We Need A Right-Wing Version Of...

I guess it's a true sign of the times. I remember countless conversations about how the left needs their version of talk radio, think tanks, Drudge, a message machine, etc. Now that the right is out of power, they are clamoring for their version of the Huffington Post, their version of MoveOn.org, their version of a Center For American Progress, etc. It's a real reversal.

Two problems with this. One is that the successful versions of grassroots organizations like MoveOn are organic. You cannot say "I'm building a right-wing MoveOn" and then expect everyone to join.

The second is that THE RIGHT ALREADY HAS THESE STRUCTURES. Most of them were built in response to existing structures on the right, and very intentionally so. Wanting to build new ones is nice and all, but rather besides the point. Conservatives have the Heritage Foundation. The American Enterprise Institute. Drudge. Talk radio. About 1,000 judicial organizations. CPAC. And on and on. Their problem is with IDEAS. Well over a majority of the public doesn't like them. And I've seen no indication that any of these new groups would alter any of those unpopular ideas. They still use tax cuts as a solution for everything, and any problem that cannot be solved by tax cuts doesn't exist. Having the 947th organization to promote that discredited idea won't exactly help.

Now, sometimes dressing up bad facts in a new suit can work, and maybe that's all that's going on here. The idea is that the new groups would remove the taint of the Republican Party's troubles. Maybe. But that R next to the name remains a pretty powerful reminder, at least for the next few years. I don't see this paying off in the near term.

The New Landscape

In 1994 when Betsy McCaughey wrote her piece in The New Republic full of lies abut the Clinton health care reform bill, the DC establishment accepted it uncritically because, well, she was in The New Republic, and nobody liked these Clinton outsiders anyway, and there was virtually no countervailing opinion independent of the White House that offered any refutation of her claims. The Village was the one and true arbiter of her story, and their acceptance of it colored the entire health care debate from that point forward.

Fast forward to 2009, and another fallacious McCaughey claim based on a clear misreading of legislative language makes the rounds of conservative media. Her claim that health information technology and comparative effectiveness research would cause rationing and give big gubmint a veto over your medical care is ridiculous. Only this time, a mainstream reporter actually chronicled how that conservative media puke funnel reinforces itself and creates opinion where there are only lies. And then a cable news show thoroughly debunks the lie in a long segment. And a series of blog posts reveal that McCaughey is on the board of directors of a medical device company and therefore has a conflict of interest over stopping comparative effectiveness studies, or that she received stock options from that company days before writing her flase op-ed in Bloomberg, or that the think tank she works at is funded by drug companies. As Ezra Klein says, this is a very new age:

Will Olbermann's segment on McCaughey end her relevance? Probably not. But it -- along with the blog posts, and inevitable columns -- will be part of what any CNN producer sees if he wants to run a segment on McCaughey the next morning. It will be part of what an NPR editor reads when she's researching a show. None of this progressive infrastructure existed in 1994. She published her smear job in an influential journal of putatively liberal opinion that was being edited by a self-professed conservative and it quickly become the conventional wisdom. This time, such arguments will not go unchallenged. That doesn't mean they will disappear. McCaughey's arguments are already taking root in the fertile swamp of talk radio. But it will be much harder for such bits of disingenuous nonsense to cement themselves in the center. And by the same token, it will be much easier for liberals to make, and disseminate, their own arguments.

I don't know if that's entirely true - there's nothing the Village likes more than to be willingly blind, and they'll probably opt for a "teach the controversy" approach - but that's better than the 1994 landscape.

Sometimes I definitely feel like I'm spitting into the wind out in the lonely blogosphere, and yet letting smears go unchallenged and letting progressive ideas get sandbagged is no longer an option. There is a progressive infrastructure now that can at least get a piece of the spotlight through relentless effort. It ought to actually be funded (greetings, liberal angels!), but even today it does have an impact.

Full Spectrum Organizing

What the Obama campaign is doing really deserves a full academic treatment. Campaign managers and consultant need to study it for the next twenty years. The level of innovation is really a quantum leap.

Their Internet fundraising, inspiring low-dollar donors to contribute over and over, has become an alternative public financing system and allowed them to stretch their dollars on the air war, including national spots at key moments and the upcoming purchase of a half-hour block of primetime a week before the election. But they are also advertising in the most unlikely places, using Google ads and iPhone applications and even buying billboards in video games like Burnout Paradise (I'm not a gamer, but Burnout rules and it's a perfect venue to find young male voters).



