How A Better Democrat Rolls

Time Warner Cable took a tentative step in New York toward billing Internet customers based on consumption rates, a Trojan horse to two-tiered pricing on the Internet. And the usage limits were designed to gouge consumers and, since they have a monopoly, offer them essentially no other viable options.

Eric Massa took on the issue and won.

I live just about on the border of New York’s 28th and 29th Congressional districts. The 28th is represented by Louise Slaughter, the powerful chair of the Rules Committee, the 29th by freshman Congressman Eric Massa. I emailed both Massa and Slaughter about the cap. I heard nothing back from Slaughter. Massa’s office told me that they thought it was a serious issue, that they were getting complaints from a lot of constituents…and then sprung into action. The opening line of the video below (via) is “I plan on putting the entire full force of my incumbency and all the risk associated with that behind stopping this very, very ill-thought out decision by Time-Warner.”



Shortly after this, Time-Warner shelved their cap plan. Apparently, it was all a “big misunderstanding.”

More on this here. Eric Massa won election as a better Democrat with significant help from the netroots. And then he turns around and stands up on the significant issue of net neutrality. This is how progressive movement power turns into policy muscle.

Taking The Hill

Matt Stoller is moving to Capitol Hill for an as-yet-unspecified job in the House of Representatives, and as excited as I am about that, his post about the "rootsgap," the gap between a party's leadership and its base, and the need for progressives to work an inside strategy as well as an outside one, is even more exciting.

The rootsgap has been the single most salient feature of modern American politics, at least since I've been paying attention. It cuts across economic issues, media policy, foreign policy, national security, civil liberties, you name it. Conservative (and often bipartisan) political elites ignore, usually the left but often the public itself, with almost no political consequences. Joe Lieberman built an entire career, and even elevated himself to be the Vice Presidential candidate, on this feature.

What we have now is a powerful political apparatus that can elect, raise money, engage in policy debates, work through our own media channels, push back on mainstream media channels, and a set of grasstops who organize on behalf of a progressive identity. It's ten years old, and there are now thousands of trained organizers and millions of activists (like you). What we're missing, among other things, is links to direct political leaders. One of the reasons Reagan succeeded is because he had a political machine borne of the conservative activist class, one well-versed in the standard centrist trickery that led to such an infuriating rootsgap on the right. His direct mail people and his evangelical liaisons knew what they wanted, and they knew they wanted more than what the mainstream GOP was offering. While there are great people around our leaders, what is striking is how politicians are considered to be 'over there' making decisions, and activist movement people are considered to be outsiders and reactive to these decisions. This doesn't make sense; cooperation can benefit everyone involved.

Now, I don't think the analogies of our party to the Republicans of the 1970s or 1980s are perfect; the Democratic Party has different problems than the Republican Party did back then, and different opportunities. And it can't be emphasized enough that we believe in very different models of the ideal American polity. But the rootsgap is a commonality, and the rootsgap is the space in which both New Right organizing and this new progressive organizing took place. Ultimately, I don't think this problem of liberal organization can be addressed without more of us from the outside going into areas where we must take some direct (as opposed to indirect) responsibility for the decisions that happen. I believe that the next few years are going to be very hard for this world, and we desperately need a vibrant progressive world, with strong leadership and good strong liberal policies. Liberals have been correct about the war in Iraq, the financial meltdown, the Bankruptcy Bill, the deficit, the Patriot Act, and, well, pretty much everything. What they haven't been is powerful enough to prevent the mistakes the country has made. And this is a leadership problem that we can and will fix.

Too true, and I credit anyone willing to take on this challenge. Politics can be enervating and exhausting, especially at the grassroots level, because those with power continually steamroll the interests of the public and then try to claim the opposite. It's not so much a difference in ideology as a difference in mindset. Those in power feel constraints and pressures that those in the grassroots never do. And there isn't enough of a dialogue, or a sense of mutual coordination and respect, to defuse those constraints and pressures.

Anyway, I'm not making much sense, but I'm happy for Matt. And I hope a lot more progressive movement types move inside as well. The country will be better served in the exchange.

This Hurts

Darcy Burner has conceded.

U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert appears to have survived a second Democratic wave election, bucking a national trend that flipped at least 23 Republican congressional seats to Democrats.

The Associated Press determined tonight that Reichert's lead for the 8th District seat was insurmountable.

While Burner's spokesman says in that piece she has not conceded, they released a statement a short time later:

"It is likely at this point that Congressman Reichert has won re-election, and while we will certainly ensure that every valid vote is counted, we accept the decision of the voters.

"I would like to thank the thousands of people who put so much time and effort into the campaign, as well as the countless thousands more who went beyond voting to actively participate in our democratic process this year. The election of Barack Obama as our new President will ensure that the change to the direction of our country called for in this campaign is realized in the new year."

