Thanks for your commentary. There's much to criticize about the old left and new left but at least I can get my mind around some of the basics they stood for. My grandparent's generation fought for the survival of the middle class. My parent's generation fought for the expansion of the middle class. My generation fought for the inclusion of those left out of the middle class.

What is the younger generation going to fight for? What are their ideals? Where is their passion? If I could get my mind around that, I'd not only have patience for their frustration with my generation, I'd cheer them on.

Seattle was bullshit, Max. It's the prime example of why street demonstrations are stupid. A bunch of whiny kids cause a bunch of trouble and don't help their pet causes in the least.

Causing riots and getting arrested don't help. They just don't. Civil disobedience is different from just getting arrested at a protest, and people don't seem to understand that.

"...Rather, it was a flare-up of the centuries-old class struggle. Imperialism, racism, and poverty were not new in 1960, nor were they discovered at that late date..."

I think you are making Graff's point here. If you think class struggle and oppression of a down trodden cross section of society that rises up and marches in the street is this age old struggle, then how is the 60s the same as that. If you had bread riots in 16th century spain, or starving peasant riots in Bavaria how does that resemble a bunch of middle class white college kids skipping class and walking around a landscaped state funded education facility crying for freedom from "da man".

"...Graff thinks demos are fine as long as they are not straight white people. I beg to differ. A massive public show of opposition by "normal" people to the Iraq war reminds people of the fundamental disconnect between the so-called electorate and our representatives...."

Aside from the phony Ohio conspiracies, 2004 was about one issue, "War". Under majority rules, Bush won. The electorate wanted his plan. If you think thats changed fine, but lets not lie to ourselves here.

One thing that it does resemble is far leftist groups swooping down on legitimatly downtrodden and disadvantaged peoples and comandeering their message and then dumping them on the side of the road.

The civil rights movement was a legitimate cry for justice by people of color that drew a slow growing but bi-partisan response amongst the white majority, but the far leftist groups and the college kids overshadowed their message. Gay groups and Women's groups had legitimate claims to call for change. The most recent example is the million immigrants in the streets of LA. After the success of the first march, the group you mentioned UFPJ and ANSWER came in and started bossing local hispanic leaders around. A local radio personality and other local leaders complained that the "May day" march had been taken over by the Leftist leaders and had pushed them out of the way. He said they were using Mexican bodies to convey their message, not ours. These socialist groups were not successful in presenting a clear goal for change for the immigrants, in fact many would say it back fired for the immigrants.

What Graff is saying is People that are calling for a return to demonstrations by middle class white people who can afford to be wandering around with a sign does not have the impact of MLK risking his life in Selma or a truly starving underclass like the downtrodden in eastern Europe that rose up against the Socialist oppression that smothered all freedom.

The cries for return to the streets is a plea for group therapy that the conservative movement never happened. Reagan never convinced the electorate to choose his vision in landslides. They didn't really run the Congress for 12 years. Its like one of those over the hill cowboy movies where the old gang rides again to prove they still got it. Only to find that the range is fenced in.

Dylan was right,..but its not present tense for the boomers, its past tense,...the times they a' changed.

If you want UFPJ and her communist leadership to take on Newt Gingrich and his contract with america, you have to take stock in your resources and size up their war chest. The college kids marched around the quad because they didn't have a media voice but they had time and a little extra pocket money for the weekend.

Now boomers have to worry about those young whipper snapper renters that skipped out on their last months rent on your income property, and ruined your plans for a remodel. You want to go up against the political movements of a new day, you have to use your resources wisely and not out of nostalgia or sentimentality.

According to a Clinton aide, one reason they won is they threw out the old play book that kept losing and attacked Republicans in their own territory. They stopped playing defense and went on offense. Being morally superior, but not focusing on achieving goals is narcissistic masturbation...you might be enjoying your self, but no one wants to watch.

You want to march in the streets, fine. You liked the so-called "anarchists" that trashed Seattle for reasons that 99% of the public don't understand, fine (Talk about a disconnect with the people).

"Stop the draft!" that was easy to understand. Your two biggest allies in that resulting legislation were Milton Friedman and Congressman Donald Rumsfeld,..but, hey it was a goal acheived.

Graff's point is the tools of the past are fine if you make clear what your marching for and you make it believable that people should listen. The ones that marched, that were not what you refered to earlier as "normal" were very clear why they were there. If you're going to get out there in your birkenstocks, your grandkids in strollers, and a cup of starbucks in your hand claiming to be oppressed and fighting the class struggle, the Mexican immigrant with his leaf blower and the minimum wage black man that stand on the curb waiting to sweep up after your done will shake his head and wonder what the hell the left really stands for?