As for the 50-state strategy, they're being realistic (obviously) but they aren't leaving anything to chance, going hard after the extra electoral vote in Nebraska and using outlets like the DCCC to make sure allies are sent to Congress to help implement his agenda.

The voter registration project over the summer appears to have been a resounding success. An unusual amount of that record fundraising was put into work on the ground, and it has led to a five percent increase nationwide in Democratic registration, which is really game-changing and significant. In Ohio alone, 666,000 new voters have been registered, making NINETY-FOUR PERCENT of the population eligible to vote in 2008, a stunning achievement.

And then, there's the care and feeding attended to a new generation of organizers, which will be the backbone of the party for the next two decades.

Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.

The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization.

Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation. Obama must continue to feed and lead the organization they have built—either as president or in opposition. If he doesn't, then the broader progressive movement needs to figure out how to pick this up, keep it going and spread it to all 50 states. For any of that to happen, the incredible organizing that has taken place this year inside Obama's campaign—and also here and there in Clinton's—needs to be thoroughly understood and celebrated. Toward that end, here are glimpses from several days of observations and interviews in Central and Southwest Ohio. This article focuses on the field program's innovative "neighborhood team" structure and the philosophy of volunteer management underlying it that is best summarized by the field campaign's ubiquitous motto: "Respect. Empower. Include."

Read that whole article. The number that is unbelievable is that around 40% of everyone in the likely voter screen of one major poll has been contacted by the Obama campaign. That's a bigger number than anybody has ever seen.

As part of one of those neighborhood teams, it's really encouraging to see. And I do think that the teams are going to be a significant help to the progressive movement. I don't think they are tethered to the party or even Senator Obama, though that is the focus right now. After the election, a shift will occur, to cementing an agenda, and these teams will be the infrastructure for making sure that agenda gets attention, recognition and passage. And if it doesn't, I don't think anyone will hesitate to demand accountability and punish those legislators who vote against the interests of their constituents.

This election could have been won by the standard Democratic approach. Obama has built an enduring structure to last far into the future. This is really important in these times of struggle and great challenge, and it's going to lead us into the 21st century the right way.

If you're so inclined, you can give Barack a day and be a part of this exciting experiment in modern organizing.

You Can't Build A Progressive Movement With Conservative Republicans

Digby and I, along with a bunch of LA-based bloggers, were fortunate enough to have lunch a couple days ago with Darcy Burner, the progressive candidate in WA-08 who is fighting to upend Bush rubber stamp Rep. Dave Reichert. By the way, give money to Darcy.

She is optimistic about her chances in November, but as Howie Klein, who set up the luncheon, notes, she is being somewhat stymied by the counterproductive way that labor unions and Dem-leaning orgs sometimes do business.

One thing we did discuss, though, is the NEA and how they, and other "progressive" interest groups like them routinely sell out progressive candidates for their own pathetic, shallow and ineffectual Inside the Beltway politics. Earlier today I corresponded with someone from the campaign of Florida Blue Dog Christine Jennings. She was trying to persuade me that Jennings was a good match for Blue America and, naively, mentioned other "progressive" organizations that had endorsed her. One was HRC, one of the most craven and despicable of all the sell-out one-issue bottom feeders in DC. Desperate for the "credibility" of bipartisanship, HRC looks for Republicans who may be disastrous for gay families but who aren't quite as disastrous as a Jim Inhofe, John Cornyn or self-loathing closet queen Mitch McConnell. Take their shameful endorsement of Susan Collins whose so-so voting record is no match for her Democratic opponent's perfect voting record. Collins voted for all Bush's hideous, violently anti-gay judicial appointments. Tom Allen, of course, opposed every one of them and, as a senator, has vowed to never vote to confirm anyone who favors discriminating against any group of Americans.

The NEA, similarly desperate for that kind of bogus Inside-the-Beltway credibility, scoured the country for Republican incumbents in high profile, tight races who they could endorse. One was Darcy's abysmal opponent, Dave Reichert, and another was Missouri reactionary goon Sam Graves. Like HRC, the NEA has lost all credibility. (Fortunately the American Federation of Teachers endorsed Darcy, which means the bureaucrats who waste tax money are for Reichert and the actual front line teachers are for Darcy.)

