‘meme’? For a moment, political strategists begin to sound like the folks who market drugs for Big Pharma.
Of course, words do matter—how you frame an issue is essential. When I write about the need for health care reform, I don’t use the words “managed care”—even though I believe that, in fact, we need to manage care to avoid overtreatment. But in the nineties, the for-profit insurance industry sullied the phrase by managing costs, not care. So I have to find a different way to “frame” the concept. At the moment, I like “finding the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.”
But what I like about that frame is not the style, but the substance. It captures exactly what I think our health care system needs to provide. Moreover, I’m not trying to cut off thought: I expect my audience to respond with questions. For example, “Who decides what is the right treatment for the right patient . . . An insurance company?” And I anticipate that if I respond by describing the difference between Medicare and a for-profit insurer making the decision, most of my audience will understand what I am talking about.
The most benighted netrooters, on the other hand, truly believe, as Moulitsas puts it, that we live in a world created by “the Rush Limbaugh[s] and Ann Coulter[s] . . . We didn't create this political environment; the Republicans did,” he told ABC News last year. But he suggests that this is “the world we live in. And, for too long, Democrats tried to keep the high ground: ‘Oh well, we're not going to go down in the muck with them.’ And the bottom line is that they've been winning and we've been losing. ”
Ultimately, Chait is not as troubled by this reductive vision of the world as I am. If progressives want to win, Chait concludes, they need to learn to fight on the Right’s turf: “Conservatives have crowed for years that they have ‘won the war of ideas.’ More often than not, such boasts include a citation of Richard Weaver's famous dictum, ‘Ideas have consequences.’ A war of ideas, though, is not an intellectual process; it is a political process. As my colleague Leon Wieseltier has written, "[I]f you are chiefly interested in the consequences, then you are not chiefly interested in the ideas.’ The netroots, like most of the conservative movement, is interested in the consequences, not the ideas. The battle is being joined at last.”
From a purely pragmatic point of view, Chait has a point. It doesn’t matter how deeply you understand the issues; if you can’t win the political war, you will never be able to implement those ideas. But do you really believe that we have to make an either/or choice between being “chiefly interested” in winning or ideas?
.> The netroots consider the notion
> of pursuing truth for its own sake
> nonsensical. Their interest in ideas,
> and facts, is purely instrumental.”
Chiat just can't get past the idea that publication of thoughtful words is not a limited resource, as it was in every era up to the 1990s (the pamphlet era perhaps being a bit of an exception). First, I hardly think that DeLong, Ezra Klein, Mark Kleinman, Matthew Yglesias, and many others I could name are "not interested in facts" or thoughtful discussion; just the opposite.
But Chiat can't accept that there isn't a single "netroots" control room (presumably staffed by Mousalitis, Black, and Armstrong) **as there is at The New Republic**. He can't accept that good, solid analysis doesn't have to be paid for (and run through the filter) of Martin Peretz before being published.
The telling point to me is that very few of the traditional media writers such as Chiat have been successful at blogging: they just can't handle the factchecking and detailed comments that they receive from the audience (their customers) - they think it is unseemly for the lesssers to talk back to their betters.
Well, the _really_ telling point to me is TNR's circulation figures over the last 10 and last 5 years, but that is another story.
sPh
May 2, 2007 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find it interesting that the cafe and TNR are featuring reactions to the Chait piece from people who have nothing to do with the netroots -- and the Atlantic's Matt Yglesias and former MSNBC on-line columnist Eric Alterman are the "official" designated reactors for TNR itself
.....while someone with an actual connection to "the netroots" (CRCS) is relegated to a sidebar.
Quite frankly, I don't need to be told by people whose livelihoods are threatened by independent bloggers what the "netroots" mean, and what "Chait got wrong".
May 2, 2007 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
We'd be happy to publish anything any person you would like to "officially" designate your netroots spokesman. In fact, feel free to hit up the reader blog, I'll promote it to the front page.
May 2, 2007 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Doesn't Chait also write for the L.A. Times?
May 2, 2007 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is absolutely no reason for progressives to fear so-called "activist netrooters." They are our meme-spreading AM radio and Fox News. Spreading those memes is only a small piece of the puzzle, however.
The memes won't necessarily end up having all that much to do with day-to-day governing, for instance, for the Democrats any more than they did for the GOP while they controlled Congress and for the Bush/Cheney Administration. They won't translate directly into public policy or legislation.
