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Monday, January 16, 2006

Why Democratic Blogs Undermine Democrats’ Chances of Regaining Power

Posted by on January 16 at 1:55 AM

If you think about it, the Democratic blogs may actually be undermining the Democrats’ chances of taking back the country. Too often, Democratic blogs are bona fide public brainstorming and public strategy sessions. Democrats are cultivating and honing their ideas in public—for everyone to see, especially Republicans.

Today, Democrats face much the same situation that Republicans faced in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the `70s and `80s, liberal Democrats controlled Congress because, by and large, the political & moral template of the country was liberal. The `70s, and even the backlash Reagan `80s, had been forged by the overwhelming liberal renaissance and cultural revolution of the 1960s. The Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the youth movement, the feminist movement, consumer rights, gay rights, environmental protection—all these things blossomed in the 60’s and early `70s and—despite Ronald Reagan’s best efforts—these values completely defined the country for years and years. Heck, Republican President Nixon established the EPA. Republican President Reagan appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court. And the Congress rejected a conservative wing nut like Robert Bork. These were simply the given values of the day. Witness the fact that a powerful, popular personality President like Reagan was forced to wage his war in Central America under the radar, illegally. And he was busted for it during the Iran-Contra affaire. This was because the lessons of Vietnam still carried weight.

However, Republicans were certainly active during this era. The Heritage Foundation, Grover Norquist and his American Taxpayers Union, The Olin Institution at Harvard University were all active during this time—cultivating and fleshing out the ideas that would eventually explode in 1994 with Newt Gringrich’s Republican Revolution. But they were doing it quietly.

And ever since 1994, the tables have been turned. Since that time, the political and moral template of the country has been conservative. Just look at Clinton’s biggest accomplishments: Welfare Reform and a balanced budget. These were Republican agenda items. The country was so conservative post ‘94, that Clinton was impeached by the House of Reps even as he reigned over peace and prosperity.

The key to the Republicans’ success at overthrowing the established order of the `70s and `80s was this: In the `70s and `80s, the Heritage Foundation and Norquist et al, operated below the radar screen. The Democratic establishment was largely unaware of the right-wing thought machine, the right-wing hand wringing strategy sessions, and all the Republican brainstorming. And so, in 1994, the conservatives were able to take Clinton, seemingly by surprise, and unveil an ideology that they’d been stoking and cultivating quietly for years. And, in 1994, they successfully ended the era of liberalism that had dominated this country since about 1970.

In comparison, today, the Democrats do their brainstorming and hand wring and strategizing out in the open. They do it on the blogs. It’s all right there for the Republicans to see. This is why the Democratic blogs, as good as they make us feel, are jeopardizing a successful liberal revolution. Democrats do too much plotting out loud.

If Grover Norquist had had a blog in the `80s, I think the Democrats would have been more prepared in 1994.


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But the GOP's blogs are out in the open, too. Also, Dem blogs aren't the center of our revolution. Places like Center for American Progress and the Rockridge Institute are. Besides, it isn't like reading the comment threads on DailyKos are anything Carville-like to gawk at. Blogs are what they are; tools for activists.

Beltowner,
I'm not juxtaposing today's Democratic blogs with today's Republican blogs. The Republicans are already in control. They're not jonesing for an insurrection. Their thoughts are on full display anyway because they represent the zeitgeist.

I'm juxtaposing the Democrats' situation today to that of Republicans in the '70s and '80s. And at that time: Norquist didn't have no blog.

Thank you-- now i KNOW for sure I am wasting my time when I read the political opinions of Josh Feit.

This is interesting. Perhaps Josh could cross-post this over at DailyKos for further analysis.

Message recieved, Mr. Feit. I just don't think the Lefty Blogs deserve the attention you give them. Mine certainly doesn't. Frankly, I don't think Pelosi or Reid could put the kibosh on DailyKos, even if could help the party. But you're on to something.

The Democratic blogs have handwringing but no real strategy. Having worked on the Kerry campaign in Washington State, once the true believers, the Deaniacs came aboard, they didn't want to work with any of us who had been with Kerry from the get-go. I really believe they wanted Kerry to lose so they could wring their hands about how their guy could've beaten George Bush.
The left wing element of the Democratic party did, and does, much more damage than any Republicain reading the typical Democratic blog could ever dream of.
The only thing that most Republicans would get, from most typical Democratic blogs, is a good laugh.
What the Democratic party really needs are some new ideas. Most blogs associated with the Democratic party just seem to repeat, like an endless loop, whatever was in the New York Times that day.
Besides, bloggers should have to edit their stuff, only for accuracy (which most don't). I say let 'er rip, bloggers!