This is just ridiculous. No matter how many endangered Republicans the NEA endorses, they are not going to fully support the kind of education policies the NEA purports to wanting. And the most important vote any member of Congress makes is for the leadership. Dave Reichert would vote for John Boehner. The NEA endorsement is an implicit endorsement for Boehner.

I'm sure the calculus here is that Reichert might be with them on one or two extra votes if he wins, whereas Burner will vote with their interests anyway, so why not cover all of their bases? This does nothing, of course, to help progressive leaders actually move education policy. And it's important to note that right-leaning groups NEVER do this, and certainly not in hotly contested races. Much like our leadership feels the need to extend remarks like "John McCain is a hero" before disagreeing with his policies, organizations like the NEA feel like they must appear bipartisan, while the NRA dispenses with such niceties. Look what they're running against Obama.

Burner is not the only candidate to speak out about this. Josh Zeitz, a progressive candidate in NJ-04, has spoken out as well.



Public pressure is what will end this perniciousness... or better, building truly progressive infrastructure to take the power out of the hands of the single-issue groups. Burner is endorsed by Blue America, which over its lifetime has raised $1.288 million dollars for candidates and causes. Until groups that claim to support progressives actually do so, they're your best bet.

Progressive Book Club

For years, conservative authors shot to the top of best-seller lists by taking losses on their books, having publishers buy thousands and pulp them, or selling them at extreme discounts through conservative book clubs. The gambit was to get on best-seller lists, not only to entice more people to buy the book, but to give the ideas and the authors a patina of seriousness, to get them booked on talk shows and such. I'm pleased to see that progressives are building a book club of their own.

Starting on Monday, the new Progressive Book Club is inviting readers to join and buy three books at $1 apiece in exchange for the obligation to buy four books over the next two years.

The brainchild of Elizabeth Wagley, a former fund-raiser and communications adviser for nonprofit groups including Doctors of the World, the Progressive Book Club is trying to update the paradigm of such familiar institutions as the Book-of-the-Month Club, as well as the 44-year-old Conservative Book Club.

Ms. Wagley said that she believed the new book club would fill a void for progressively minded readers. “The right has always understood the power of ideas, the power of books as legitimizers of ideas,” she said. “I see the opportunity with the book-club structure to create a powerful tool to showcase the ideas of the left.”

There are some excellent books on the reading list over at the Progressive Book Club, including Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, Jim Webb's A Time To Fight, Matthew Yglesias' Heads In The Sand, and Cliff Schechter's The Real McCain. This is an excellent project. There have always been plenty of progressive books and progressive authors out there, but this will get the books in more hands, and hopefully get the authors in more prominent positions in the national debate.

OK, What The Hell Is EMILY's List Doing?

I was prepared to bash EMILY's List, which is by all accounts seems to be a fine organization, for endorsing Nikki Tinker, a Harold Ford/DLC clone who isn't personally pro-choice. Now, EMILY's List's ENTIRE raison d'etre is to support pro-choice women for elected office, so I'm not seeing the point here. Plus Rep. Steve Cohen, her primary opponent, is a great progressive, and they're not expanding the field of pro-choice legislators whatsoever by going after this seat. Cohen is a Jewish man in a predominantly black seat in Memphis, Tennessee, but that doesn't mean EMILY's List has to jump on board with any woman challenger.

But it doesn't stop there. Pam Spaulding writes:

In one Congressional race (Tennessee’s 9th district, which includes Memphis and environs), EMILY’s List is backing a candidate, Nikki Tinker, who is up against a pro-choice, pro-LGBT incumbent, Steven Cohen. Tinker’s campaign and surrogates have engaged in disturbing tactics that show how conflicts between core Democratic constituencies have erupted into ways difficult to paper over.

Rep. Steve Cohen, who is Jewish, was attacked in a flier (left, “Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the Jews hate Jesus") distributed by a black homobigoted pastor from Murphreesboro who is not even from Cohen’s district, Rev. George Brooks. Tinker, who happens to be black as well, and was called to condemn the flier. (WaPo):

[T]he literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to ”see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election.”

