As a longtime progressive tired of ineffective protesting, I've watched in glee as MoveOn has amassed political power by Webbing a few million of us and our dollars together. I'm a proud MoveOn member, even though I disagree sometimes with its leaders (mostly over too-cozy relations with top Democrats).
And as a longtime proponent of independent media, I'm gleeful that liberal/progressive bloggers have seized a new medium to mobilize millions of activists and confront a Democratic elite that seemed unwilling to confront and beat Team Bush.
Given my glee, it's difficult for me to have to pose this question: Are the Netroots a paper tiger - more roar than bite?
Despite being overwhelmingly opposed to the nomination of Hillary Clinton, the Netroots have so far done little to slow down her coronation. Boosted by celebrity-worshipping corporate media (and a maximum donation from Rupert Murdoch himself), Hillary Clinton keeps rolling on - allied with the corporate lobbyists and Democratic insiders loathed even by moderately liberal bloggers.
Meanwhile, Clinton has never been popular among the Netroots. She's never moved out of single digits in the (unscientific) monthly straw poll of DailyKos readers, while John Edwards has averaged 38 percent in the last six months among Kossacks, with Barack Obama averaging 26 percent.
In an April straw poll of MoveOn members following a virtual town hall on Iraq, the results were Obama (28%), Edwards (25%), Dennis Kunicich (17%) and Bill Richardson (12%) - followed by Clinton in fifth place with 11 percent. Clinton did better following a July town hall on climate change, but finished in third place, 17 points behind Edwards.
The reality is stark: While it's hard to find a MoveOn leader or respected progressive blogger who supports Clinton, they can't (or won't) stop her.
Several factors may explain why most Netroots leaders are not taking stronger action:
1) They "misunderestimate" the potential hazards of another Clinton White House.
While progressives desperately want a Democratic president, the last Clinton in the White House subverted the progressive agenda. Eight years of Clintonite triangulation caused the Democratic Party to decline at every level of government. Hillary today is surrounded by the same staff and would likely appoint the same corporate types to top jobs as Clinton I, where big decisions were often corrupt and calculated toward moneyed interests.
The toughest brawl Bill Clinton was willing to wage (besides saving his own hide from impeachment) was against the Democratic base: for the corporate-backed NAFTA. Through the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Bill brought us far more media conglomeration than George W. He pardoned well-connected fugitive financier Marc Rich, while leaving Native American activist Leonard Peltier to rot in prison despite pleas from Amnesty International and others.
Hillary's contribution to Clinton I was her botched healthcare proposal, a corporate-originated "reform" that would have enshrined a half-dozen of the largest insurance companies at the center of the system, and was so convoluted it never came up for a vote.
What we've seen of Hillary Clinton in the Senate and on the campaign trail suggests that Clinton II would indeed be a sorry sequel. Today she's winning the endorsement of Republican CEOs, after having had Murdoch host a benefit for her at the Fox News building in 2006. Just as Bill Clinton's spine achieved a rare firmness while battling for NAFTA, we recently observed in Hillary a rare passion and firmness on a single issue: her YearlyKos defense of lobbyists, including those who "represent corporations that employ a lot of people."
Like Bill campaigning as a populist and governing as a corporatist, Hillary's stump speech proclaims she'll end the Iraq war in January 2009, while she assures the New York Times of a long-term U.S. military presence inside Iraq. She's tried to explain away her vote to authorize the war, but avoids mention of her even more dubious vote hours earlier against requiring United Nations approval (or, if U.N. approval failed, a second Congressional authorization) before war could begin. Her overall bellicosity on Iran and the Middle East wins praise from conservative pundits; her "Israel-right-or-wrong" stance could make Christian Zionists blush.
In too much of the liberal blogosphere, history begins with the Florida election
theft of 2000, and events before that time seem ancient and irrelevant. There is insufficient grasp of how the Clintons' rise to power was intertwined with the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Conference - set up 22 years ago to weaken the power of the grassroots (labor, feminist, civil rights) inside the party. Still on the attack in 2004, the DLC targeted new villains, like MoveOn and the Dean upsurge.
2) They want to be Democratic "team players."
Matt Bai's new book on the Democratic Party, "The Argument," has a passing reference to Hillary Clinton's courtship of MoveOn leaders in private meetings: "Her charm appeared to have paid off: while MoveOn's members remained furious at Clinton for voting with Bush on the war resolution, its leaders refused to criticize her publicly."