Mr. Feit-- who, "supports the WTO," according to The Stranger's own website (this by itself is so egregious, it makes Dan Savage's support for the Iraq debacle almost forgivable)-- seems to think thst in the 80's the "political & moral template of the country was liberal." Was he even alive then? I mean, has Mr. Feit even heard the names 'Ryan White,' 'Kimberly Bergalis,' or, for that matter, 'R. Reagan' and his Bride of Lee Atwater/Frankenstein, 'Margaret Fucking Thatcher?' It was THE time when art, sex and sentience were all forced to go into separate rooms and stand in the corner.

His posting is wrong on so many levels-- I only have time to point out one.

Drewvsea,
I know that during the '80s the Republicans breathed fire. But it was a backlash. And backlashes, by definition, take place against something. The Reagan '80s took place against the larger liberal paradigm.

You ever heard of Tip O'Neill, dude? He was the Massachusetts Liberal who was Speaker of the House from '77-'87, which means the House was...Democratic. You ever hear of Robert Bork? Ever wonder why Congress was able to shoot him down, unlike Roberts or Alito? The values of the Civil Rights et al '60s still defined this country—which is why the Yuppie '80s were a story—they shocked or upset the template. And they got Borked.

Unfortunately, today, Bush does not represent a backlash. He represents the fruition of the conservative momvement. Those values set the standard.

Meanwhile, Terry: I'm not saying the blogs shouldn't "let 'er rip." I'm just saying, Democrats are fooling themselves if they think the liberal blogosphere is undoing Bush's America.

Who would be in the smoke filled rooms plotting our future, and who are you trying to keep out?

The benefits of oxygen and daylight on the democratic process should not be disregarded.

The problem of the two party system is that we end up having to choose between either McDonalds or else Burger King. No other options are considered "electable."

All that right-wing BS was easy to read in National Review, or watch on Firing Line on PBS. Besides, good ideas don't need to be developed in secret.

There's a huge difference between what people say and what people do. So Republicans talk a big game about small government and whatnot, and they'd like to turn the country into their corporate paradise, but voters don't actually like that. There are some examples of how the country has actually drifted right (how the Iraq reconstruction was handled, recent regressive tax cuts) but mostly politics has treaded water since Nixon. No major programs started or cut, no change on abortion, no change on Social Security, etc. It's true things have drifted right a little bit in tone, but actually policies weren't as liberal as they seemed back then, and aren't as conservative now either.

America pretty much likes the status quo, and anybody who fucks with that gets voted out.

The concept that we'er giving secrets to the enemy is preposterous. The issue is quite the oposite. The lefty blogs are spectacularly insular but readers, writers and Josh believe that America is reading them. That's the problem.

Norquist and the Heritage Foundation were insular too.


At Progressive Majority, we have a blog at www.progressivemajoritywashington.org .. but I challenge you to show me where we reveal our strategy.

In 2005, we spent more than $100,000 making sure that Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart was elected and that former State Representative Tom Mielke lost. Show me where we talked about it on the blog.

We have recruited candidates in six state senate races and ten state house races, but don't discuss the candidacies until they announce.

There are two kinds of bloggers -- those who are PART of the strategy and those who COMMENT on the strategy. Both are important.

I agree that in general, Democrats do too much plotting out loud. I think that is generally due to how Democratic donors react to things when they are on the front page of the paper (= mo' money). We try to avoid that at least at our PAC, and I know others do as well.

Looking at the state picture, tell me what Cantwell's strategy is. Tell me what our target list is for the state senate, or for the state house. It's never been on any blog that I know of.

Anyhow, just my 2 cents.

I disagree, Ahura - a million people a day read Daily Kos, including staffers for most legislators in DC and nearly all major traditional media outlets. When it was announced that Harry Reid would keynote the yearly Kos convention in June, Sen. John Cornyn's office released an attack press release within the hour. So it's fairly widely read. By all Americans? No. But there's influence.

However, I think you're off-base, Josh. If you pay attention to these things, you'll see that while there is endless strategizing and planning and hand-wringing, little of it ever results in actual policy or action. The actions and plans that are taking place, while informed to some degree by conversations on various blogs, are still cooked up behind closed doors.

As much as we write and plan and scheme and fume, ultimately the blogs are reactive, and all the planning and strategizing revolves around plans, strategies or policies that have already been announced.

And Terry Parkhurst: Please stop whining about Deaniacs. As the recipient of dozens of calls from frustrated Deaniacs who were either ignored by the Kerry campaign when they offered help or were actively kept away, I assure you Deaniacs not only wanted Kerry to win, they made every effort to work with and assist the campaign. Please, please, I'm begging you, get over this fight that ended two years ago.