The Commercial Appeal wrote an editorial in Wednesday’s paper condemning Tinker for not speaking out against the anti-Semitic literature.

“What does Nikki Tinker think about anti-Semitic literature being circulated that might help her unseat 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in the Democratic primary next August?” the editorial asked. “The question goes to the character of the woman who wants to represent the 9th District, and 9th District voters deserve an answer. But Tinker declined to return a phone call about the flier.”

That's really disgusting. Is there any vetting going on at Ellen Malcolm's offices?

The real sad thing is that unless you get a group like EMILY's List aboard you can kiss a primary challenge goodbye. And this is who they decide to lend that power to. There is so much work to be done.

Consolidation Cont'd.

A lot of people are concerned about Barack Obama's move to de-fund independent groups supporting his candidacy that would attack John McCain primarily in television ads. The reverberations have already claimed their first casualty - Progressive Media USA.

Progressive Media USA, the group organized to be the main soft-money advertising vehicle for Democrats in the fall, will dramatically scale back its efforts in deference to the wishes of the party's presumptive nominee.

"Progressive Media will not be running an independent ad campaign this year," David Brock, the head of the organization, confirmed in a statement obtained by The Fix this morning.

"Progressive Media was established to be an independent on-going progressive issue advocacy organization," Brock added. "We were not established for one issue, one candidate or one election cycle. But donors and potential donors are getting clear signals from the Obama camp through the news media and we recognize that reality."

I disagree with this effort by Obama. It's not like his ads have been setting the world on fire, so I don't know why we should expect them to be so amazing that nobody else should be able to throw in their two cents. I understand that the "change Washington" rhetoric demands that 527s get demonized, but plenty of outside groups have worked for Obama throughout the primary, particularly labor unions. Defining McCain is going to be a key strategy going into the fall, and while Obama's rhetoric has shown he can do that, from an advertising standpoint he's untested. There's no reason that you unilaterally disarm, and all this does is make it easier to criticize McCain when the inevitable conservative 527s come after you. I don't think that's a good enough trade-off.

Of course, this again gets to Obama consolidating power within the party, and this is the negative side effect of that. We need a vibrant movement outside of electoral politics to push progressive policy, and I'm not willing to give up that power to a President. I think that Obama's use of field and organizing to grow the Democratic base is laudable - his voter registration effort is the best thing to happen to the party in a long time. In fact, I was at the Los Angeles event in this video:



But that doesn't mean you cede everything to the guy. Outside groups can work TOGETHER with a President, and he has to understand that.

The Obama Party

On Saturday, in over 100 locations across the country, the Obama Vote for Change campaign will roll out with kickoff events all over the country designed to register and mobilize voters. At the event I'll be attending in South Los Angeles, the goal is to register 2,000 new voters in one afternoon. Multiply that out and you have 200,000 voters registered by one campaign in a single day. And that's only the beginning. Marc Ambinder has caught on to just how seismic this summer has the potential of being.

The Obama campaign calls its "Vote for Change" voter registration drive a mere voter registration drive. Nothing to see here, folks, except for ordinary people helping ordinary people gain the franchise.

But it's more than that. The Vote For Change program will lay the foundation for Obama's general election get-out-the-vote efforts. Obama aides won't say much more, but I gather that the campaign is constructing an incredibly elaborate online interface to allow its more than a million donors and volunteers to directly persuade their neighbors through a variety of media. Names gathered from the voter registration effort will be merged with names gathered through Obama's primary efforts and the names off of the Democratic Party's integrated voter file as well as lists purchased from outside vendors.

On election day, Obama might have more than a million individuals volunteering on his behalf. That should scare the beejeesus out of the McCain campaign and the RNC.

There's nothing shadowy about this - it's an extension of what the Obama campaign has been doing since he entered the race. He's building a new Democratic infrastructure, regimenting it under his brand, and enlisting new technologies and more sophisticated voter contacting techniques to turn it from a normal GOTV effort into a lasting movement. The short-term goal is to increase voter turnout by such a degree that Republicans will wither in November, not just from a swamp of cash but a flood of numbers. The long-term goal is to subvert the traditional structures of the Democratic Party since the early 1990s, subvert the nascent structures that the progressive movement has been building since the late 1990s, and build a parallel structure, under his brand, that will become the new power center in American politics. This is tremendous news.

