I really enjoyed Chris Hayes and his article about Moveon. It's useful to think about where that group - which really has seeded nearly all progressive non-blogging internet activism - is going and what lessons their strategy has in store. In general, I see Moveon as one emergent piece in an ecosystem of activism on the 'Open' Left, which is distinguished from the New Left world by its embrace of open systems as organizing vehicles. As such, it's a mistake to see the group as a single issue group that can execute a strategy with a big swinging email list. Moveon is constrained, fundamentally, by what their members click on, and by the demands of relative transparency. It is also constrained by a legacy situation known as 'America'.

Moveon's members have been told for thirty years that Democrats are anti-military, that Democrat = progressive, that our politicians are good people, that NPR is a good media outlet, that Republicans are the problem, that criticism of Democrats from the left is why Democrats lose, that Karl Rove is the master of the universe, and that Democrats losing is the biggest problem in the whole world. That's all nonsense, but it is hard to unlearn lessons that have been pounded into your skull by witnessing Walter Mondale get the crap kicked out of him. Ergo, Moveon is organizing a very risk-averse group of activists. That's a legacy problem that critics of Moveon don't have to deal with and don't see. Critics can turn on a dime, Moveon has to listen to 3 million middle-aged liberal white people before they do so, and their members often don't like it when Moveon goes out on a limb in the wrong direction.

Keep that in mind.

One other problem with understanding Moveon is that there is no measurement system in politics for success. Is it a success of Moveon that every House and Senate campaign in the country is using sophisticated email tools because of organizers who, when you trace back, learned their craft from Zack Exley who was dispatched by the Moveon people to the Dean and Kerry campaigns? I think so. But Moveon isn't going to get the credit, because the group built power for other people. Is stopping Social Security privatization a success for Moveon, or Talkingpointsmemo, or Nancy Pelosi? What about John Bolton, who is not the UN ambassador causing trouble for us with Iran partially because of the work Moveon did? In a sense, that's what makes answering following questions from Chris Hayes so hard:

The model of internet activism they pioneered has been widely adopted, plowing the ground the Obama campaign has so fruitfully harvested. But there appears to be diminishing returns, as its rate of growth has slowed considerably, and politicians learn to ignore mass petitions.

Where's the evidence that these petitions 'worked' in the first place? Clinton was impeached, America went to war in Iraq, Medicare Part D went through, war funding went through in 2007, etc. Conversely, where's the evidence they aren't working now? The FCC just voted to enforce net neutrality regulations against Comcast, which is partially as a result of the pressure Moveon put on Congress and individual commissioners over the last few years. And Obama has a strong internet freedom platform, and there's no way he would have adopted that platform if Moveon had not helped make it mainstream through their organizing work over the past few years.

In other words, the questions about effectiveness are really hard to measure. Certainly, petitions are boring, but ineffectual? Unclear. My guess is that sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. Chris's next question is even more interesting.

How does MoveOn function in relationship to a possible Obama administration? They endorsed him in the primary and gave some pushback over his FISA heresy, but its unclear just how much fear they strike in the hearts of Democratic politicians. MoveOn's critics (some of whom are joining in discussion) charge that MoveOn has grown too cozy with the Democratic party and been insufficiently confrontational, particularly on the issue of funding the war.

Moveon's leadership is not Moveon's membership, and for whatever reason, Moveon's members love and trust Obama, which of course constrains what the leadership of the group can and will do. Now, I have no idea why base Democrats believe their political leaders, but they do. That's why there are so few primary challenges in general, and why not one single Democrat in the House criticized Steny Hoyer for pushing the horrific FISA bill through. I don't get it, but it's obvious that something in the water white liberals have been drinking for thirty years has made them extremely conflict-averse and prone to worshiping a well-branded candidate whose primary (though not only) political attribute is that when compared to George W. Bush he is not a psychotic criminal. That's probably a temporary state of mind, though, as when Bush goes away the world will look very different.