Just terrible news. Darcy took time and effort away from campaigning into creating the Responsible Plan to try and change the conversation around Iraq. She succeeded in that - but put a huge target on her back, and the hard right and the NRCC fired away at her. The Seattle Times ran a ridiculous story claiming that she lied about her Harvard degree, which was simply untrue.

Because she took all that fire, she probably drew it away from other progressive Democrats, who have her to thank in part for getting them into Congress. But that's the kind of person Burner is, and she'd never ask for their thanks. She leads by her very nature.

I'm sure there will be an emerging narrative that this means the netroots always lose when they push too hard behind a candidate. There will be a cherry-picking of Ned Lamont and Darcy and that will harden in the CW. You'll hear it everywhere. It's just wrong. We need MORE leaders like Darcy, not less. And I certainly hope she runs again.

I Am A Very Famous Journalist

I think Richard Cohen is actually some character being played by Andy Kaufmann:

But Milbank’s not the only Post staffer who’s been dropped from the left’s Christmas card list.

“I used to get a lot more on the right,” said columnist Richard Cohen, who broke with liberals when he supported the Iraq war. More recently, the left has picked apart columns that are perceived as being favorable to John McCain.

“If you’re a little bit critical of Barack Obama, you get really a pie of vilification right in the face,” Cohen said, adding that his liberal critics “were born too late, because they would have been great communists.”

Cohen, the guy who said "only a fool, or a Frechman" would dispute Colin Powell's presentation on Iraq WMD at the UN, lost his credibility years ago. But Fred Hiatt forgot to tell him, so he continues along as if he's just the smartest man in America. He doesn't recognize that a whole lot of liberal bloggers freely criticize Obama, too. What we have little patience for is rampant, relentless stupidity. Which is what defines Cohen.

Cohen was obviously born too late and in the wrong country, because with his silencing of all dissent and belief in his own superiority, he would have made a great African dictator.

Wanker emeritus.

Netroots Nation

So I'm off in the morning to Austin for Netroots Nation. It should be a lot of fun, and it's always cool to meet the people you read and interact with online every year. I'm not on any panels, but we did manage to throw together a Calitics Caucus to discuss California-related issues. It'll be tomorrow at 3:00 in Room 18B. Details here. And if you want to get your ass beaten in the Pub Quiz, come to that and be on a team other than mine (wow, that was the whitest-sounding trash talk in history).

I'll try to post stuff as time allows, but I've always found that to be a near-impossibility at this convention, so I'm not going to sweat it too hard if I don't check in a bunch. Netroots Nation is for getting offline and talking to people.

So, light posting through the weekend. Cheers!

My Obama Indifference

The HuffPo writes about Obama and the netroots. They might as well have made it about Obama and liberals who are paying attention.

The worst part of all of this is that he doesn't need to do it. Like all cautious centrists, they have a fundamental belief that the country is conservative and that Democrats must portray conservative values in order to win. It's simply not true anymore; that's a vision of the world as it existed at a brief time in 2001 and 2002. 80% of the country thinks we're moving in the wrong direction. No Democrat gains by offering the same direction.

I think it'll be marginally easier to get decent small-bore legislation passed in an Obama Administration, but that's about it. I think he's pragmatic, and if pushed he will move in the direction of those doing the pushing. The opportunity moment is that he is concerned with increasing the Democratic majority in Congress, which means we can use that to elect progressives committed to a different agenda and toss out the insidious Blue Dogs.

The best thing I've read on this is this piece by Kathy G, who lives in his old State Senate district and so has watched Obama up close for a long time. I do think Obama eventually listens to his constituents if enough pressure is applied, so the recognition has to be that the real work begins the day AFTER the election, not before.

NYT Or Daily Kos Circa 2005?

I don't read many dead-tree newspapers cover to cover anymore; I prefer to filter them online and read selected stories. But I got a New York Times at my hotel this morning and decided to give it a whirl. It's pretty amazing, the degree to which stories that bubbled up through online media sources take so long to get covered in the dead-tree media.

In the news section there was a story on Purity Balls, this deeply creepy ritual of evangelical fathers and their daughters going to a prom together and the girls renewing their vow of celibacy until marriage in front of their dads. It's worth covering, but to me it was a two year-old story, because bloggers like Echidne of the Snakes had been posting about it since then.

Then, on the editorial page, there was an op-ed about net neutrality, praising the value of a network-neutral Internet and the need for legislation to codify it. Which is great, and I for one am glad to have the Times on board, but this is an issue that has been pounded home by the netroots and online organizations like Save the Internet for years.

It's just weird to me, the whole lag time thing. The netroots is often just an expression of what informed citizens are talking about and finding interesting. Catch up, journalists!

UPDATE: Not to mention that Bill Kristol's column today has a huge factual error in it that it took blogs all of a couple minutes to uncover, despite the fact that newspapers have, you know, editors and stuff.

To support his argument, Kristol pointed to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) 41-point loss in the West Virginia primary:

"On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin."