However, despite his calls that change always occurs from the bottom up, these structures are very much being created and controlled from the top down. In a laudable piece by Matt Stoller, and not just because he quotes me, he discusses how Obama is consolidating the elements of the party and streamlining the message.

Obama has created a number of significant infrastructure pieces through his campaign, displacing traditional groups the way he promised he would by signaling the end of the old politics of division and partisanship.

Voter Registration: Obama has launched a 50 state registration drive [...] I have heard from several sources that the Obama campaign is sending out signals to donors, specifically at last weekend's Democracy Alliance convention, to stop giving to outside groups, including America Votes. The campaign also circulated negative press reports about Women's Voices Women's Vote, implying voter suppression.

Obama Organizing Fellows: These are unpaid positions, and they will be used to do field organizing, message, and helping to "continue to build the movement". This is pure leadership development, though it continues the class-based diminution of talent by refusing to pay, a problem outlined in Crashing the Gates.

Money: MyBarackObama.com: With 1.5 million donors, this campaign has blown away anything we've ever seen in terms of grassroots fundraising. The technology is all centralized, so Obama knows the name, address, giving patterns, and occupation of every donor out there, as well as social networking information, like who the best raisers are. He has bypassed Actblue, and will probably end up building in a Congressional slate feature to further party build while keeping control of the data.

One email from Moveon to their full list can bring in between $100k to $1M for a candidate, with $1M being the very top end of the range. With one good email to his list, in a few months, Obama will probably be able to bring in $1-3M for a Senate candidate under attack or split that among several. 10-20% of the money going to Senate candidates this cycle might come from Barack Obama's internet operation. Stunning.

Field: MyBarackObama.com (MyBO): MyBarackObama.com is the cornerstone of the campaign, and it will have between 10-15 million opt-in members by election day. This group can be used for lobbying on legislation, GOTV, and donations. It's a cross between Moveon.org and the DNC, and with the White House, it can transform progressive politics and further amplify the power of the Presidency. As coordinated campaigns pick up, and the top of the ticket brings coattails, organizing power is going to further flow to the Obama campaign.

Message and Politics: MyBarackObama.com: Obama used youtube to push back on Reverend Wright, something he will continue to do to move beyond sound bite politics. He has a good press shop and a way to push message out to the web. The campaign has also, despite thousands of interviews with a huge number of outlets, refused to have Obama interact on progressive blogs. The Fox News situation, where Obama went on Fox News and mismanaged communications, drew criticism from Moveon because taking down Fox News has been a key strategic goal of that organization; nevertheless, the group supported him because of overwhelming adulation from their membership.

This is a far different strategy than the McCain campaign, who, though he hates blogs, talks to them, or the Clinton campaign, who invites them on her calls. This is NOT a criticism, by the way, it's obviously worked as a strategy to centralize messaging power around the Obama shop while neutering a potentially off-message rowdy group. That has its downsides, which I'll get into, but it is a strategy.

I'm also told, though I can't confirm, that Obama campaign has also subtly encouraged donors to not fund groups like VoteVets and Progressive Media. These groups fall under the 'same old Washington politics' which he wants to avoid, a partisan gunslinging contest he explicitly advocates against.

Stoller continues that the progressive structures built around opposition to Bush and partisan combat are outdated, in Obama's view, or at least not the perception he wants to carry across. Obama's bet is to mass such a large group that nobody could possibly compete with him in a left-right matchup from either side, and so he offers the options of "unite or die," to borrow the phrase from the John Adams miniseries. These are smart, new structures and a coordinated message to a degree that the Democratic Party hasn't seen. He's reinventing the Party and training a new generation of leaders, and leveraging technology in a way that will pay dividends for decades. Forget the "he can't win X subgroup" nonsense; what's at work here is so much bigger.

There are a lot of positives to this. The old leadership of the Party has become ossified, and Obama's takeover is an extension of the Dean movement, only on less explicitly ideological terms. To strip a Lanny Davis and a Terry McAuliffe of their power is frankly a welcome development. The figures in an Obama Administration will likely be core figures within the party for the next 20 years. The next generation will be characterized, as Chris Bowers perceives, with a set of more technocratic, good-government advocates, policy types who have a command of their specific bailiwicks, rather than the corporate-friendly DLC types of recent yore. Neither of these are necessarily progressive, but I'd consider the former group, motivated by policy over politics, far more palatable. And in addition, investing in voter registration and mobilization is the wisest use of resources that I've seen in the Democratic Party in my lifetime.