In truth, MoveOn leaders have gone beyond refusing to publicly criticize Hillary Clinton - actually finding bizarre excuses to praise her on some of her worst issues, like Iran and Iraq. During the 2006 Democratic Senate primary in New York, it was not a shock that MoveOn's leadership would not help Clinton's antiwar challenger, Jonathan Tasini, an under-funded long shot. But what purpose was served by not criticizing her when she brazenly refused to even debate Tasini on the war - or by lauding her for a McCain-like critique of Don Rumsfeld's war "mismanagement"?
With MoveOn avoiding criticism of Clinton in '05, '06 and half of '07, then when?
Netroots leaders seem almost mute today as Hillary Clinton makes full use of old media/old money advantages. Bloggers who loudly championed the Dean insurgency are oddly quiescent as the candidate of the party establishment gains ground. Have these young insurgents become Democratic Party elder statespersons - team players first and foremost? Has the courtship by Party insiders quieted them?
What animated the meteoric growth of MoveOn and progressive blogs was a crucial insight: that the Democratic establishment was too spineless or clueless to stand up to the Bush agenda. This insight has never been more relevant than now - with Bush an unpopular lame duck and Democratic leaders in Congress offering "little other than one failure after the next since taking power in January," in Glenn Greenwald's words.
Ancient history, from 1993-1994, teaches us that loyalty to party should never come before loyalty to principles - and that which Democrats hold power can be as important as whether Democrats hold power. I was a young(er) columnist when Bill Clinton entered the White House and Democrats controlled Congress. We didn't get promised campaign finance reform; we didn't get promised investment in the cities; we didn't even get a vote on healthcare - since the Clintons had undermined and triangulated the 100 Democrats in Congress co-sponsoring a bill for nonprofit National Health Insurance. But we did get NAFTA.
And soon - inevitably and predictably -we got the Gingrich counterrevolution.
3) There's no Dean campaign to unite them - just "Edwama."
In the last three months of DailyKos reader polls, Edwards and Obama have combined for more than 60 percent of the vote - as against only 8 percent for Clinton.
Despite being hammered by corporate media, Edwards retains deep Netroots support as he pushes a progressive, populist message that evokes Bobby Kennedy's 1968 campaign. Fueled by Internet fundraising, Obama has inspired a huge grassroots following, especially among youth and people of color. Both are tagging Clinton as the candidate of moneyed lobbyists. Either - especially Edwards - would likely appoint a cabinet quite different than the corporate Clintonites one would get from Hillary. At this stage, it looks like only Edwards or Obama can beat Clinton; polls of Iowa Democrats show a three-way race among them.
Were Edwards or Obama to drop out of the race today, Netroots support would likely galvanize behind the other. The current 63-8 percent "Edwama" edge over Clinton among Kossacks would become at least a 50-15 percent landslide for Edwards or for Obama. (And it's hard to argue Clinton is more electable in a general election, since she provokes even more loathing among conservatives than wariness among progressive activists.)
The reality is that neither Edwards nor Obama is dropping out. There is no Dean candidate at the moment.
But that should not prevent Netroots leaders and progressive bloggers from speaking out loudly and clearly about their objections to Clinton's policies and associations, and the negative consequences of her leading the Democrats in 2008 - in long-term electability, governance and movement building.
* *
Reporting the results of his July straw poll in which Edwama outpolled Clinton 7 to 1, DailyKos founder Markos gloated that he was among the 5 percent who voted "No Freakin' Clue": "I'm enjoying the campaigns without any emotional investment in any of them. It's quite liberating. I wish more of you would give it a shot."
Here was a key Netroots backer of Dean sitting on the sidelines four years later, encouraging a laissez-faire attitude over who is the 2008 Democratic nominee.
If 2004 taught anything, it's that it matters mightily who the nominee is. Despite all the organizing, fundraising, phone-banking, canvassing and concertizing, it's hard to beat even a discredited Republican with a Democratic candidate who comes across as a vacillating and calculating Washington insider.
I was never prouder to be a MoveOn member as when, after Kerry's defeat, Eli Pariser of MoveOn PAC blasted corporate Democrats in a mass email: "For years, the Party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base. But we can't afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers." Eli's email called for a "bold Democratic vision" - not a phrase typically associated with Hillary Clinton.
In a bit of hyperbole, Eli proclaimed on behalf of grassroots donors who'd given $300 million to Kerry and the Democrats: "Now it's our Party. We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back." But unlike owners, Netroots leaders today act more like field hands - deferring to other powers the selection of the candidate.
If Clinton coasts to the Democratic nomination without need of Netroots support, the "elite Washington insiders" denounced by Eli will be laughing - ad commissions in hand - all the way to the bank.
And they'll be ridiculing the Netroots as a paper tiger.
Also, if you look really hard through the careful language, the position differences between the above families is minimal.
I think the ennui is more to do with a pre-occupation with surviving the last days of shrub than a critical look at the offerings from the democratic party.