Most Americans are frankly not all that interested in policy details. That doesn't mean they aren't interested in politics or don't vote, however, and we need a way to successfully communicate with them. This may come as a surprise, but it's never going to be by releasing a really convincing policy tome or white paper.
There will still be plenty of places for thoughtful discussion and plenty of progressive bloggers doing other things. I seen some good names already listed in these comments.
May 2, 2007 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
.....while someone with an actual connection to "the netroots" (CRCS) is relegated to a sidebar.
In defense of the Cafe, my post was prominently displayed yesterday afternoon, featured alone at the top of the page.
This (the relegation) is just a function of how things flow on the front page...
Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...
May 2, 2007 9:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
The most benighted netrooters, on the other hand, truly believe, as Moulitsas puts it, that we live in a world created by “the Rush Limbaugh[s] and Ann Coulter[s] . . . We didn't create this political environment; the Republicans did,” he told ABC News last year. But he suggests that this is “the world we live in. And, for too long, Democrats tried to keep the high ground: ‘Oh well, we're not going to go down in the muck with them.’ And the bottom line is that they've been winning and we've been losing. ”
Do you think this is not true? Is that not exactly what happened? The choice is between keeping the "high ground" and watching this country die around us or fight. You're right that not all sites work on ideas, though of course DailyKos HAS produced some very interesting policy papers.
But think about it, Maggie Mahar, YOU ARE THE NETROOTS IDEA PEOPLE. You and Ezra Klein writing on healthcare--your work is the base to build the new healthcare plan, others for other topics. Kos and Bowers (since MyDD IS the site most dedicated to winning the polls) don't need to do that since YOU are doing it.
Also, question to Chait: What was his function while he was frothing his anti-Dean hysteria?
May 2, 2007 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess my reaction to this post is: If ya haven't noticed, Dems and the Left have gotten their asses kicked lately...
I almost get the sense there's this kind of denial that runs through this piece, that somehow politics is actually about Ideas and High Roads.
Kos is EXACTLY right when he says today's political climate was created by Rush Limbaugh. We may not like it, but it's true. Politics today is a mediated event, a spectacle of who can say the better thing in the better way. It's all about selling your message, and selling yourself.
We may not like it, but it's true.
What the netroots have done is twofold. They've created, as Chait points out, an alternative to the (incredibly well-built, well-funded, very successful) right wing message machine. It's propaganda, but "good" propaganda.
It's why Joe Klein no longer reflexively writes his columns, but now thinks first.
Second, the blogs have given us little people a voice. A chance to participate in our democracy. A way to debate, and test ideas, and learn a thing or two in the process. Yes, there are trolls. Yes, there is a danger of echo-chambering. Yes, some people still do not have access. But, on the whole, this is all a good thing.
If we in the netroots have taken back even a small part of our democracy, if we've taken some of the power and credibility and influence of the punditry class and the lazy journalists and the Ann Coulters of the world, then I'd say, we've done ourselves a favor. We've helped put the small "d" back into democracy.
Pundits and journalists and political consultants may not like it, but it's true.
Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...
May 2, 2007 9:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I tend to define "netroots" as an Internet enabled spontaneous uprising among progressive type folk with a goal of seizing back the steering wheel of political dialogue from the incestuous professional pundit class described so well by Eric Alterman in his 1994 book "Sound and Fury."
May 2, 2007 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Holy Mackerel!
Just finished reading the Chait piece at TNR.
Like watching a blind man grope an elephant.
No matter he can't make it on a blog, he's inability to clearly grasp reality has clearly stunted his ability to contribute to rational discourse.
Take this for example, "The netroots consider the notion of pursuing truth for its own sake nonsensical. Their interest in ideas, and facts, is purely instrumental.”
What he fails to grasp is that the netroots consider the notion of pursuing politics for its own sake nonsensical. Their interest in politics is purely instrumental.
RATIONAL discourse is the coin of the realm on Kos, TPM, Balkinization, DeLong and the like.
And yes there are litmus tests for gaining influence in the blogosphere. However, unlike Republican litmus tests, these are based on conventional wisdom and middleclass common sense.
Universal Healthcare. Let's talk about it.
Get out of Iraq. Let' talk about it.