What's less positive is the centralization of all these networks and amplifiers, and how that will work as a potential governing strategy, AND where that leaves those groups who have grown up in the current polarized environment, and prospered. I don't think it's the end of them - even if the big donors desert some progressive movement groups, the Obama campaign itself has shown the ability of a self-sustaining small-donor network. In addition, some of these groups, like the 2004 structures built to run field campaigns in the Kerry election, were so ad hoc and combustible that they offered no long-term hopes for success anyway, and the single-issue silos of the past have always had a range of flaws.

Still, outside amplifiers are going to be needed to enact Obama's agenda. There's a myth that progressive groups like MoveOn would dry up without a lightning rod like Bush to oppose but I don't think that's true. People aren't only mad with Bush but really are seeking legitimate solutions and will get excited about them. If Obama is shutting out these organizers who are positioned to help him put through those solutions, can he possibly build a parallel movement big enough to combat the institutional barriers in Washington? I actually think it's possible he can, but the more important question is this: what happens the first time that an agenda item fails, when Congress suddenly finds its backbone and starts acting like an independent branch of government again, when a media which loves to raise heroes only to trash them engages in that familiar cycle, when Obama experiences a legislative loss? It's bound to happen, and the question is how he'll keep together his movement, built on his image, without outside help? I appreciate the washing away of the Clintonite strain at the top of the party, which I think is out of step with the historical moment, so much so that Hillary Clinton has spent three months running away from it. But wresting away ALL the power and consolidating it is I think a misunderstanding of how inside and outside groups can be mutually reinforcing and part of a more vibrant cultural and political movement, and how the culture is moving toward more decentralized, more viral, looser networks to organize. Obama's movement, based on unity and hope, is working because politics is of the moment, a fad, Paris Hilton. To sustain that, you must institutionalize engagement, civic participation, awareness and action, even in a non-horse race year, as a necessary facet of citizenship. And there's no reason to shut down reinforcing progressive structures that can keep it fun and interesting and vital.

We are not yet here to stay. The progressive organizations, the advocacy groups, even the blogosphere may be ephemeral if it doesn't sustain itself. If the flow of money keeps moving in only one direction, less people will be able to continue the work (I hate that Obama isn't paying his organizing fellows, perpetuating that myth of "psychic income" and barring entire classes of people from the process). Obama is not trying to sweep us off the table or anything, but certainly he has his own power base and his own ideas for how best to movement-build. There's a bit of overlap, but our role is going to be radically different and to a degree unwanted at first; see the Barack Obama MySpace page incident. There's a happy medium here, but it requires a great deal of consideration and study.

Every State Counts

I live in California, a big, diverse state and an electoral prize. If I lived in one of the two dozen states that Hillary Clinton has claimed don't count in the nomination process, I'd be offended. Actually, I still am.

Solis Doyle's departure capped a rough weekend for Clinton after she lost the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska, Washington state, Maine and the Virgin Islands to Obama.

She said she never expected to do well in any of those contests, even though she had been favored to win Maine. Clinton repeated her criticism that the caucus system is undemocratic and caters mostly to party activists.

As for Louisiana, "You had a very strong and very proud African- American electorate, which I totally respect and understand," Clinton said.

She noted that the states she won on Super Tuesday were all states Democrats must win to succeed in the general election. Many of the states Obama won that night, such as Alaska and North Dakota, would not be competitive for Democrats next November, she said.

Clinton was up 57-10 in Maine at one point. Furthermore, their caucuses allowed absentee balloting, which kind of blows away that whole "undemocratic" argument (which I didn't hear her say a lot before Iowa or Nevada). "Caucus" is another word for "election paid for and run by the Party," and the rules are often very different from one to another. They are party-building exercises, important for the Democratic infrastructure, and most crucial, IN PLACE AND WELL-KNOWN before Clinton ever got into the race, so it's not exactly a shocker.