Apparently Kristol didn’t look hard enough. Writing at Room Eight, New York political consultant Jerry Skurnik says it took him “all of 2 minutes to find what Kristol couldn’t find.” On Feb. 5, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by 85 points in the Utah primary... In fact, on the same day, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee beat McCain by the same margin Kristol touted as unprecedented — 41 points — in the Arkansas primary. As did Mitt Romney in the Colorado caucus.

Fit McCain For Leg Irons

John McCain is a fugitive from justice. He spoke at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council a man on the lam. With every passing day, every fill-up on the Straight Talk Express, every sandwich, every long-distance phone call to a lobbyist friend, he is further breaking campaign finance law. He has overspent federal limits while remaining in the public system for the primaries. And the netroots is doing something about it.

Yesterday afternoon, FDL's Jane Hamsher filed a complaint with the FEC charging John McCain with violations of campaign finance law for spending beyond limits imposed by his decision to take public financing.

McCain has claimed he is backing off that decision, and justifies it with the fact that he never received any of that public money. However, the law clearly states that he is bound by those limits if he uses the promise of those funds in order to secure campaign loans -- something he absolutely did.

I signed on to this early, and I would have tried to make a citizen's arrest in LA today if I had been awake earlier (this is why I'm not a cop). You can sign on to the complaint as well here. The full text is here (PDF). This is a great action by the netroots.

Book 'em, Dan-o!

Money-Crater

When conservatives online try to mimic the liberal blogosphere and activist community, it never turns out right. Yesterday the "rightroots" announced that today would be an "F7" - a money-bomb of a day to stop Hillary (!) or Barack (!) from ruining our country with their homobortion white surrender flags.

Right now they have 28 donors. $2,440.

By contrast, Clinton and Obama have raised something like $13 million over the last couple days.

My favorite part of this is the first comment on this thread announcing the money, er, bomb.

Jeffrey Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

I’ll donate $0

Thanks for asking.

Once the RNC decides to stick up for conservative principles instead of for their frat club I might consider donating to the cause.

Hysterical.

Yearly Kos: Everything You Need To Know

OK, I'm finally getting around to posting about Yearly Kos. Well, at least the second half of it. I was pretty good at posting about the first half and then trailed off. So let me just bullet-point some random thoughts. I'm going to go more in-depth on the Presidential forum and the Edwards break-out session afterwards.

• The Netroots candidate event was one of my favorite events, and the Teamsters barbecue was the other. The true spirit of Yearly Kos (which next year will be called Netroots Nation) is found in these mass social events where you can talk to a large group of people from all parts of the blogosphere. There were over 30 candidates for 2008 at the Convention, and among my favorites were Congressional candidates Gary Trauner (WY-AL), Darcy Burner (WA-08) and Scott Kleeb (NE-03); and Senate candidates Jay Buckey (NH) and Steve Novick (OR). My night of drinking with Scott Kleeb really deserves its own post, but I should mention that Steve Novick is kind of awesome. A lawyer and activist in the Paul Wellstone mold, Steve was the lead counsel on the Love Canal case. He's also a short man with a hook for a hand, and instead of shying away from that, he discusses it proudly. Votehook.com is his website, and he refers to himself as a "fighter with a strong left hook!" It's great to see someone with a disability running for Senate and offering that kind of perspective. He rocks.

• We actually sucked the hotel bar dry. On Sunday night they were out of beer. Completely out. (This is mainly because McCormick Place is nowhere near anything and so the hotel bar became the meeting place) On Friday and Saturday Drinking Liberally held some patio parties, and Saturday night's was marred by intermittent thunderstorms. I noticed that less and less people would run in from out of the rain after each re-occurrence.

• During the Presidential forum, Mike Stark calmly sat with a sign in the front row that said "Hillary: Stop Lying." She had to look at it for two hours. I should note that I spent a couple hours on Saturday helping out Stark with a controversial video of him confronting Bill O'Reilly at his house. You can see it at Brave New Films' blog.

• My friend Paul Hogarth has written an incredible article about Hillary Clinton's experience at the event which is far richer and deeper than most of the Big Media thumbsuckers I've seen. His thesis is that Clinton's performance has endangered her hopes at the nomination, and I don't know if he's right, but certainly her ringing defense of DC lobbyists at the debate didn't help her, and Hogarth's amazing question in a breakout session about her stance on the worst legislation of her husband's tenure - welfare reform, the Telecommunications Act, DOMA, and NAFTA - left her tongue-tied. But Hogarth didn't report the best part: late on Saturday night, two Hillary supporters accosted him and tried to get him to change his mind about her!