Bush sucks. What are we going to do about it.
You can take the contrary position on these questions, but you better be prepared to defend them. Common sense says you can't.
He completely misses the truly revolutionizing effect blogs have had. Real-time comment with professors. Debunking propoganda.
Kos and the like are successful because they demand accurate information. Not spin. They mock framing and memes because that's what the right uses. Patriot Act, Clean Skies Act, they are Orwellian and must be called on it. The RW drives this discussion.
The MSM, like Joe Klein, are astonished to find themselves challenged and the very integrity of their work questioned. Honorable men, like Joe, can recognize it and begin re-evaluating a life time of lap dog habits.
This revolution of technology finally gives voice to a silent majority devoted to common sense and good governance as core principles and yes those principles are litmus tests.
We need litmus tests because the RW has adopted their infamous "date rape" approach to bi-partisanship. a litmus test is required to make sure that the potential bipartisanship is genuine.
Implicit in this entire piece is that the Kos is to the left of the American people. I don't think so. He is the mainstream and that is the source of his power.
Chait's inability to see these very simple truths casts doubt on all his conclusions.
So long as TNR and the DLC persist in living in a fantasy world, they will continue to be keel hauled by the goodship blogoshpere.
May 2, 2007 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that Chait's wrong about the whiff of anti-intellectualism. Intellectual debate is pretty highly prized on sites like this.
It's more a whiff of intellectual populism. A lot of us have frankly noticed that we don't need advanced degrees in political science, social science, journalism or whatever in order to have and express opinions that would stand up to scrutiny by the best think tank fellows and MSM columnists. We think about the issues and then write about them in a forum where we know we're going to be confronted and corrected by our fellow bloggers and we try to live up to that standard, while having fun as well.
Three years ago people were debating whether or not Wikipedia is a good thing. Now, most of the people who debated that with me are using it. It has its flaws, but it's a good source of information, written by a lot of regular people.
Once people realized, in a public forum, that they're musings about the rights and wrongs of society are just as good as what the pros put out they started wondering "why them and not me?" It's a really good question.
You see it here on TPMCafe all of the time. The membership doesn't really treat the contributors has higher up on the food chain than the commenters. Some contributors have come here, refused to engage with the commenters and basically failed during their time here. What we're seeing is that people who do this kind of thing are getting bolder. They're following Joe Lieberman around with cameras and floats and asking him questions. They've realized that if you send a letter to Time calling Joe Klein a wanker that they won't print it, so they're publishing it themselves.
Basically, we no longer view a senator, columnist, political appointtee or think tank fellow as authority figures. That's why everyone in DC is fretting about "civility in politics." What they really mean is that the rabble is getting out of line.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 2, 2007 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chait describes a number of problems with the netroots, more often than not with some measure of accuracy. Yet he doesn't, I think, really get at the heart of the problem.
If I had to characterize the worst aspect of liberal netroots, it would be their tendency to induce a pernicious kind of groupthink. Now, I don't think that that should be very surprising. The netroots by definition represent a group, and they are evaluating and espousing ideas, and group consensus is a natural byproduct of the feedback mechanism. In many ways this is a good thing, but it would be foolish to imagine that it inclines ONLY toward the positive.
I think that this groupthink constitutes the overarching defect in the operation of the netroots -- sometimes undermining the very political effectiveness that it regards as its raison d'etre.
I certainly agree with most bloggers that the MSM often errs very badly by pretending that there are always two sides to any story when often there is only one. But bloggers really do seem to be constitutionally incapable of looking at any issue from more than one point of view. In fact, they virtually always rise as one to enforce the one "correct" approach to any issue. Dissenters, even with well established liberal credentials, are treated as trolls or worse.
One pointed example is the Edwards blogger fiasco. Anyone with a particle of common sense knew that those bloggers had to go because of the nature of their writings. Yet virtually the entire left blogosphere united to force Edwards to keep those bloggers on. God only knows how much well deserved damage this single act wrought on the reputation of the blogosphere in larger political circles. Basically, the blogosphere was insisting that, under penalty of blogosphere repudiation, Edwards keep on staff individuals whose presence would actively harm Edwards' electoral prospects. The episode was remarkable in how it revealed the degree of immature, blind, self- and other- destructive groupthink of which the blogosphere can be capable.