Furthermore, you do tend to campaign the way you govern. So Clinton is essentially saying that she'd only care about the big Democratic states in her Administration, is that what I can gather? I feel like we need to build the party everywhere so that we're not confined to this narrow set of states, and Obama's activism in these currently red states is going to leave infrastructure in place for decades. One looks like he's running to be the President of all Americans; the other is running to be President of elites. I mean, that's certainly what it looks like, and I REALLY don't want a President denigrating the work of the activists of his or her own party.

Last night at a forum Sen. Clinton claimed that Obama might not be willing to fight for Democratic values. Should we ask Democrats in Maine about that? Washington? Nebraska? Louisiana?

That really irks me.

UPDATE: Apparently Wisconsin's largely white, working-class female vote doesn't matter either.

Daylight for the Progressive Movement

Good for Barack Obama for reconsidering his play to wealthy state interests in favor of the larger principle of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

With pressure mounting on Democratic presidential candidates to adopt hard-line positions on curbing global warming, Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday backtracked from his long-held support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal as an alternative fuel to power motor vehicles.

The Illinois Democrat made his announcement with little fanfare — in a dryly worded and technical-sounding e-mail sent late in the day from his Senate office to environmental advocacy groups — and did not mention the issue during an appearance at a Brentwood gas station, described in a new Times blog, designed to shore up his green bona fides with a renewed call to nationalize California's ambitious goals for reducing carbon levels in fuel [...]

"Senator Obama supports research into all technologies to help solve our climate change and energy dependence problems, including shifting our energy use to renewable fuels and investing in technology that could make coal a clean-burning source of energy," the e-mail said. "However, unless and until this technology is perfected, Senator Obama will not support the development of any coal-to-liquid fuels unless they emit at least 20% less life-cycle carbon than conventional fuels."

Coal-to-liquid as it stands right now is a horrible idea, worse than nuclear power because it is a dangerous pollutant without improving the carbon footprint. It's good that Obama reconsidered. But it's better that the progressive movement could get out the truth on the issue and actually change the debate. That Sen. Kerry went to a state side to announce his opposition to coal-to-liquid shows exactly how powerful this progressive movement is becoming in creating conventional wisdom. The paradigm is really starting to shift, and for the first time in a while I feel that regular people are actually being listened to.

UPDATE: See also Dick Durbin's diary on the Big Orange Satan, where he actually understands the issue of funding progressive infrastructure. We have a long way to go, but I see that we're breaking through the ice somewhat.

Also, it's hilarious to see the coal industry whining like babies:

Popovich said the industry had been impressed by Obama's "willingness to take a stand that's unpopular with some of his party's constituents."

He called the senator's new statement the result of a "jihad" waged by some environmentalists against the coal industry.

"Clearly they are trying to intimidate Obama from doing something sensible," Popovich said.

Yeah, sensibly destroy the planet and make us all have to use oxygen masks to breathe.

Sorry we weren't here for a while, but the average citizen is back. And we're talking. And we're not going away. And you and your rich corporate buddies are going to have to deal with it.

Chairman Dean in Palm Springs

This is a nice write-up of a private fundraising stop by the DNC Chair in Palm Springs, and the connection between his message and the message we present almost every day on this site is striking.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says his party will need more outreach than money to win California in 2008.

The former presidential candidate and Vermont governor was in Palm Springs Saturday for a private fund raiser, as reported on thedesertsun.com Saturday.

"The strategy in California is not to spend $30 million on television," said Dean, who addressed the media outside.

"People want to be contacted door to door, and they want to be contacted on the Internet, and they want their opinions to matter," he said.

"If we don't start doing grassroots politics in California, we're not going to be able to count on California in the foreseeable future."

A-frickin-men.

Taking this state for granted the past 16 years has led to an apathetic voter class, a Republican governor, and a general weakening of the state Democratic Party. There's no cohesion because there's no outreach beyond the big urban centers. The fact that Dean made this pitch in Palm Springs is in itself significant.

Kevin Corcoran, a sales and marketing consultant, said he hosted Dean's reception in his Palm Springs home "to begin the conversation for 2008."

Too often, he said, candidates bypass the valley and head to Los Angeles for outreach and fund-raising efforts.

"It's a great opportunity for the people in our community - the access to Dean to learn about what he's doing, what the party's doing and start to develop a point of view," Corcoran said.