• Digby (who I can sort of count as a friend now. Weird.) is right in part. There was far more diversity at this year's event, the gender ratio was almost even, and the black and Latino communities were more represented (though not as much as I'd like). The under-representation of these communties in the general blogosphere is a function of class, which is why we need to wire poor and rural communities as sure as we needed rural electrification in the 1930s. It's also an expensive convention to attend, which is why I hope Kid Oakland's amazing grant program, which paid to bring 17 poor and rural men and women from all over the country to the convention, continues to expand.

• Ezra Klein thinks that the netroots represents a bunch of policy wonks because that's the convention HE went to. I saw a lot of local blogging panels so I think it's about local empowerment. There was enough material here for 4 or 5 conventions, and I'm turning around a bit on this. Maybe it's good that you can customize your experience, as long as there are enough unifying moments as well.

• This post by Rick Jacobs made me very proud to be a part of this community. Key graf:

And that's the real learning here. The "movement" is growing up fast. People want to build from the ground up, taking the best of ideas, research and activism to lead on local and state issues. That's what the right wing did for decades. They worked slowly but inexorably on issues. The candidates they ultimately elected carried those issues for them and contorted America. The online communities are embracing the slow work necessary to build and win, aware that working locally can, and always does, lead to national success, aware too that online activism is transparent and increasingly the bedrock of democracy.

The MSM actually got a good bit of this convention right, but as usual the bloggers had the best perspectives.

• There was one event that the Right picked up on at Yearly Kos, a shouting match between Jon Soltz of VoteVets and a pro-war soldier. The soldier was wearing his uniform and violating military policy by engaging in politics while wearing it, that was the entire subject of the feud. He knows this, because in a far less-attended Iraq Veterans Against The War panel on Sunday, the same soldier came in and said "He (Soltz) violated the law too," essentially admitting that he did break the law with his actions.

And yes, Ezra's right about this:

SO let's be clear here: No one at the Kos panel searched out the questioner's wedding registry, no one at the Kos panel dug up his old poetry to embarrass him, no one at the Kos panel speculated on what a terrible soldier he is and how much he must have slowed his unit down, no one at the Kos panel unearthed his MySpace page, no one at the Kos panel said "he'd better watch his ass."

And yet, merely a week after the Right did all that to Private Beauchamp -- whose story has been proven true in virtually all respects, with the singular error misremembering the location of one of the stories -- they have the audacity to accuse members of YearlyKos of proving insufficiently supportive of the troops. And they're doing so over an argument that was not between a room of people, or a conference of people, and a soldier, but between -- and limited to -- two soldiers.

• One of my favorite panels was "Creating A New News" with SusanG from Daily Kos, Andrew Golis of TPM, Will Bunch of Attytood and Jay Rosen of PressThink. This was really about the distributed model that the Internet affords journalism to use, which allows citizens to become engaged in their media. Plus, it included my favorite quote of the weekend, by Joel Connolly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "I'm sorry that those of you on the left side can't see some of our panelists. But the podium, like David Broder, is immovable." Heh. Andrew Golis also had a great line: "Do what you do best, and link to the rest." I'll try to remember that.

I'm sure I could continue to fill a book with this, but I'll stop. Here, though, are some pics.

Me and clammyc:



S.R. Sidarth ("Macaca"), Lane Hudson, Mike Stark:



The panelist's-eye view from the California caucus (name mispelled):



California Congressional candidates Charlie Brown, Ron Shepston, Steve Young and Russ Warner:



Howard Dean:



Late night:



Wes Clark:



Me and Ned Lamont!



The netroots candidates:



Ron Shepston up front, Digby in the back:

Big Media Me

Check out my comments about Hillary and the netroots, complete with a picture with my bud clammyc from Yearly Kos, at the New York Observer's blog.

Best Traditional Media Article On Yearly Kos I've Ever Read

Good work by Jose Antonio Vargas, understanding the impact of the convention and the makeup of the netroots. Key graf:

There is no one leader, the name of the convention notwithstanding, and it's a disparate, unorganized community that's almost impossible to categorize. While the leading bloggers are in their 20s and 30s, the rank-and-file are older, in their 40s and 50s. The common assumption is that the Net roots is monolithic and full of ideologues. It is neither. It is made up of people who are mostly interested in getting Democrats elected -- and making sure Democrats stay in power.

Exigesis!!!

This is about a progressive movement, not any one blog or one leader (in fact, next year, this won't be called Yearly Kos, I learned - learned! - from the article). It's about a committed group of tens of thousands of individuals coming together to do the hard work of taking back their government.

UPDATE: If you want to see a piece of shit article about the convention, check this from Katherine Seeyle. She actually gets right a small note about the convention, then commits journalistic malpractice:

The (Presidential) candidates are coming to speak on stage to the roughly 1,500 people here and then take questions in individual break-out sessions, which will have room for about 200 people each.

Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards are among those coming. And, it seemed, they were all participating in the break-out sessions.

While they are all still coming for the main show, it turns out that Senator Clinton is not attending the break-out session. Her campaign says it told the Kos organizers a week ago that she would not be attending the individual session, but the organizers did not announce it until tonight, at the opening dinner. The announcement drew big boos from the audience.