May 2, 2007 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I understand that there is this blogger (Josh Michele?) who has this talkingpointsletter blog (I think that's the name of it) who might provide some insight.
See this Josh guy has been around almost since day one, and has engaged in a brand of netroots activism that doesn't fit into Chait's bogus "the netroots want to reproduce the (top-down) right wing noise machine model". Josh can explain how the netroots see ideas and information and activism (and therefore power) flowing from the ground up --and how Chait is simply a beltway poseur whose job is threatened by the democratization of opinion through the netroots. (I understand this Josh guy is actually pretty 'beltway' himself, so he probably won't use the term 'beltway poseur').
Anyway I hope you can find this guy Josh, because he's played a key role in the development of the 'netroots' infrastructure...and he might have something of interest to say about it.
May 2, 2007 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps there is a reasonable worry that if the left is successful at a meme-heavy campaign it will forget to think and govern competently. I'm not persuaded of that, but it's a good question to keep nearby.
But why this concern over Democratic intellectual honesty, or lack of? After the decades of mind-numbing slogans from the right, someone thinks Dems are shallow? (OK, we showed Goldwater and a mushroom cloud.) Since when is sloganeering a new evil?
May 2, 2007 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
That whole thing blew over, but your post neglects to mention that the whole sad affair was whipped up by that noxious demagogue Bill O'Donnasomething...
It was not clear that they had to go.
They left because of death threats they received from RW wackjobs who had tracked down their home addresses.
However, as far as I can tell, the "netroots" and John made peace because they share a similar vision of America.
May 2, 2007 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've only tangentially looked into this little so-called "debate" going on with this Chait fellow. I don't find it worthy of serious attention. It simply is false. It presents a false dichotomy: either your content is pure or it is merely a meme. How about this: package your ideological content in powerful memes and have the best of both worlds. End of discussion.
The implication is that once the left learns to package its ideas in such a way that they have maximum impact on people, well then the idea is somewhat tainted.
I do not find a poverty of controversy within the netroots. It is a lively intellectual environment.
It is true however of all congregation of people that they will instinctively try to establish a norm which has the potential of quashing the "wonderful interplay of uncensored ideas" that we should all value dearly.
May 2, 2007 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
your post neglects to mention that the whole sad affair was whipped up by that noxious demagogue Bill O'Donnasomething...It was not clear that they had to go.
You're still not getting it.
Yes, a rightwing nutjob was leading the charge against the bloggers.
But, yes, they absolutely had to go because of what they wrote. This is where the particle of common sense is absolutely required.
What can I say? You exemplify my case -- you can't see things other than in the way the left blogosphere has dictated you must.
May 2, 2007 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Consider the difference between an idea and a “meme.” Memes are notions that spread easily. Like mass hysteria."
Passivity is at the heart of the theory of "memes."
It would be nice is there was finally a backlash against the vulgar instrumentalism of Dawkins et al. The intellectual neatnicks of the Chicago school of economics and the Darwinian Fundamentalist promulgators of "Bright-ness" have all too much in common with each other, and not much to do with either the left of with democracy.
The netroots are adversarial because the press's model has become one of collaboration, which itself has become the rule for technocratic intellectual life: the rule of experts takes precedence over the rule of the people and of law. The logic of a courtroom isn't collaboration and reason but formalized adversarialism; and It's sloppy as hell.
I'd rather have a thousand irresponsible newpapermen than one morally serious journalist.
May 2, 2007 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
sphealey--In fairness to Chait, I want to make it clear that he does draw a clear distinction between "netrooters" and other "liberal bloggers" who are more interested in ideas:
"Outsiders often use the terms "net-roots" and "liberal bloggers" interchangeably, but they aren't exactly the same thing. The netroots are a subset of the liberal blogs, constituting those blogs that are directly involved in political activism, often urging their readers to volunteer for, or donate money to, Democratic candidates. Other liberal bloggers, sometimes called the "wonkosphere," advocate liberal ideas but do not directly involve themselves in politics. Most of the popular sites in the wonkosphere are maintained by academics or (generally) young liberal journalists, such as former American Prospect staffer Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo or Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum. The quality of these blogs varies immensely, with the best ones offering a level of reporting and analysis far better than typical mainstream media fare. While journalistic liberal bloggers are not directly part of the netroots, the two groups generally regard one another as allies and criticize one another tepidly if at all."