Hah! Right again.

The crux of the matter relates to affecting change. Slime the old left all you want, but in the end, they were a large influence in radical changes the permeated through every aspect of America's society, and whose reverberations are still bouncing off of walls and islands old and new. The problem with the socalled netroots movement is there is much talk, little action, and absolutely NO CHANGE. Democrats took congress, but have failed to reign in the fascist, - I mean imperialist - I mean unitary executive. The war in Iraq is a ghoushish costly, bloody, noendinsight horrorshow - that is ESCALATING, not diminishing in anyway.

The netrooters (who I support in spirit) need to prove that they are move that "googling monkeys' chattering in the wilderness - and actuall AFFECT some real change.

That most critical element and accomplishment of the netroots movement is not yet proven.

Lastly, and it was the same in the 60's, - there comes a time when the political system is simply incapable of affecting any remedy to the deceptions, abuses, failures, derelictions of duty, and wanton profiteering, of the fascists, - I mean imperialists, - I mean corporatists - I mean GOP leaders commandeering the governemnt. Then as now, - the normal mechanisms of the government and America's unique experiment in democracy were, and are now severly damaged, mangled, and broken.

The Nixon government was a Disney episode compared to the fascist tyranny of the The Bush government who ruthless operates above, outside, beyond, and in total disdain of the Constitution, the rule of law, the laws of the land, and the will of the majority of the American people. This fascist - I mean imperialist, - I mean unitary executive has absolutely ZERO concern, respect, or willingness to be restrained by the courts, the congress, or the American system. The political system today is broken, rotting, and withering away. For many of us, in what you may term "old left" circles, (and I will remind you that we support the netroots movement in spirit) - CHANGE is what is necessary - and CHANGE will happen only when we take it to the streets and force accountability from this government.

Again, - a few hundred thousand protesting twice a year here and there is not enough force to energize the mechanism for CHANGE. What is need in millions of Americans protesting consistantly and relentlessly until this fascist government is forced to recognize our concerns, hear our grievances, and CHANGE!!!

Pace'

Or start shooting.

Good overall points there John ... As to this:

I'm just not sure anyone gets it now.

Re: Under majority rules, Bush won. The electorate wanted his plan.

But let's remeber that "electorate" is not a synonym for "Citizenry". Bush received 53 million votes in 2004. That about 1/6 the population of this country. Even setting aside minors and non-citizens, that's still far less than a majority.

. . . how does that resemble a bunch of middle class white college kids skipping class and walking around a landscaped state funded education facility crying for freedom from "da man".

This is fiction. Poverty was the original inspiration for the student movement, before Vietnam. Some people on the left did goofy things and were not serious, others were serious, doing community organizing, supporting labor.

Delve into some history, forget the clichés.

Don't forget anti-military-industrial complex.

Tom

Max:

in re: who think they've invented participatory Democracy, since evidently they've never read the Port Huron Statement or Kirk Sales SDS.

Don't want to go all archaic on your ass, but you could really make your point (no?) by mentioning The Populist moment : a short history of the agrarian revolt in America by Lawrence Goodwyn.

How is that relevant, OGD?

Not at all. I luv Goodwyn. For me his book is huge.

Because the trouble was instigated by the city not the protesters.
learn to read.

TonyF 

Bravo! Bravo!  Outstanding post. This part especially deserves an encore:

The Nixon government was a Disney episode compared to the fascist tyranny of the The Bush government who ruthless operates above, outside, beyond, and in total disdain of the Constitution, the rule of law, the laws of the land, and the will of the majority of the American people. This fascist - I mean imperialist, - I mean unitary executive has absolutely ZERO concern, respect, or willingness to be restrained by the courts, the congress, or the American system. The political system today is broken, rotting, and withering away. For many of us, in what you may term "old left" circles, (and I will remind you that we support the netroots movement in spirit) - CHANGE is what is necessary - and CHANGE will happen only when we take it to the streets and force accountability from this government.

I don't have any doubt that poverty was a concern, but I think you are making my point if 40 years later you are telling someone that they have to go find a history book and not focus on cliches.

Let's face it, the world thinks our lives here are pretty comfortable. We are in a war with people that mock our lives of convenience. When we as comfortable people go out and protest, complain, call others to do something or help in a way that we want them to,.. to demonstrate,...our message should be clear, otherwise we end up 40 years later telling somone to forget the cliche.