That's all true. Then...

But hey, this is a tough crowd. Later in the evening, they booed Mother Theresa.

Hey fool, that was during a PUB QUIZ, and people were yelling because they got the question wrong. Thanks for the absolute slander. I'm sure to see it become wingnut mythology within minutes today, something we'll hear for the next 20 years. All because you don't understand a thing.

From the Edit Bay: Making Crashing The States

I'm looking forward to seeing everybody at the Yearly Kos Convention this week, where I'll be spewing my own special brand of hate pretty much continuously to anyone and everyone who approaches me (It may cause you to experience blanching, the dropping of teacups and fainting; consult your doctor). I'm actually co-moderating the California/Hawaii regional caucus on Thursday at 3:30, so all members of the Golden State should be sure to come by (we'll have at least 3 Congressional candidates speaking at the caucus). And I hope to reaffirm old friendships, make new ones, and find random comments buried in the archives of the site and hold them up as emblematic of the Angry Left.

But I wanted to talk about what I've been spending the last week doing, lending my particular abilities to a project you may know about called Crashing The States, a film chronicling the 26-state journey last election season by two members of our community, hekebolos and Reality Bites Back, to visit all of the Netroots Endorsed campaigns and learn the story of the progressive blogosphere along the way. This was an interesting film to edit, so I wanted to take a minute to explain the process.

I've been editing film and television for over a decade (or at least pretending to while I blog), and I looked forward to working on Crashing The States when I was approached to help last year. Fortunately, a hiatus in my current job allowed me for some time over the past two weeks (or unfortunately, depending on your interest in my maintaining my back account).

The key to a project like this is organization. Over 300 hours of footage was shot in dozens of different locations. Determining a coherent narrative when offered this many possibilities is like drinking through a fire hose. The good news is that Gary (Reality Bites Back) did a great job scrutinizing and organizing the footage. Unfortunately, that process simply takes so many man-hours that there was no way we would be able to complete the finished film in time for the convention, which I believe was the initial goal. So we ended up deciding on a 23-minute "mini-version" for Yearly Kos.

When I was brought in on the project a couple weeks ago, Gary had a 30-minute "stringout" of some of the top moments of the trip. I could immedately see that there was a great film hidden within the footage. The challenge would be to find it, and more importantly to set it in the proper context. We were dealing with a few issues. The first was how to juggle the multiple stories. There's an "A" story of the journey by Gary and Dante (hekebolos) itself. You want to offer some of their personalities and give the feeling of forward movement to give a through-line to the film. Then of course we have the story of the different candidates they encountered along the way. They visited over 30 of them, but for the purposes of this mini-film, we focused on people like Jim Webb, Jon Tester, Ned Lamont, Darcy Burner, Brian Keeler, and a couple more. And then you have a third story you have to weave into the film, the story of the netroots, as told by its leading lights, like Markos, Jerome Armstrong, Chris Bowers, Jane Hamsher, etc.

How do you deal with this?

Well, the important thing is to not lose sight of the goal. The "A" story must remain paramount, and you have to find those areas of linkage to weave in the other parts. This is easier in a 90-minute film when you have enough time to address everything. In a 23-minute film we can only give you a taste of that, but I think we did a decent enough job.

The other challenge you have is not to predetermine your audience and make sure that the film is sufficiently broad enough for everyone to understand it. We will be screening it for a very discerning audience at Yearly Kos, people who know about and participate in the blogosphere, and who remember well the battles of 2006. Nevertheless, you must put the film together imagining that the viewer may not have any understanding of the netroots at all. That's why I thought it was good to setup the stakes in 2006, as well as the history of the blogosphere, right off the top. Once the backstory was settled, then we could move into the journey that is essentially our "A" story. Again, this would be easier if the film were much longer and you would have more time to spread everything out. You may want to begin the journey and then fill in the gaps. But for our purposes, we wanted to inform the audience without talking down to them, and this structure seemed to be the best way to go.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how the film came out. The scenery and cinematography is spectacular, and the excitement you see on the ground in these races is palpable. In addition, the access that Gary and Dante managed to get is very impressive. I was glad to have the time to be a part of it.

But this is the beginning and not the end. This 23-minute version is designed to give people a taste of things to come. My hope is that the production can get the necessary funding needed to... well, to hire me, and a composer, and all of the other expenditures needed to complete the film. As a freelance employee, if I'm not working I'm not being paid. This isn't belly-aching, I'm happy to donate my time to something worthwhile, but this is a story that deserves to be told, and it shouldn't be done on nights and weekends, but the right way, with the attention to detail commensurate with the quality of the effort. If you like what you see at the preview screening, I would hope that you would be able to donate to the cause and help fund the first independent documentary film that has arisen purely from the netroots. I think this film can be a document of our movement, and a historical snapshot of the great victory in 2006.