You really should read Chait's piece . . .
As to the idea that we live in a world created by Rush Limbaugh, etc., and that Dems will always get their asses kicked unless they get down and fight Conservatives on their own turf . . .
I can see how you might think that if your political memory extends back only as far as 1990 or '95. But the fact is that what has happened since you as an individual came of age does not define political history--or how politics works.
In the past, the Left has won on issues and ideas. The Left of the sixties was very concerned with ideas and did succeed in making advances on many fronts: women's rights, the rights of minorities, the poor (passing Medicare and Medicaid), school integration, etc. And we won elections. Finally unlike the many liberals who ignored the facts about Iraq and bought the meme (weapons of mass destruction) we realized, from the beginning, that the war in Vietnam was being fought by and for the Halliburton's of the time.
We also elected Jimmy Carter—the best ex-President we have ever had.
Finally, when Bill Clinton was first elected, Democrats were still running on--and winning on--issues. (As a “New Democrat” Clinton was not as progressive as the Left of the sixties, but compared to Bush Sr., he was a huge improvement and a clear win for Democrats. It was only when Newt Gingrich came along that today's Conservatives came to power. That was just 13 years ago, and does not define what has happened, or will happen for all time—even if it does define what has happened in your (conscious) lifetime.
May 2, 2007 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
But, yes, they absolutely had to go because of what they wrote. This is where the particle of common sense is absolutely required.
I don't think it's non-common sensical to think that people should have a right to free speech.
To me, the easy and lazy way out is to fire people when someone starts to yell. It takes more courage to make a stand for free speech.
And, as pointed out above, they didn't have to go because of what they wrote, but because they were receiving death threats. From, I can only assume, very religious people...
Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...
May 2, 2007 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chait has a blind spot that ruins an otherwise useful piece.
"Two deep, organic bonds hold together the netroots."
No there is a third. The netroots are overwhelmingly against Bush's War.
"This dream inevitably brings the netroots into conflict with many liberal political commentators, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and other outposts of the center left. The traditional interpretation of this feud is as a pure ideological spat between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party--and it's true that there's a strong ideological component to the spat."
It is not left and right, it is anti-war vs pro-war, or worse war enablers who won't come out openly against the war because they are politically timid.
" While both the DLC and tnr supported the Iraq war, both stridently opposed almost every other element of the Bush agenda. The overwhelming majority of DLC missives and tnr articles are perfectly congenial to mainstream liberalism and perfectly hostile to the Republican Party of George W. Bush. But these sorts of subtleties generally escape the Manichean analysis that pervades the netroots.."
Chait says this like it should be a get out of jail free card. In point of fact TNR launched and continues to launch continual attacks on the motives of the anti-war Left. Marty Peretz has gotten pretty close to calling me and people like me either traitors or deluded. And then his employees wonder why we don't extend out our hand in friendship, well it is because we are using that hand to wipe Marty's spit out of our eye.
The netroots taken as a whole recognize a broad range of opinion on just about everything. It only gets Manichean about the war. Chait feels this is just as issue among other issues, something about which we can agree to disagree whereas I think most of the netroots regards it as non-negotiable.
The DLC/TNR folks from the netroots perspective were not only wrong on the war but on the politics of war. They constantly maintained that forthright opposition to Bush was simply a losing strategy, that people wouldn't vote for angry candidates. Well from the net root perspective if you were not angry you just were not paying attention.
Failure to understand this point is what fatally weakens the piece and distorts Chaits overall analysis.
May 2, 2007 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've read Chait's article three times now, and with each reading it becomes more nonsensical and self -contradictory. It is a mish-mash of triteness and superficiality cloaked in a feigned objectivity and intellectual weightiness. In other words, it's all dressed up with no place to go.
It is based on the most preposterous premise - that the netroots is some kind of primitive, atavistic machine like thing, reflexively swatting at anything in its way, bereft of concept, principle and ideas, although, for some strange reason, tolerant of different ideologies and non-conformists, unless that non-conformist happens to be "principled Joe Lieberman", a meme if ever there was one.