Gradually, or perhaps suddenly, these members will have their expectations raised, and Moveon will have more flexibility to oppose Obama when necessary. That's a good thing. The imperial Presidency and the surveillance state needs to go away, even if our newest imperial President will have really cool internet tools to allow you to snitch on your neighbors to the NSA using your own webpage on MyBarackObama. As the brush from the Bush Presidency is metaphorically cleared, the white liberal base of Moveon is going to be more open to putting pressure on Democratic leaders to push liberal policies. The 'we must defeat Republicans or else they will give everything to right-wing corporate looters' will give way to 'how did the right-wing corporate looters buy our party?' And that's going to change things, as we saw with Donna Edwards in 2008 and Joe Lieberman in 2006. I was there, I saw what happened, and Moveon was a big factor in those races. I'm expecting those kinds of pressure tactics to increase in 2010, 2012, or beyond, as the isolated narratives around those candidates become more generalized in the wake of possible Democratic governance failures.

You might ask why I'm so dismissive of criticism of Moveon. It's not that I think they do everything well, it's mostly because I think the Moveon brand is an unfair target, and not just for the right. On a very basic level, they do stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You have to understand though that most people in progressive politics in DC don't do very much (when was the last time you heard anything from the progressive caucus, which if you want to get all technical, does actually exist), and the bitching and moaning about Moveon is coming from people that know there is now competition. For instance, let's take Moveon's 'worst' moment, the Betray Us ad. In a larger context, let's remember that David Petraeus going outside the chain of command to the political sector to secure a promotion and then promoting war policies in uniform is extraordinarily threatening to the American republic. Yet there was not a peep of a response from any Democrat or progressive group. Moveon might have screwed up their ad (though I don't know that they screwed up the politics or the message), but they at least had the guts to do something. Did anyone else? Were there hearings on the politicization of the military? No. They just let this political hack in uniform trash the nonpartisan honor code of the military, in silence. And who was there when certain people in the Obama camp threw Wes Clark under the bus? Moveon, while Lanny Davis and the rest of the wankers knashed their teeth on TV about this progressive who has won a war with zero American casualties and nearly died in Vietnam as part of his honor laden 34 year old service record. Trash this group if you want, but if you do, make sure you're never in the cross-hairs of the media and right-wing smear machines, because Moveon is one of the few allies you'll have.

In other words, because of their independence and track record of experimentation, Moveon is going to be scorned by a lot of liberalish professional advocates, who sense the competition, as elitists who don't get their hands dirty, keyboard monkeys that live in their parents basement, anti-American, pick your right-wing insult. Or they'll be scorned as having insufficient street cred because, well, it's easy to pick on white liberals (we're used to it), and by and large the professional advocacy left in DC hasn't done all that much in the last thirty years except lose and whine about it in the New Republic or dress up in self-righteous pink outfits and get thrown out of public events. That's weird, too, because pink isn't usually a self-righteous color.

The final reason I think critics of Moveon often miss the boat is because success in politics comes from coalition-building, and Moveon has no choice but to form coalitions with DC groups that aren't very good at wielding power. Most DC groups in progressive politics - with the significant exception of labor, parts of ACORN, some direct mail groups and the netroots - are funded by billionaires and extraordinarily cautious foundations, which has screwed up the left for years. And unfortunately on the left, there is no one else out there with significant numbers with any degree of pragmatic success in political organizing. Look at the pathetic response the environmental movement has to drilling (although to be fair to the environmental groups, they've only had thirty years to prepare for the energy crisis). Can you really expect coalitions to be effective when you have to work with groups who consider Fred Krupp, the head of the corrupt Environmental Defense, and a strong drilling proponent to be part of the 'environmental community'? It's hard enough to get anything done in politics. (update: Krupp denies he was calling for more drilling)

In other words, Moveon is just 3 million mostly white liberals organized in a fairly top-down manner with strong listening capacity, trying to figure out how to change the world. And let's remember, the world is a big place. As more people pick up the tools and tactics Moveon has discovered, the world will begin to move in our direction. Th ecosystem of internet activism is already filling in, with Brave New Films, Color of Change, California's Courage Campaign, the blogs, and any number of other groups emerging that are more laterally focused. Group formation only going to accelerate and organizational models are going to mutate, and I expect Moveon to be there to help as a bedrock platform of activism, as it has been for the last ten years.

And for those of you who don't like Moveon, I'll pander. Moveon, you're a bunch of sellouts! Petitions are dumb!