I'm looking forward to having you all see it.

Jonah Goldberg Proves He Can Read

While the LA Times editorial page must be commended for joining the reality-based community and finally calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq, on the othr hand they still print Doughy Pantload Jonah Goldberg, whose scintillating column today reads like a fifth-grade book report on Jonathan Chait's netroots article. He literally regurgitates it, selectively picking and choosing the most off-base parts.

The conservative movement was a response to generations of growing statism at home and abroad. From the Progressive era to the Great Society, government seemed to be expanding in tandem with the threat of communism. The conservative project was first and foremost an intellectual one because, as Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell has written, it takes an ideology to beat an ideology (he also called for a military coup last week, but let's forget that - ed).

The conservative infrastructure that arouses so much envy among liberals today was an afterthought. It was created because the far more valuable real estate — universities, foundations, newspapers and TV networks — were held by liberals. Conservatives used their institutions to have serious arguments about what conservatives should believe.

Apparently loss leaders like the National Review (where Jonah Goldberg makes his money) were just something conservatives threw together with billions of dollars. Never mind that Goldberg mentions a think tank, the Hoover Institution, one of dozens which the conservative movement has constructed over the past 40 years, including AEI, Heritage, Cato, Ayn Rand, The Federalist Society, ACU, Hudson all of which employ people who write for those same "afterthought" publications. This idea that movement conservatism was all about deep thinkers sitting in a salon somewhere proffering arguments back and forth without ever wanting to amplify them is about as dishonest as you can get. And as it's manifested into blogs and talk radio and Fox News, it of course is a noise machine, primarily concerned with collecting media scalps and calling people traitors.

Then Goldberg lets his slip show:

Meanwhile, the supposedly all-powerful Republican noise machine's greatest victory is allegedly the George W. Bush presidency — which he barely won the first time. And, recall, Bush had to campaign as a "compassionate" conservative in order to get as far as he did. If we're so good at PR, why did conservatism need the adjective?

Exactly. Conservatism is deeply hated in this country, and must be dressed up and hidden away in order to appeal to anybody. That's the whole point of spending billions of dollars to come up with a way to sell it!

There are elements of the conservative movement that can be useful to progressives, but mainly they're just organizational and (largely) financial. The rest of it we can manage on our own.

Big Thinking on the Netroots

I'm reading Jonathan Chait's big article on the netroots, and a few things jump out at me. He seems to be ghettoizing the netroots as something that solely happens on national liberal blogs, when in fact there is MoveOn and DFA and PDA and Progressive States and dozens of email groups that aren't clickable or linkable, as well as the fast-growing network of state-level blogs.

This part is kind of funny...

Two deep, organic bonds hold together the netroots. The first is generational. Netroots activists tend to be in their thirties, like Moulitsas and Black, or younger. Even those who are older, such as Armstrong (who is in his early forties), often developed a strong interest in politics only recently. Nearly all of them, then, share the common experience of having their political consciousness awakened and shaped by the Bush years.

...considering I went to school with Chait and he's the same age as Markos.

But overall, I would say that it simply doesn't work to characterize the netroots in any meaningful way because it's too big. Those 500,000 unique daily visitors to Kos have 500,001 different opinions. There are certain points on which there is general agreement - the out-of-touch Beltway media, the wrongness of DLC-style shifts to the right, the need to compete everywhere and organize at the grassroots level, etc. But I would argue that those means are put to far different ends depending on the blogger. And they're all parts of a whole: Media Matters and Orcinus couldn't be more different, yet they're part of the same cause, essentially. And the idea that "thou shalt not criticize the Democratic Party or Democratic candidates" is just not true; I do it almost every day.

A lot of this article feels like a defense of the DLC and a conflation of movement progressivism with movement conservatism. There are similarities in terms of organizing, but I think that's as far as it goes. The guy who's writing this wrote "Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe" online in 2003, and yet he's the one arguing against participatory journalism and arguing for "intellectual honesty" (because that was such an honest enterprise). This idea that Chait, or those who he speaks for in the article, are somehow more intellectually rigorous than netroots who hold fast to some mythical ideology is just untrue. And the idea that Chait is criticizing those who don't "take the facts wherever they go," given the whole Dean-o-Phobe thing and that he still talks about liberals like they're George McGovern incarnate, is just laughable. This article is full of little biases like this.

But the bit on Swampland and the evolution of Joe Klein is pretty good, Unfortunately, I wrote it three months ago.

CA-42: New Blog Targeting Gary Miller

I'm involved in a new site called Trash Dirty Gary, a netroots attempt to shine a light on the corrupt dealings of Inland Empire/Orange County Congressman Gary Miller, one of the biggest sleazebags on Capitol Hill. I just distilled all my previous posts on Miller into one monster to get everyone up to date on what this guy's been doing with his office.