The quote of mine that you call fiction does not mention the war. It mentions college kids and "freedom from da man". If you want to lump in poverty, free speech, war, what ever you like under that you can, but calling it fiction that a bunch of comortable kids were crying oppression....that's vanity. Which is what a lot of this netrrots v. boomer fight is over.

So you are saying it was the City of Seattle that smashed the Starbucks and Nike store?

Also, notice that the report says that the Freedom of Speech rights were not violated, which means the Time, Place, and Manner restrictions that the City of Seattle imposed on the WTO protestors were legal. So therefore, all the protestors who refused to comply with those restrictions were in violation of the law. Also, this ruling means that the only thing the city was guilty of was blanket arrest, but not of illegally restricting freedom of speech. Of course, all this will be reviewed by an appeals court.

Nonetheless, a legal analysis of what the jury found begs a certain questions. Namely, what affect on the WTO did those protests have? Did the Seattle protestors greatly change WTO policy? Did they greatly change US policy? Did they change US policy more than the change of USTR's from Barshefsky under Clinton to Zoellick when Bush took over?

Whatever the answer to those questions, don't forget the first question here which, to repeat, did the city of seattle cause the disturbance in 1999 by destroying the Nike Store and some Starbucks or did the "protestors" do that?

The problem with the socalled netroots movement is there is much talk, little action, and absolutely NO CHANGE.

Doesn't talking constitute healthy politics within a democracy? Isn't that the point, to talk and hopefully change minds. The political climate in the US is changing, somewhat because of the netroots and somewhat because of the ultimate bankruptcy of the right. Sorry it isn't fast enough for you, but I definitely can tell you that the way it is changing now is much better and faster than through the use polarizing protests.

Furthermore, if you want change in the US political system, you are stuck waiting at least two years regardless, as that is how long till the US congress is up for reelection. Representatives do not change their minds based on large scale protests because the nature of the single member district system means that those Representatives usually are not beholden to the protestors. Which begs the question as to the efficacy of protests. If the protests are designed to raise political awareness of certain issue, how do protests serve that goal any better than orchestrated netroots media campaigns? And not only serve the goal of raising awareness but do it in a manner that helps more than it hurts

Back in the day, while I was prancing around manicured college grounds, a bunch of us pampered undergrads headed down to join up with strikers at an Allen Bradley plant. We marched with them for a couple of wintry days and hung out in the trailers set up as warming huts.

Those guys (all men back then on the picket line) were very kind and indulgent to us and along with learning some labor movement history, listening to stories of the the old days we also learned that this was no game, that this was for real, this was about food on the table and a roof over your head. We learned that actions count, not hopes, not wishes, not thoughts, but action. We also learned that it was not easy to take action, that many people tried very hard to look at the world in a way that would allow them to NOT take action, to sit home, to do little that was inconvenient, hard, and dangerous.

This is a common human trait, that can be helpful in many cases but must be recognized and when the time comes it must be overcome. To have people on the left speak out against taking action, against street demonstrations, against doing ALL that is necessary to resist, fight and overcome the tyranny descending upon us is dangerous and must be addressed. It is not self-indulgent in the least my friend. 

While I agree with your point, I don't know if a larger percentage of the "citizenry" had voted the outcome would have been any different. There really isn't a large portion of the "citizenry" that disagrees with Bush and is disenfranchised.

A quarter of the population is estimated to be under 18, according to the census, and another 11 percent is foreign born. So assuming all the foreign borns and under 18s cannot or did not vote, Bush was elected by around 28 percent of the United States, assuming 300 mil in the US. Conventional wisdom has been more voters=more Democrats elected, but given the past two presidential cycles saw record numbers in terms of turn out and a Republican was still elected, I am not sure that the conventional wisdom is correct.

The destruction of a Starbucks by some idiots was and is a side issue.
Civil disobedience is something else. But no, slackers from Eugene, Oregon don't interest me. But I don't defend the government response to the protests, or to the idea that they might occur.
In NY "The Paranoids Were Right".

When more than a thousand people were swept up in mass arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention, defense lawyers complained in court that the protesters had to wait much longer to see a judge than those accused of far more serious crimes like robbery or assault.
Now, newly released city records not only put precise numbers to those claims, but also show the special scrutiny the New York Police Department gave to people arrested in or near the convention protests.
At the height of the mass arrests, on Aug. 31, 2004, demonstrators — and some people who said they were bystanders just swept up by the police — were held for an average of 32.7 hours before they saw a judge, according to city statistics. For people charged with crimes that the police decided were not related to the convention, the wait to see a judge was just under five hours.