Good points, Dean.
But I'm not talking about the nitty gritty campaign strategy, that obviously, happens behind closed doors.

I'm talking about the constant thought balloons and stop & start themes of potential framing campaigns that go up on DailyKos, and TPM, and AmericaBlog— all the time.

It's exciting. And it helps counter spin the Republicans.

But it also charts the Democrats every thought and move—which isn't strategically smart.

Switzerblog, I think you're wrong that the Blogs don't have an impact or even potentially set the agenda. Remember: The Democrats are a bumbling party, and I'm telling you, they're desperate for ideas, and this is where they get 'em. I'm afraid there isn't anything at all going on behind closed doors.

Ugh. I don't understand this penchant for some lefties to self-censor. Hide our views? Work on them "behind the scenes"? It's a policy of *shame*, as if the ideas are too repugnant or extreme to allow people access to them.

The problem is not that our ideas are too public, but that they're NOT PUBLIC ENOUGH! If the traditional media discussed a fraction of the issues raised on blogs, we'd have a different political climate.

Remember, neither the 2000 or 2004 elections were landslides for conservatives. In fact you could argue that Democrats "won" both, if it weren't for the Supreme Court and Diebold. The country isn't inherently conservative; but its debate is.

Thus, the liberal blogs actually SERVE the cause of the Democratic party. It's the traditional party members who continually blow political chance after political chance by kow-towing to the idea that liberal ideology is shameful.

Josh,


Normally your column is one of my favorite parts of the Stranger, but you've gone off the deep end here.


First, you haven't given any evidence that secrecy was the key to the Republicans taking the House in 1994. Democratic incompetence is a much more likely explanation than Republican cleverness. Right-wing beliefs have never been a closely guarded secret.


Secondly, you greatly overestimate the value of secrecy. Secrecy only makes sense in 2 cases:


1. When it's cheaper to steal the secret than to discover it independently.


This is that case with secrets like detailed instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb. A country could spend billions of dollars perfecting the technology themselves, or they could spend thousands or millions of dollars to buy the plans from a spy.


It's fairly inexpensive to pay people to sit around all day and guess what the other political party is going to do: it's cheap to come up with political ideas. It's so inexpensive to do this that there isn't really any benefit to keeping political tactics a secret in the first place.


2) When it's expensive for the enemy to respond incorrectly and have to change tactics.


This is why battle plans are secret: an attacking army has many places they might attack, but the defending army usually doesn't have enough troops to sufficiently defend all points, and it takes time to rearrange the troops once the attack does begin; the defender has to choose points to concentrate their defenses.


This isn't the case in politics. Each side has enough people to dream up replies to any possible tactic the other uses, and even if something comes as a complete surprise, it doesn't take much time to roll out a response: it's cheap to move ideas.


All you'd get out shutting up Democratic bloggers is fewer people involved in arguing for Democratic views.


~Phillip

I agree this was a pretty stupid posting.

The problem with taking political views online is all people do is promulgate and defend their own, and flame everyone else.

And it's typically the lowest common denominator that dominates the blogosphere and most other open areas of the online world.

As a case in point, despite such reservations I recently submitted several radical ideas to the sinceslicedbread.com contest for the best ideas to help working Americans - Tax the Rich, Hire Kids Right Out of High School, Eliminate the Need for Unions (by giving workers proxy rights), etc.

They announced the 21 finalists a week ago. A weaker collection of ideas could not be imagined.

Since then, everyone's been denouncing the contest in comments on the blog.

Problem is, not only was the selection of finalists bad - but nearly all the ideas submitted were pretty bad, and the comments were worse.

OK, Josh, we'll just shut up now and let everyone come to you and the Stranger for our political education, right?


FAT CHANCE!

Hey Josh, if you point has some merit, give us some concrete examples. I think the only big Republican ideas are:

* Markets are MAGIC! (econ 101 gone horribly wrong)
* Government is bad.
* Let's demagogue trivial issues (flag burning, pledge of allegiance).

Those have all been pretty much out in the open.

That Republicans were insular over-all in their rise to power pre-1994 is a good reason to not be insular now. If politics is a zero-sum football type game where you adopt the other side's game plan, then I don't want to play.

Politics is about being involved, it's about being engaged. It isn't about closing doors and keeping conversations out. While some of what goes on online is a "shout to flame" process, the internet is a conversation.

Lets keep it out there.

Chris,

That's a good question.
Here's what I'm thinking.

The Rs' ability to transform their small govt. agenda into fine-tuned "righteous" speaking points around "personal responsibility" was crafted "off-line." And their ability to railroad that agenda onto TV and into columns happened "off-line." In other words, the fact that they were pulling strings and churning, was happening behind the curtain. And then voila: These sound bites appeared.