This effort is along the lines of Say No To Pombo and Dump Doolittle, and hopefully by continuing an insistent focus on Miller and his actions we can energize support throughout the local community and spur a challenge. Go check it out.

Netroots Victory

The Nevada Democratic Party couldn't take the pressure and cancelled a Democratic Presidential primary debate scheduled to broadcast on Fox News.

Democratic activists have protested that Fox is not a suitable partner for the event. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards announced Wednesday that he would not participate in the debate, citing Fox's conservative ties as a factor. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has said publicly that he would attend the debate; no other Democratic candidate has formally responded to an invitation.

MoveOn.org Civic Action claims to have collected more than 260,000 signatures on a petition that calls the cable network a "mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel."

Big win for the online community here. Fox News should simply not be legitimized as a news outlet. They're a propaganda operation with the occasional crappy comedy show thrown in for good measure. The right will probably have a caniption fit on this one, but the Democrats are smart to have cancelled this. It's just another example of how the progressive movement is asserting itself within the party.

Support Net Neutrality in California

The Michigan Democratic Party passed a net neutrality resolution as part of its platform over the weekend. This resolution is coming to California at the upcoming CDP convention, and I urge you to support it.

Like so many issues in recent years, given the paralysis at the federal level, states are stepping up to make progress on issues important to them. Today five Western governors, 4 Democrats and Arnold Schwarzenegger, agreed to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with a cap-and-trade system. Net neutrality is almost the reverse of this process. Having been stymied somewhat at the federal level, telcos like AT&T and others are moving into the states with cable franchising bills and other pernicious legislation designed to codify a two-tiered Internet into state law. This is not acceptable, and we must work at the party level to ensure that a free and open Internet is preserved.

The text of the proposed resolution, which will be entered at the California Democratic Party convention in April, is nearly identical to the language of the Michigan resolution:

WHEREAS, the growth of a free and open internet has provided historic advances in the realms of communication, research and economic development; and

WHEREAS, to encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the internet, California consumers are entitled to access the lawful internet content of their choice without interference by their internet service providers; and

WHEREAS, to encourage the transformation of California's economy to meet future needs and to further the growth of California's technology industry, California businesses are entitled to, and require, open and unfettered internet access; therefore be it

RESOLVED that the Lake County Democratic Central Committee supports passage of Net Neutrality legislation in California and at the Federal level.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the California State Democratic Party adopt a position in favor of Net Neutrality in the State Party Platform.

An executive board member in Lake County has already entered in this resolution to the CDP. Now it's our turn. We know that Mark Leno has introduced a Net Neutrality bill in the Legislature. We need to show that he is supported by the party at the CDP sessions in April. There are something on the order of two dozen blogger delegates all over the state who will represent their communities in a couple months. There isn't anyone more able to carry forward this message to our fellow delegates and throughout the party than us. It's time to organize around this issue. We all know the stakes. An internet where content providers are charged for their services at different rates, essentially forced to bribe the gatekeepers to get their information out quickly and freely, will be crippling to the kind of innovation and purpose that has characterized the Internet from the beginning.

I imagine there will be a tremendous amount of organizing from the telcos to keep this language out of the platform, just as there was in Michigan. That's why it's so important to get the jump by making the case to the voters. I would suggest that you call your Assemblymembers on this one as well. An endorsement by the party will go a long way toward keeping enough legislators standing with us on this issue to get it passed.

Virtual March On Washington

One thing I respected the hell out of Molly Ivins for was her ability to be consistently funny about politics, it's a rare art and skill and something to which I aspire online and offline. But in some of her last words in print, she knew that the time to be funny had passed. She knew what to say.

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war," Ivins wrote in the Jan. 11 column. "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

Tomorrow, on February 1, MoveOn.org is leading a virtual march on Washington. You click the link and sign up for a time to call your Representatives. The goal is to get a million calls in to DC opposing the escalation and opposing the war.

I know I slagged on the Senate for wanting to pass this nonbinding resolution, and I'm suspicious of their motives, but I also know the words of Molly Ivins. In this democracy, the people lead, and the smart politicians get in front of the parade and pretend they've been there all along. Our members of Congress need to hear from their constituents. It's up to us to say that this is the priority and they must stand strong. In truth, even something nonbinding would be the first opposition Bush has faced since this war began. If we continue to pressure our Congresscritters, we can end this war and get our troops home to their families.

Please sign up for the virtual march on Washington and do your part to make your voice heard. Do it for Molly.

The Historical Importance of the California Grassroots

I am honored to be serving as a delegate to the CDP along with Ellis Perlman, a Professor Emeritus in political science from the University of Michigan-Flint. He has been a keen observer of grassroots politics as it relates to this state for the past 100 years, and I asked him to put together some information on it, to serve as a historical perspective for those of us who don't quite remember the days of Hiram Johnson and Earl Warren. There's some very good information here, and it all speaks to the fact that this "people-powered" movement is nothing new, it's just being adapted for the 21st century.