While I like Edwards best of the viable ones, they all look great when compared to the "F" troop over at GOP.
Since 2000 Hillary has received more $$ from all forms of media than any other Democrat, except for Al Gore in 2000.
Until we get back to a "free" press, the power of "we the people" will be more effective on local races and putting our energy/time/money into media reform, election reform and publicly funded campaigns. For now the big boys rule as we watch in horror as they once again decide who our candidate will be. (Knowing full well that Hillary will lose the GE and they'll have their "man" once again right where they want/need him. President Huckabee, anyone?)
If we actually had a free/independent press, people who actually qualify for the job of president would be in the race: Clark and Gore. That they're not tells us that we're pretty much f'd.
I registered Democrat just so I could smack Hillary, and the DLC down in the primary. There are many of us ready to go.
We can mewl as much as we want, but the "Democratic leadership" long since went supply side ("third way, win-win") and joined the plutocratic-republican party.
They deceive the working class to promote the economic interests of the industrial cartels and supply-side capitalists in the same way the plutocratic-republican leadership deceive their base (to the same end) by spouting religious cant.
Both branches of the plutocratic party set the specious lib/con debate to distract the working class from plutocratic policies while lib/con blur is actively promoted by the ideologically aggressive corporate media.
The majority of Democratic voters are dupes. They believe that because the Democratic party and the Republican party have different names that the Democratic party is necessarily a good alternative to the Republican.
But the DLC and Blue Dog and other "centrist" Democrats are the left foot, while the Republicans are the right, and both together are lurching toward plutocracy.
Every step the DLC takes toward the mythical "center" is actually a step to the right.
The average Democratic voter, who reads Newsweek or Time and the local paper, skips the useless debates, and doesn't know how to pronounce Kucinich's name, can get very excited about Hillary Clinton without understanding or knowing much, if anything, about her policies or their economic implications for the working class.
The leadership of organizations like MoveOn are another facet of the left branch of the plutocratic party, deceiving local progressives into donating their money to support candidates like Kerry and Clinton, and to waste their time on tiny local protests that get no press and have no impact.
The leadership of MoveOn are conservative Democrats masquerading as progressives to coopt energy and to diffuse it or divert it back into the establishment.
It was by no means a new strategy but it was effective. This strategy successfully garnered votes from conservatives and allowed Clinton to win both presidential elections.
Hillary Clinton is using the same strategy, she is a conservative Democrat in the same mold as her husband.
The question is, will Democrats who don't agree with Hillary dismiss her, vote for someone else, not vote at all or vote for her to avoid another Republican from taking over the presidency?
Bill Clinton had to be conservative, DLC, to win against Bush and Dole in the post-Reagan, Gingrich era.
You make the salient point however - yes, Hilary is "conservative" like her husband, at exactly the wrong time in history for the similarity. For example, the public rejected conservatism - Bush's brand - big time in the last election. Doesn't that offer an opportunity for something other than a return to the nineties? E.G. must we endure another 8 years of stalemate in the mid-east for nothing?? We desperately need to get past the reactionary Clintons.
The Netroots have had many successes and many more are still to come.
There is but one thing we need to do: OVERTHROW THE PUNDITOCRACY. The gatekeepers need to cough up those gate keys - now.
I'm back now, working on 2 environmental projects and the Draft Gore Campaign.
Most of the influential folks at AlGore.org ARE
part of the baby boomer generation.
But the netroots crowd just hasn't produced
period.
If Gore does decide not to run I thank all of
them for being paper tigers all.
I would however moderate what he has to say as foll:
His criticism of the Clinton nineties is right on the mark. However, I think Clinton was somewhat limited by what was actually politically possible at the time. The tragedy for today is that Clintons are bringing back the nineties at precisely a time in history when so much more is possible. We need to take a different path. It is the deficiencies of the nineties that need to be addressed before it is too late.
The blame lies with the failure of Obama's campaign to communicate a substantive platform with broad-based appeal. The net roots can't do much about Hilary if there is no alternative to Hilary. They need a candidate.
Vanity Fair just published a 100 most something or other list. On the list is Steven Jobs, Warren Buffet, etc. Each person can point to some substantive contribution he made recently. For some reason Bill Clinton is on the list. In an interview, a Vanity Fair rep couldnt think of why clinton was on the list but suggested that he was an "Ambassador to the World". The elites need to get serious.
Same shyte different day.
Same players that have lost so many other elections.
It's pathetic.
If there's one (and only one) thing right now that will bring Republicans to the polls in '08, it's a Hillary nomination.
So go ahead Dems, just give it to her and give away the office for four more years.