Numerous police officers and local and national officials have been ordered to stand trial in connection with the event. In one trial, 28 police officials are standing trial on charges related to the two night raids, charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, use of excessive force and planting evidence. In other proceedings, 45 state officials, including prison guards, police and medics, are being tried for abusing detainees in their custody who were arrested during the raid. Detainees reported being spat at, verbally and physically humiliated, and threatened with rape.
Following the event it has been reported that certain police admitted to planting Molotov cocktails in order to justify the Diaz School raids, as well as faking the stabbing of a police officer to frame activists [3].
Police conducted nighttime raids upon centers housing protesters and campsites, most notably the attacks on the Diaz-Pascoli and Diaz-Pertini schools shortly after midnight on July 21. These were being used as sleeping quarters, and had also been set up as centers for those providing media, medical, and legal support work. Police baton attacks left three activists, including British journalist Mark Covell, in comas. At least one person has suffered brain damage, while another had both jaws and fourteen teeth broken. In total, over 60 were severely injured and a parliamentary inquiry was launched [4]. It concluded no wrongdoing on the part of police.
Ninety-three people were arrested during the raids. In May, 2003, Judge Anna Ivaldi concluded that they had put up no resistance whatsoever to the police and all charges were dropped against them.
In 2005, twenty-nine police officers were indicted for grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest during a night-time raid on the Diaz School. A further 45 state officials, including police officers, prison guards and doctors, were charged with physically and mentally abusing demonstrators held in a detention centre in the nearby town of Bolzaneto.

The protests were broad-based the violence was not. And yes I blame the state response more than the adolescent idiot "black bloc."

Re: I suggest that the primary reason was the storytellers, particularly the televised narrative.

But even more than that it just human nature to focus on the most extreme, the most radical and certainly the most violent. That was true back in the Civil Rights era when it was riots in the inner cities that people focused on; during the Vietnam protests when the Weather Underground and other violent groups were the center of attention, and, going way back, it was true of the abolitionist movement, John Brown over calm and rational people whose names were barely recorded. So if you are going to have a protest movement, for god's sake either corral or simply exclude the crazies. Else the story will be about them, not the issue you want to protest.

Re: There really isn't a large portion of the "citizenry" that disagrees with Bush and is disenfranchised.

I think it would be more accurate to say that there's a huge fraction of the citizenry (including many who do vote) that are fundamentally too ignorant of the facts to make an informed judgment. I recall seeing a poll where a shockingly large number of people were simply clueless about what sorts of things Bush stood for or would work for-- they chose things like "universal healthcare" and "subsidized college tuition" and even (!) "gay rights". Now you can try to blame that on the media, but I don't think that flies: no one who pays even cursory attention to the news would think Bush favored the things I just listed. Indeed, the problem is that these people do NOT pay attention to the news. Instead they simply adopt a politician by some inner and rather myserious criterion (it isn't sex appeal or anything obvious like that) and then deck him without whatever things they themselves favor, even if it turns him into the mirror image of what he really stands for.

Those in power will ALWAYS stigmatize any sort of dissent as uniformly mindless, violent, hypocritical, self-indulgent, do anything but acknowledge what it's about.

As in foreign affairs, a wise man characterizes the ruling ethos as "terrorism is what other people do."

'Inferior' is not what has been at issue. Many netroots are good Democrats who have done a lot of good. I have never intimated otherwise. But sometimes we get canards about "the left" which are really dishonest ways of ducking issues and fending off criticism. We can also observe bureaucratic, sectarian behavior with the same objective.

Don't take this as about YOU.

J. McCutchen

I didn't respond to EJ's apologia because I didn't see that she really was about what she claimed at the outset.

As for what she claimed, as one of those self-absorbed protesters myself, what she claimed is half-baked at best.

Max has it right:

Why? Well because our political system is deeply flawed, failing miserably at respecting the consent of the governed.

It failed in the case of Vietnam, it fails today. Graff's crticism that neither the recent demonstrations nor the demonstrations occuring world-wide before the invasion did anything to stop it is inapposite.

The demonstrations didn't affect the congressional debates then or now, and neither have the 2006 elections or public opinion polls (showing that 2/3 of Americans oppose the war; 72% oppose the surge; 58% want Congress to cut off funds; 55% want a timetable for withdrawal; nearly 40% want immediate withdrawal.