Chait is so confused by the netroots that he seems to overlook the very obvious fact that the netroots supported Ned Lamont and not Joe Lieberman because Ned Lamont was the democratic candidate - Joe Lieberman was not. He seems to forget that democrats have the right to support not only the candidate of their choice in the primary, but the democratic candidate who actually won the primary. (If Joe Lieberman had been "principled" he would have accepted the democrats' choice in the election.) Why democrats should be obligated to support a candidate not of their party is beyond comprehension - why should the netroots support an independent anymore than they would offer support to the republican candidate? Afterall, we're not Broderites, incapable of understanding the difference between bi-partisanship and non-partisanship.
This conceit of Chait's, that he's discovered that there are no "ideas" behind netroot activism borders on the lunatic. It is as silly as the notion of "concept art" - as opposed to what, art that has no concept behind it? Netroot activism is itself an idea - the idea that the political process can be changed to include once again, the people, an idea that is so surprising to Chait, that he simply cannot comprehend it as being anything but dangerous and reactionary to all that Chait holds sacred - that a certain class of people in this country are better suited to running it. They have "ideas", activists are reflexive, they not only do not have "ideas", they cannot possibly understand them.
The most telling paragraph in Chait's article is the paragraph that equates the Cindy Sheehan story with the Swift Boat story. That Chait even finds them alike, is demonstrative of his confusion between truth and objectivity. The stories aren't weighted, they're not even comparable - Cindy Sheehan's story, whether you agree with her politics or not, is based on a truthful incident - her son was killed in Iraq, the Swift Boat story wasn't truthful, and yet Chait seems to think that by "harping" on the Cindy Sheehan story, the goal of netroot activists was to force the press corp to give them "equal time." That's Chait's "idea" of objectivity.
Is it any wonder why netroot activists are contemptuous of TNR? If they can't understand even the simple concept that there is a difference between truth and objectivity, they can never understand the netroot activists and the ideas and principles that motivate them.
May 2, 2007 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Without putting too fine a point on it it would seem that Joe McGinniss' "The Selling of the President" about Nixon's campaign gave rise to the concept of the meme. Nixon, Reagan and other Republicans brought admen and pr-men into not just their campaigns but the White House as well. This all promoted the idea that everythign was selling.
This was further promotedby Left's view that whether it was the Vietnam or Civil Right that they were on the moral side and the Republicans were not. That the only explanation for Republican electoral victories were as a result of the fooling of the American people. The fact of being out of touch with the American People, contempt for them and sanctimony were ignored.
It is hard to know what the meaning of the netroots really will be. This moment coincides with the worst President in our history being both a Republican, a conservative and in maany ways as ideological as the netroots. Bush has presided over an endless array of failure and incompetence. Americans don't like losing or failure.
The Democrats are trying to tap dance around being much tougher than ever before and not being their usual creampuffs and at the same time not be such slaves to the netroots and thus reflecting the anti-Americanism so prevelent on the non-Liberal Left.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
May 2, 2007 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
First, Maggie, THANK YOU for responding. It's to your credit -- sometimes we Cafe bloggers feel like we're shouting into the wind on these posts...
I can see how you might think that if your political memory extends back only as far as 1990 or '95. But the fact is that what has happened since you as an individual came of age does not define political history--or how politics works.
Sorry. My memory indeed goes farther back than Clinton...
(In fact, why simply assume I'm some 20 year old kid? Kind of displaying the same kind of ignorance about the culture of blogging here as Chait does in his piece. Most bloggers are probably over 40...Although, admittedly, I do have a youthful charm about me...) :-)
I guess we just disagree, but I argue that politics today is not the politics of the 60s, or even the 90s. The landscape has changed, precisely around media. The news media, the medium of the blog, television...our politics today is inseparable from the media fabric within which we live.
Much different from the 60s, where activists printed up newsletters and handed them out.
To an extent, Reagan changed this. He brought a superficiality to politics, more style than substance. And people realized it worked. His successor, in that respect, was Bill Clinton. What Clinton brought to politics was not so much issues, but charm and tele-presence.
Clinton felt our pain, and he won because of it.
(A third party in the race also helped...)
I'm sure you and I agree on so much more than we disagree on. As I said, my belief is the increased, really, inseparable role that media plays -- and all the societal, cultural, and political consequences as a result -- are much more significant than you're giving credit here.
It's not that Ideas aren't important anymore. It's just that they're always one Swift Boat attack away from not mattering.
Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...
May 2, 2007 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
"In fairness to Chait?" Netroot activism is not only an idea, it is an idea that has been implemented to effect change.