Grass Roots and Political Change in California Jan. 21, 2007

Progressivism, building on earlier populist movements, has spurred a variety of grass roots movements during the past hundred years in California. The state’s political history is encouraging. It demonstrates that progressive grass roots movements can achieve power and influence public policy. The examples below illustrate such achievements and influence.

Two factors should be noted. One is that the movements typically have been rooted in the middle and upper middle class. The second is that conservatives have had similar successes, especially in the 1960 and beyond. -Ellis Perlman January 24, 2007

The Progressive movement in California was founded by Chester Rowell and Edward Dickson, two journalists who had become disgusted with the Southern Pacific Railroad’s control of the state legislature. Their efforts ultimately led to formation of the Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican League, with clubs forming throughout the state. This was a grass roots movement, largely from within the Republican Party, to clean up California government, and make it more responsive to Progressive ideals.
Source: Joseph P. Harris, California Politics (Chandler: 1967), pp. 1-13

Another form of grass roots action and accomplishment in California involved the response of women when they first gained the right to vote. Women’s suffrage was opposed by the elite in Los Angeles, and especially by the Los Angeles Times. It was approved by 2000 votes in Los Angeles, and by 3587 votes statewide in a special election on October 10, 1911. By December, more than 82,000 women had registered in Los Angeles, and more than 90% voted in the mayoral election. Ironically, the Times, having opposed the women’s vote, congratulated women for their “intelligent voting” in defeating the Socialist mayoral candidate, John Harriman.
Source: Jane Apostal, “Why Women Should Not Have the Vote: Anti-Suffrage Views in the Southland in 1911,” Southern California Quarterly 70:29-42 (Spring, 1988)

A group of Republicans, mainly liberals, met in August, 1923, to organize a campaign to secure a liberal state legislature, and to oppose Friend W. Richardson, the conservative Republican governor. They created the Progressive Voters League to contest the 1924 and 1926 elections. The very conservative Richardson followed two progressive governors, Hiram Johnson and William Stephens. The Democratic Party was weak, commonly winning no more than a third of the gubernatorial vote. When Richardson was elected in 1922, conservative Republicans had a majority in the Assembly, and almost a majority in the Senate. The Voters League was instrumental in electing a Progressive, Clement Young, as Governor. The League then disbanded, and Conservative James Rolfe was elected governor in 1930. As with most revolts against dominant political authority in 20th century California, grass roots organization played a major role, and the revolt came from within the Republican Party.

Source: Russell Posner, “The Progressive Voters League, 1923-1926,” California Historical Society Quarterly 36:251-261 (September, 1957)

Progressivism is generally considered to have faded as a force in California and nationally by the 1920s-1930s period. Rosanne M. Barker demonstrated that Progressivism continued as an active movement during this period, sustained by women’s organizations, particularly in small towns. She highlights the activity of Pearl Chase and other women activists in Santa Barbara, and notes that progressive women activists were achieving success in other towns, as well. The types of activities and accomplishments described by Barker did not draw much attention, at the time or later. It represented, however, substantial grass roots effort and achievement of progressive goals.
Source: Rosanne M. Barker, “Small Town Progressivism: Pearl Chase and Female Activism in Santa Barbara,” Southern California Quarterly 79:47-100 (Spring, 1997)

The California Republican Assembly was organized in 1934 as a response to Republican losses in 1932. Clubs were formed throughout the state. By 1938, Earl Warren had become the key figure in bringing moderate/progressive Republican leadership to power, to control the state for the next twenty years. Subsequent grass root movements, beginning with United Republicans of California and the John Birch Society regained conservative control of the Republican Party by the 1960s.
Source: Richard Harvey, Dynamics of California Government and Politics (Wadsworth, 1970) ch. 2

The California Democratic Council, with chapters throughout the state and a peak membership of 66,000, grew out of Adlai Stevenson’s unsuccessful 1952 campaign for President. The political leader most associated with the CDC was Alan Cranston, State Controller and later U. S. Senator. The CDC was a grass roots movement, one generated from within the Democratic Party. Its membership tended to be middle class and suburban, as were the several Republican grass roots movements that fostered progressive reform.
Source: Clyde E. Jacobs and John F. Gallagher, California Government: One Among Fifty (Macmillan, 1966), pp. 102-106

I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did (or perhaps not; I'm a history nerd). It's interesting that grassroots movements in this state have traditionally started in the middle and upper-middle classes; not surprising, certainly on the basis of leisure time. I think our challenge in the netroots is to ensure a multiplicity of voices, to understand and hear from the concerns of the poor and those typically not present in the larger political debate.

The other factor is that our opposition is just as equipped to pull this off, so we must be smarter, and grow larger, and continue to innovate to maintain any kind of advantage. We also must keep an eye on our legislators in Sacramento, as the "clean up government" mantra has bounced back and forth between the parties over the years.