Will "OpenLeft" Open Doors in DC?

Two giants of the liberal blogosphere joined forces today with a longtime Washington consultant to launch a new website, OpenLeft, designed as a hub for dialogue between progressive outsiders and Washington insiders.

Former Clinton White House official Mike Lux is leading the effort with Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers of MyDD, the influential blog that forced tight-fisted Democrats to donate more than $2 million to candidates last year, helped stymie Fox's Democratic presidential debate, and launched one of the first "grassroots polls" in the history of American politics. (Readers of Huffington Post may also recognize all three as guest bloggers on this site.)

"OpenLeft is not just about tools and tactics. We have a different set of ideas about how our culture and country should work," says Stoller, a 29-year-old Harvard graduate who has repeatedly rocked the Democratic establishment with searing blog attacks and aggressive grassroots campaigns. "We believe that power and wealth should be distributed more equally than they are now," he explains. So the site aims to empower netroots activists, challenge and criticize institutional players--and somehow build progressive coalitions along the way.

The organizers envision OpenLeft--named as a counterpoint to the 1960s' New Left--as the newsletter of the broader progressive movement, which increasingly uses Internet activism to force "open" transparency and accountability on the political establishment. Of course, that establishment includes some bloggers, who now work for politicians or run "A-list" blogs, which draw enough readers and revenue to make them free-standing media elites. As Bowers emphasizes in his first post on OpenLeft, "what was once a fluid, 'outsider' and 'open' form of new media is now witnessing the crystallization of a new 'establishment' all its own."

Yet unlike most liberal blogs, insiders will not just drop by OpenLeft for "chats" and fundraising. The organizers are recruiting institutional partners to fund the site, collaborate on campaigns and stick around for sustained criticism from their fiery bloggers and commenters.

Lux says OpenLeft will work with organizations like the Sierra Club, People for the American Way (PFAW) and USAction to provide "a bridge between outside movement people and insiders." The blog offers organizations potential visibility, members and fundraising, if they engage readers in a real ongoing dialogue about their strategy and policy objectives. Lux thinks groups will embrace a chance to engage new members, because the old model for liberal organizations is already dead. He has a point. Most of today's activists are not card-carrying members of anything, they don't respond to direct mail fundraising, and they are unmoved by initiatives that assume their support and ignore their ideas.

OpenLeft also wants to scale and routinize debates between insiders and the netroots, (a term the founders find misleading and underinclusive). So the blog will adopt an unusual policy for the blogosphere: a right of response. Stoller says every liberal organization or person facing criticism from the site will have a right to respond in a thorough "front page" post. (Right-wingers need not apply, since OpenLeft only caters to a progressive audience.) The rule would address a common failure of both the traditional media and the blogosphere; neither generally allow sufficient space for rebuttals from most subjects of their coverage.

Some critics point out that blog attacks are not always the best starting point for engagement. William Beutler, the former editor of the Hotline Blogometer, thinks that Stoller's confrontational style may alienate insiders. "I don't see [OpenLeft] as being a website the establishment will leap to get involved with," said Beutler, who works at New Media Strategies, which advises Republican Fred Thompson. Daniel Drezner, a conservative academic blogger who has battled with Stoller online, voiced a similar skepticism of OpenLeft's goals. "I'm not sure Matt Stoller is going to be a bridge-builder," he said.

Other power players say it's essential that bloggers remain aggressive while working within the system. "Whenever something is effective, the establishment would like to refract it for its own purposes," argues Rob Johnson, a board member of an elite group of Democratic donors called the Democracy Alliance. "It's up to individual bloggers to stick to their guns," despite pressure to change, he explained in a recent interview about OpenLeft. Bloggers can benefit from access, he added, as long they maintain their "wild animal" approach.

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This post is an excerpt from "OpenLeft Aims to Open Doors in DC" by Ari Melber of The Nation.