I am glad personally that hundreds of thousands middle class, frumpy old hippies with nothing personally at stake are willing to the time to take to the streets.

Next demonstration - 3/17 March on the Pentagon.

It won't be an Armies of the Night experience but who, save Graff, cares?

HEY HEY LBJ how many kids did ya kill today!

Ooops my bad..wrong century, must be Alzheimer's

BTW, I've also marched in the SF LGBT parade, Mayor Newsom's contingent for the past 3 years and 1 as candidate.

That's a good thing too.

=== Today there are people like Markos Moulitsas who think they've invented participatory democracy, since evidently they've never read the Port Huron Statement or Kirk Sale's SDS. ===

Yeah, nothing personal about that. Pure weighty substance.

How did the saying go? "The personal is political"? The problem I have with these debates is that there is one party[1] that believes so strongly that its personal should be the base of all political that they lose sight of their own arguments much less failings.

sPh

[1] Plural sense.

I have a little trouble believing this is still bouncing around. I've read E.J.'s original post, and I still can't for the life of me figure out why it's gotten people so exercised about it.

Count me as seeing this not as boomer vanity, but as boomers wanting to defend their legacy. And I think in that context, the offended boomers in question are misreading the sentiment.

I'm now 30. Growing up in a house with parents who saw both MLK and JFK speak in person, marched multiple times, and were returned Peace Corps volunteers, all during the Reagan administration when I knew exactly two other kids whose parents were voting Democratic, the 1960s were the gold standard. Not necessarily from them, but from the forms of liberal that made it into our house, such as the Atlantic, publications from the Southern Poverty Law Center, PBS news shows, NPR, and so on. The impression I was left with as a 13 year old in 1989 was that social change had built up post-war, then erupted in a spasm in the late 1960s, then been bitterly crushed by the Nixonian hordes of corporate media. The challenge for the next generation of leftists, then, was simply to figure out how to re-create the 60s, which would somehow involve the right subtle mix of street marches, drugs, rock and roll, and growing your hair long.

Fortunately, as my political awareness grew out of an adolescent "down with the establishment!" and into a point where I could ask questions of Mom and Dad that had more relevance than, "did y'all wear bell bottoms," I learned from them that while a great deal of positive change happened in the 1960s, and that it took enormous courage from many people, social justice didn't begin and end there. I learned why my parents didn't have easy job names like "doctor" and "lawyer" -- Dad was busy trying to improve access to health care for underserved populations, and Mom was trying to help kids with behavioral-emotional problems. Moreover, and more discouraging, I realized that a lot of those men with long hair and women burning bras had to be among people voting for Reagan.

Since then, I've marched in a couple of anti-Iraq war protests, including the MLK Day march in DC in 2003, and known several people who've been arrested at protests ranging from the School of Americas protest to Seattle to various much smaller ones protesting unfair anti-labor/anti-immigrant practices. And the sad conclusion I've come to is that many modern day street protests are not about adovcating a cause, demonstrating support for a movement, building community, or communicating dissent, which is what I think they should be about. Instead, they're about a nebulous "raising awareness," words that have come to have a tinny ring in my ear, because underlying that, the real purpose seems to be some sort of narcisistic street theater; the protest becomes more about the protesters than about a cause. Meanwhile, these "leftists" are marching past people living in substandard housing, workers whose labor rights are being abused, communities being destroyed by poor land use policies, and the list goes on. But those issues just aren't as much fun, or satisfying, or whatever, as marching in the streets with a sign and yelling.

So if I may presume, what Graff, Stoller, Moulitsas, Marshall, and the rest of the current 30-something crowd (whom I recently joined) are talking about in the anti-60s nostalgia moments is not some rejection of all things Boomer, or saying that nothing worthwhile happened in the 60s. The message is that yes, it is in fact possible that the politics, the messages, and the methods used in the 60s were not, as many of us grew up believeing, the be-all and end-all of how leftist organizing and resistance has to happen. There are, in fact, older models of resistance that the New Left ignored and saw as outmoded which have some life in them. And yes, there are new tools, such as the collaborative electronic medium, which deserved to be used and exploited. And finally, that despite the assertions of many of those who publish in a more traditional medium, for good or bad, Dean was not McGovern, DailyKos is not SDS, and Iraq is not Vietnam.

Democracy is not just in the streets. Street protests are a very limited, very specialized form of resistance. True democracy requires a lot more work on a lot more fronts than just street protests, and while I think young progressive activists universally have a lot of respect for previous generations of activists, we're also getting damn tired of being told we're doing it wrong.