We need a 58-county strategy in California for the future of the party. The demographic shifts are tremendous and we need to go where the people are going; namely, to the interior counties that offer the best chance for party growth.

Fortunately, the burgeoning of the state progressive blogosphere and other outreach developments have given Democrats across the state the opportunity to band together and offer a real alternative. But this is only a beginning.

I hope Gov. Dean attends the CDP convention and makes it just as clear there how we need to mimic his "Be everywhere" strategy for this state, which is a message that Art Torres and everyone in the Party must internalize.

The Power Of Progressive Activism

In one day, John Aravosis at AmericaBlog went from defining a problem (some really violently homophobic Snickers ads from the Super Bowl) to digging up information on the creators of the problem (the owners of Snickers are billionaire Republican activists), to marshalling support in opposition to the problem (HRC and GLAAD came out against Snickers and Mars Inc.), to getting Snickers to pull the website where the ads lived, and a personal apology from the company for their offensive advertising (me, I think all advertising is offensive, that's why I own a TiVo).

Aravosis is the best we have at building grassroots acitivist campaigns online and getting results. The time frame on this one is incredible. Great work by AmericaBlog.

And it shows that the progressive message is a force in getting desired results. Matt Stoller writes about how the progressive movement proved more powerful than AIPAC in walking back John Edwards.

On January 23, Raw Story published a speech by John Edwards in which he used extremely bellicose language to describe Iran. It was a shocking display of ignorance on the part of Edwards, and the conference itself was composed of neoconservative hawks itching for action against Iran. Steve Clemons dubbed it a 'war party'. Supporters of Edwards, of which I considered myself one until that moment, had a real awakening as to whether he had genuinely learned lessons from his war vote in Iraq.

Over the next few weeks, progressives picked up the speech, and confronted Edwards in various venues, including the blogs and the American Prospect. He was also accosted by supporters, staffers, and advisors, all of whom found themselves with the same level of pause. He has walked back his rhetoric, for which he deserves credit (and a bit of scorn). And then on Meet the Press, according to Digby, John Edwards performed admirably.

This is some powerful stuff. I have always had suspicions of John Edwards, but it doesn't really matter if any of us trust him on a personal level. The issue is what are the structural constraints upon someone's behavior. And now Edwards, because of the blogs and new media outlets like Raw Story, will be confronted with his Iran comments repeatedly, and walked back against hawkishness. These constraints will apply to any candidate, and it's going to be interesting to watch as the public begins to feel its oats around its newly empowered state [...]

So what we saw with Edwards, a brutal assault on his credibility after he kowtowed to AIPAC, was not an isolated pattern. It's what happens when progressives get organized and work to beat back corrupted ideas that flourish in secret. It's what happens when we genuinely listen to Howard Dean and take power for ourselves. We should consider this in 2008, as we move forward. Debate makes our party and our country stronger. Let's not pretend that positivity is a good thing - criticism walked Edwards back from insane rhetoric on Iran. If we can figure out the funding and racial bridges, it can do a whole lot more when the next President takes office.

One point here I think is very right. When the Clintons did their Third Way bit in the 1990s there was nobody on the left credibly constraining them and pushing them in a more liberal direction. Even if Hillary is nominated and elected, the rules of the game have changed. It's not about the candidate so much (although that's incredibly important) as how the progressive movement can be a lever to push people out of the default ways of thinking. People are getting active in their democracy, and once that starts it's very hard to stop. So there's going to be pressure from the left in ways I don't think anyone's really seen in the modern age, not on a national level. Nobody's going to give up fighting fights that need to be fought.

Big Ups for Calitics

As you may know, I write for Calitics, the state-level progressive community blog serving the Golden State. I'm happy to hear that BlogPAC, a progressive blogger PAC run by Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, has given Calitics a grant to cover a years' worth of hosting costs.

It's important that the progressive movement sustains itself rather than gives all its money to the consultant class that still uses all the money to get people elected. Progressive blogs have a unique power to set the political agenda at the state, local, and national levels. They can generate buzz and activate core supporters. It's great that organizations like BlogPAC are recognizing this potential and seeking to fund it. I'm proud to be a part of this effort.

You can contribute to BlogPAC at the link. It's important to reward those who are doing hard work for little or no pay.