There is no revolution. The netroots play a key role in the Democratic Party but it is not the Democratic Party. It is probably 8 percent of it.
Hillary now has more supporters on dailykos.com and mydd.com than Jeff Cohen seems to know about. And her supporters come prepared with facts and are very intelligent and well-informed. They are also the "netroots". Hillary has a strong band of "Kossacks" on her team.
There is no black and white in politics. Ask those who learned hard lessons from voting for Bush (both times).
Jeff Cohen paints the Clintons as monsters. Jeff Cohen might like to meet me, and my sister and our four kids and hear our stories. If it weren't for President Bill and Senator Hillary, we would still be living below the poverty line and my youngest son would likely be dead.
Don't throw away the baby with the bathwater Jeff.
There is no revolution.
I am sure Bill O'Reilly would love to read your article, which is nothing more than an exaggerated piece of junk.
And this is not a new choice, not for your generation — it is a choice that many others have faced throughout history. Only now, we can hope that with your help and engagement we can find a new answer.'
Wes Clark, Seton Hall, 2002
Wes Clark is a man of whom you can ask a question, and he will look you directly in the eye, and give you the most truthful and complete answer you can imagine. You will know the absolute truth of the statement as well as the thought process behind the answer. You will have no doubt as to the intellect of the speaker and meaning of the answer to this question....
Mario Cuomo
I hope a man as capable and rare as Clark will be employed in a significant position by the next administration.
I've often wondered why the netroots people don't simply rise up and form their own party. The progressive bloggers are simply fed up with the inactive, spineless cowards that comprise the current Democratic Congress. Seriously though, a strong third party is DESPERATELY what our country needs. Why WHY should we be caught between a rock and a hard place with the lunatics on the right and the weak democrats in the middle? They're just shells of politicians. The netroots people should give remonstrance to the DLC and its current crop of Senate/House reps and OFFICIALLY and publicly declare their grievances with the Democratic party. And if they don't acquiesce to the majority of demands, they should break off and form their own party.
The two party system is entrenched and discourages other parties from successfully flourishing and competing. A very undemocratic system in the land of liberty and democracy.
My point is that your provocative question appears to be merely an excuse for yet another anti-Hillary blog post. While Hillary is probably not my first choice for president, I'm beginning to admire the way she stands up to the self-anointed blogosphere, and survives all this constant attacking from the left.
The "netroots" are not the "grassroots."
I'm a reader and contriutor at dailykos, and I confess that I find most of my compatriots there to be way out of touch with the rest of the country, as well as self-righteous, biased, and closed-minded. They're very easily snowed by Edwards' champaign rhetoric, always making excuses for his questionable behavior, past and present, instead of facing the truth. As an example, if a Republican had pulled off that sneaky, campaign-as-charity ploy, the reactions on dailykos would have been a lot different.
This impenatrable denial is what keeps the netroots from maturing into a potent force; it serves none of us well.
That's why I prefer this site - I see the real America here at HuffPo, with all it's bumps and wrinkles. I like it. I like it a lot.
So yes, the netroots is/are a paper tiger. They have very little influence on the political outcomes in this country, because they are too caught up in themselves, too busy talking to each other and patting each other on the back, too busy being generally intolerant to listen to and understand their fellow Americans. As a result, the average person dismisses them.
1) No web site including this one truly represents the American public. Many are still not on the internet and many who are don't blog. There are many who type with two fingers and don't have the desire to type their thoughts in detail. No blog can represent the illiterate or those whose English language skills are insufficient for effective communication.
2) The netroots are still a minority but a growing minority. It takes more than blog sentiment to bring a candidate to an electable position. It takes money. Individual donors can't match corporate donations but they can impact the political scene. If Dean didn't scream or commit any other gaffe, the impact of netroots would have been different.
spartanburg City 1000 new houses
Greenville 1000 new houses
Project after project after project I worked on them.
Hillary will do it agian. Money for the common good. She will chase the evil in this nation to the ends of the earth. We will set it all straight.
Hillary our Queen, Red White and Blue and true.
Honest Fair Blonde Haired America Girl.
You can see it in her face.
To our queen with love, I pledge my shield to thee. I bow my head in allegence to our hope.
I love you a true patriot. A Queen.
Darryl Mast
85 new schools Greenville county South Carolina
75 new schools Spartanburg County SC
23 million dollar new library Greenville
300 million dollar appropriation to USC-Upstate
New Port Authority in Charleston Columbus Street
5000 house tore down Rocky mount NC
A whole city rebuilt near Rocky Mount
Hurricane Floyd
I'm really wondering if the Democratic Party cares about this country,or the values we all say we stand for.It seems to me that if we did,Kucinich would be the front runner by a huge margin