Apparently it's not relevant to you, and that's quite all right.

To other's it may be ... Specifically those in the Seattle region. It may just teach, and thereby instruct those on both sides of the civil disobedience issue to act more civilly next go 'round.

Thanks for taking note.

~OGD~

The Left is about much more than demonstrations, always has been.

And yet, today's "demonstration wing" of the Left does not seem to understand that. Demonstrations are social opportunities to be very loud about all the stuff you believe in. They may have convinced bystanders to join up once. They do not do so anymore. They are wastes of time.

It is ridiculous to me that this conversation is still occuring. Whether or not the 60s were the apex of "real liberalism" or just another period from which to draw some positive and negative historical lessons, the fact is that they are over. We're in a different era today, one which requires new forms of organization and advocacy. And, perhaps most importantly, the leaders of liberalism today need to be able to speak to the youth of today. Historical masturbation about SDS or the Weathermen or whatever isn't going to cut it.

"This is fiction."

I agree. The demonstrations should not be trivialized. The demonstrators were taking real risks.

As a music student, I could not afford to be maimed by a police baton, so I did not participate in demonstrations, I did not go to watch demonstrations, and I would not go within several city blocks of a demonstration.

You could get your teeth knocked out for nothing.

Also, my father had told me something about the dangers to union organizers from gun thugs in Harlan County, KY. They didn't live long.

So when you criticize the demonstrators, you are not criticizing me, because I stayed as far away from the demonstrators as I could get. So this is nothing personal, but I always understood that the demonstrations were about something real.

My sense is that you have an unwarranted, unprovoked and invalid criticism in terms of effecting change in our democracy when Graf asserts that civil disobedience in the form of protests are no longer effective. Civil disobedience is a fundamental cornerstone in a democracy. It represents the will of the people.

However, there is quite a lot more to civil disobedience than street protest and demonstration. Here, I have to very strongly agree with Graff that street protests have very little efficacy, and are only potent in a certain mix of circumstances. I have seen little call here at TPMCafe for anything that resembles Rosa Parks' bus ride, or Ghandi making salt, or even Thoreau refusing to pay taxes. (A white, bourgeouis protest if there ever was one.)

You're right true democracy is work, get at it. I would love to see that anger channeled into effective change....don't get mad...get even. We will all be glad to recognize that achievement...we need it!

And see, here's where I think we really get into the meat of the matter. (apologies to vegitarians) E.J.'s point wasn't to somehow say that street protests never do any good; her point (as I see it) was that all of the calls of, "where is the outrage? Where are the street protests?" are, in fact, not recognizing the achievements that have been made by the "netroots" over the past four years. Nor do they recognize that street protests are not the only way things get done. There is just as much import, and I would even say more, in organization, collaboration, coalition forming, and locally-focused action.

In 2003, the invasion of Iraq made it clear that no democratic structure existed that was powerful enough to put the breaks on a colonialist and imperialist war. There wasn't even enough to have a meaningful debate. So 200,000 of us took to the streets of DC to try to forcefully show that there were in fact a large number of us who disagreed with the war. On CNN, the 28 (I counted) counter-protesters got more coverage than we did. We were all looking for some way to throw on the breaks, and the best we found was in Howard Dean, who, despite his many flaws as a candidate, was willing to unapologetically oppose the war. And although his candidacy failed, it was the netroots that put him there, and scared the crap out of the pro-war forces in Washington.

Since then, the netroots have put Jim Webb, our most articulate war opponent to date, in the Senate; weakened the credibility of pro-war Senator Lieberman; and helped secure majority control in the House. I know the war hasn't been stopped, but we're now actually getting close to having it be meaningfully debated in Congress, something that was a wispy fantasy a year ago.

I would say that Graff's post was in response to an unwarranted, unprovoked, and invalid criticism of the netroots, specifically saying that we weren't taking to the streets enough. I respect Max highly, but in this specific instance he can stuff it. The difference here is that the New Left saw party manuvering and coalition building as unclean tools of the establishment, with civil disobedience being the only pure means of resistance.* I, along with others, beg to differ, and willfully engage in these where appropriate, with civil disobedience held as a more extreme measure to be used carefully but forcefully when needed.

I would say it was the New Left who was lacking in an understanding of history in dismissing non-civil disobedience methods, not the netroots.

----

* (I am aware that this was not uniformly representative of the New Left. Please take it in the light that all generalizations should be taken, as "partly true enough.)