Can you not see that Chait is wrong? He takes one remark, by one activist and conflates it to define and entire movement. Yes, netroot activists want to win - they want to win because they HAVE ideas, not because they don't.
Chait's argument is based on the example of the netroots support of Ned Lamont, instead of Joe Lieberman, a false argument considering the fact that Joe Lieberman wasn't the democratic candidate, a fact that Chait conveniently forgets to mention.
Chait's article is non diluted nonsense and an ill-disguised attempt at rehabilitating TNR - "see, we're really the idea people, and you netroot activists are the labourers who punch a time clock for the democratic machine."
Am I the only one who sees this as absolute bullshit? I can't be.
May 2, 2007 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
They practice the techniques they appear to be condeming while projecting their use onto their adversaries. It is a classic propaganda ploy.
May 2, 2007 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Marty Peretz weren't just a money launderer for the Pentagon.
Such things have happened before.
May 2, 2007 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody in the mainstream punditry will ever admit this but the netroots support of Lamont was successful. Lamont won the primary and won the majority of Democratic votes in the general election.
To say that the netroots lost in Connecticut holds them to an impossible standard -- one in which they're expected not just to influence Democrats but the Republican voters who overwhelmingly supported Lieberman.
Nobody ever expects the DLC to have sway over Republicans. Why should the netroots be held to that standard?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 2, 2007 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maggie Mahar's post is interesting, but I think she does a disservice to both Chait and various online posters, whether we wish to call them a movement or not, to pull out his aside on memes in this way. First, it hardly seems that large a preoccupation of either Chait or those online. Second, examining press coverage is a legitimate area of discussion. Like it or not, spin and how it goes down is big part of the world.
Third, talking about framing, as Ms. Mahar herself says, is not always anthithetical to intellectual argument, because words sometimes have weight. I hear a little argument here over slogans, but only a tiny minority of threads attempting to create new ones per se apart from discussions of policy. Wasn't a huge fraction of the foreign policy here complaints about the "concert of democracies" without putting forth an opposition slogan? Again, it's hardly a mirror image of Karl Rove's chamber.
Finally, there is naturally some debate about politics apart from goals, but that can often assume goals, and anyhow people I know in the real world always talk politics. For that matter, isn't one of the common complaints against the mainstream media, as well as a factor in explaining why its vulnerable to spin and to faux even-handedness, that it's all horse race all the time? I'd have said that here you more often hear complaints about why a candidate's success is covered, while a major speech was not.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
May 2, 2007 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
.> Sorry. My memory indeed goes farther
> back than Clinton...
Indeed.
sPh
May 2, 2007 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
You raise excellent points. I wouldn't dismiss "civility in politics" out of hand, but rather try to define it or observe there are several ideas in that wink wink nudge nudge meme.
As best as I can remember, I first started hearing the "civility in politics" argument not so much with anything Internet-related, but with respect to Gingrich and what might be called, to borrow from what they term, in Richmond society, the Late Unpleasantness Between the States, the "Radical Republicans". IIRC, there were even some bipartisan Congressional retreats then to try to reintroduce civility.
As an aside, the term would have applied nicely to the downing of Tail Gunner Joe, but was not used then.
There is, however, a need for a certain civility at a blog, if there is to be discussion at a level less trivial than AM talk radio. Now, for many years, when someone says "I think you are an SOB," I surprise them by answering "yes, that's probably true."
"No, I meant that you probably think I'm an SOB. I can't think of why you'd lie to me about that. Your misperception, however, does not put a female dog into my lineage."
Calling people SOBs or more classic political cliches does not encourage useful exchange of ideas.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 2, 2007 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is a difference between one speaking as an individual, and one apparently speaking ex officio when it comes to free speech. If Edwards doesn't disavow statements by staff, not necessarily chastising them but making clear that something is not his position, it is not unreasonable to assume he supports the statement.
In a way, it's unfortunate, but it's been the wiser presidents that will promptly fire a staffer for reasons of image, to say nothing of potential criminality. If, in the short term after the Watergate breakin, Nixon had fired Colson and Haldeman, and probably Ehrlichman a bit later, he might have nipped the situation in the bud.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 2, 2007 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
A tad condescending, isn't it?
May 2, 2007 12:38 PM | Repl