I agree that the ideas were certainly out there. Reagan, by tapping Goldwater Libertarianism, floated a lot of the agenda in the 80s. That's obvious.

But the strategies to transplant those ideas into the media weren't hashed out in such a public, angst-ridden way. And the strategies for articulating those ideas were also not hashed out in such a public way.

The comparison I'm stuck on is that Dem blogs are in constant campaign mode—where the campaign is hatched and played out for all to see.

It's healthy and great to have so many ideas swirling and heating up liberal thinking caps.

But here's my point: There's something about the rhythm of it—the hatching and then the trying to play it out—that happens 100 X in one day on a blog, that's become problematic. Too much plotting out loud. And then when the campaign and/or brilliant new sound bite fails, as it often does, or simply doesn't catch on, the rhythm becomes even more pronounced and clunky.

I'm just suggesting a little more stealth.


Others have already pointed out most of the reasons why Josh's supposition really isn't that true. Dean's comment above is particularly apt. I still don't understand WHY they spent that much money down here, although I'm glad they did.

Let me add one more, with due respect. We don't really have much choice but to fight back with what we have. Unfortunately I don't have a cable television channel or a talk radio station. We're trying to "build our own media," which a lot of people talk about but few actually do.

Political campaigns were never all that secret anyhow. At the federal level the television stations have to give anyone who asks the ad buys, and at the state level we have a decent if imperfect set of disclosure laws. Campaigns that know what they are doing can get a good idea of what the opposition is doing.

There are very few truly original ideas in politics anyway. Mostly what the GOP does better than us is coordinate their own plans with their allies.

Nice points, Jon. Josh, there is a big difference between "informing" strategy, which blogs most certainly do, and actually "creating" strategy, which they do not. Look at the wildly divergent views and ideas just on Slog - and you guys are all pretty much stoned! All lefty blogs are not created alike, and community blogs like Kos or Washblog (that's www.washblog.com, for a moment of pimping...) especially offer a wide range of opinions. Strategy doesn't come from that - it's just cacophony. That either party can siphon good ideas from that cacophony is no secret, and it certainly doesn't undermine the Party's larger plan.

Jon Devore writes: "Mostly what the GOP does better than us is coordinate their own plans with their allies."

Hmmm...I wonder why that is?

maybe what we need are some left-wing sites that provide tools to develop an agenda - and not just a bunch of competing ideas

some kind of Web 2.0 site with the goal of developing a leftist contract with America - or at least a top 10 list of things we can all agree we'd like to achieve for the good of the country

actually, I've been thinking of developing one myself...but need to learn Ruby on Rails first, alas

hey josh: I saw some good political strategy recently from Peter Daou entitled "The (Broken) Triangle: Progessive Bloggers in the Wilderness." It makes the point that unike the rovians, the bloggers don't have the support of the "traditional media" and the public officials to echo and implement their ideas. I think that's a better statement of the current state of affairs than your thesis. If you have the time, check it out on The Huffington Post.

Or if you prefer a more down to earth version, The Rude Pundit has translated it for you in this post "The Democrats are Pussies and Getting Fucked."

Nice link HOWIE -- I was just about to post that link here, too. Here's an appropriate quote from the story:

"This, then, is the reality: progressive bloggers and online activists -- positioned on the front lines of a cold civil war -- face a thankless and daunting task: battle the Bush administration and its legions of online and offline apologists, battle the so-called “liberal” media and its tireless weaving of pro-GOP narratives, battle the ineffectual Democratic leadership, and battle the demoralization and frustration that comes with a long, steep uphill struggle."

Also, if you're interested, I responded to Feit's post over at: http://www.catch.com/comments/43705_0_17_0_C/

Look, "Switzerblog," Maybe there were indeed Deaniacs who were kept away from the Kerry campaign. But there are also people who were for Kerry, before he turned things around in January and February of 2004, who were turned away from the campaign.
If Deaniacs wanted so badly for Kerry to win, why did they ignore efforts by a guy whom I can only remember as "Jeff from West Seattle" to coordinate meet-ups? Jeff and I tried to keep the meet-ups alive, as a way for Kerry supporters to interact. However, the people who had started mmet-ups for Dr. Dean, weren't interested in working with us. It became a way of dueling meet-ups.
So screw it. I am not about to let it go. Most especially when I heard Phil Talmadge, at a "progressive Democrats" Christmas party, in December 2004, lay waste to John Kerry, saying, "We need a better candidate," and repeating the same tired old carnard about "He said he was for the war and then he was against it," in a manner better than perhaps Karl Rove himself could've done.

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