Underneath the daily headlines from Washington, conservatives are waging guerilla warfare against a number of President Obama’s appointees, and it’s getting pretty ugly. At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick has the rundown on efforts to block the nominations of Harold Koh as legal advisor to the State Deparment, and of Dawn Johnson as director of the Justice Deparment’s Office of Legal Counsel. In both cases, made-up or distorted allegations by the nominees have migrated from right-wing blogs to talk radio and eventually to congressional Republicans.
It happens quickly and seamlessly, says Lithwick:

There is no rest stop on the misinformation superhighway. Some senators apparently cannot be bothered to fact-check the claims they have read in the blogosphere. And that makes the rest of us responsible for fact-checking them as needed and for getting angry when good people are smeared for views they do not hold. One needn’t read all of the thousands of pages Koh has written over his career to find an opinion or argument with which you disagree. But the fact that his critics must fabricate Koh’s opinions in order to take issue with them suggests that they haven’t read any of them.

Lithwick’s theory is that conservatives are going nuts on these mid-level legal appointments as a sort of warm-up for how they intend to proceed once Obama makes major judicial appointments, particularly to the U.S. Supreme Court. “If what Koh and Johnsen have been facing is a practice-sliming from the far right, we should be very, very afraid for whoever it is that someday merits their scrutiny at the high court.”

If traditional print media are watching a disaster unfold, then it’s safe to say that conservative media are feeling the first tremors of their own looming crisis.
Sure, Rush Limbaugh — newly re-elevated by his fight with the Obama White House — claims that his numbers are better than ever.
But:

The dirty little secret of conservative talk radio is that the average age of listeners is 67 and rising.

It’s no different on television — the average age for viewers of Fox News is also somewhere in the mid-60s.
On top of everything else (falling advertiser revenues, the GOP’s identity crisis), conservative media institutions have an age problem which they have no idea how to fix.
Last year, David Kuo (the former head of the Bush White House office on faith-based initiatives) and Joe Carter (a Huckabee staffer and blogger) — with backing from William Bennett — decided to start an online magazine. They hoped to find a way for political conservatives to engage popular society in a way that was culturally relevant. If they succeeded, one obvious benefit would be making their brand of conservatism more appealing to younger generations.
Their model would be a conservative version of Slate — a little bit edgy but appreciative of books, TV, and movies.
They hired smart, young writers like Conor Friedersdorf , a journalist and graduate student at NYU; James Poulos, a PhD candidate in government at Georgetown; and Peter Suderman, a blogger and Libertarian.
They called their project Culture11 and quietly launched the site in beta during the late summer.
As Charles Homans reports in the current issue of Washington Monthly:

For a site that took as its starting point a retreat from the political arena, Culture11 actually had a lot to say about the election, and it was generally more eclectic and off-message than what other political publications had on offer as November approached. This had a lot to do with the fact that Culture11’s editorial brain trust was made up of people who had little concern for—or at least needed a breather from—the self-immolating Hindenburg of movement conservatism.

In many ways, it was the act of being off-message that made Culture11 interesting, and sometimes, very smart. But of course their willingness to flaunt conservative orthodoxy so deep into an election year guaranteed that the new magazine created plenty of critics among ostensible ideological allies.
It occasionally even created friction inside its own newsroom:

In December, when a pseudonymous contributor to Ladyblog, Culture11’s “conservative feminist” forum, posted an entry titled “In Defense of the ‘Hook-up Culture,’ ” Carter yanked it off the blog. (“I didn’t like the content,” he later said. “We wanted dissent within the conservative perspective, but to me that fell out of line.”) The move prompted an in-house uproar and an apologetic response from Kuo, reinstating the post but also averring that “Culture11 is a conservative site. We see the world through a culturally conservative lens. As such the post isn’t something that anyone here particularly agreed with. We don’t believe the hookup lifestyle is good for anyone.” (“I think our disagreements were healthy disagreements,” he told me later.)

It seems that there is a natural limit to what even the most open-minded conservatives can tolerate.
Late last month, after weeks of working the phones and crunching the budget, David Kuo came to the conclusion that Culture11 no longer had a future — at least not in its current form. He called his staff and told them that his board of directors had decided to lay them off. Today, the archives are active and William Bennett still updates his blog, but for all intents and purposes, the site is dead.
While it lasted, Culture11 was an interesting experiment. But even at its best, the writers and contributors were a band of insurgents with minimal establishment support and divergent goals and ideological viewpoints.
Was it all doomed from the start?
Maybe.
One of the overriding themes of the modern conservative movement has been its distaste (and occassional hatred) for popular culture (whatever it was at the time). Just as the old lions wrung their hands at Elvis and comic books, so do latter-day conservatives decry Jay-Z and video games.
Culture11 attempted to exist outside that bubble — written by people who listened to Lil’ Wayne, watched movies where people sometimes took off their clothes, and owned iPhones. But even they couldn’t help but feel superior when it came time to discuss their peers. More telling still was the occasional bit of self-loathing they let slip when it came time to look in the mirror.
Look no farther than Friedersdorf’s piece on the music played at his best friend’s wedding:

Our parents unselfconsciously played “Under My Thumb” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” during family car trips—we turned out fine! Even gangsta’ rap albums we sneaked in our youth hardly caused us to roll down the street “smoking indo, sippin’ on gin and juice.”
Yet we feel uneasy putting our iPods on shuffle if anyone under 15 is around. What explains this attitude shift? Were the prudes right? Is gangsta’ rap uniquely degraded?

Even while acknowledging hip hop’s cultural value, Friedersdorf concludes the piece hoping for a future where the music enjoyed by his children is less profane. Not exactly a message with a lot of Millennial resonance.
As Culture11 floundered, another group of conservatives led by Andrew Breitbart (of Drudge fame) unveiled their own website with superficially the same cultural-commentary mission — Big Hollywood. The new site was greeted with fairly significant praises in right-wing circles, and it gained traction just as quickly as Culture11 lost its footing.
Desipte the theoretical similarity, the two sites could not be more different. Big Hollywood exists to poke fun at the entertainment industry’s excess while Culture11 made a sincere investment in attempting to create intellectually honest criticism. Even the way each site was designed speaks to their differences. Culture11 embraced clean lines and rounded corners — if the editors of Slate unveiled a redesign with the same look and feel tomorrow, not one reader would bat an eye. Big Hollywood looks like The Drudge Report or the homepage for Fox News.
What better evidence exists that the two sites were meant for different audiences?
Big Hollywood is more chum for the conservative base. Yes, it’s an online outlet, and yes, that means that its publishing schedule is a little different. But its message and even its methods are intended for the Rush listener or the O’Reilly watchers. Which means an audience in its 60s.
Culture11 was an attempt to embrace free-form online modes of expression, find a solution to the youth problem, and force conservatives to think differently about popular culture. Given the difficulty of chewing a bite that size, perhaps its failure was no surprise.
But if conservatives are not prepared to grapple with all three problems now, they’ll be forced to confront the future soon. Demographics is destiny, as they say, and right now, the trends are all going the wrong way.

Peter Nicholas and Peter Wallsten are on to something in their L.A.Times article “On Economic Matters, Obama Lacks a Secretary of Selling It.”:

Aside from President Obama, the administration has yet to find a commanding figure who can carry economic policy messages and inspire confidence in White House prescriptions…In assembling his economic team, the President gave first priority to technical skill and intellectual achievement. So far, none of his senior advisors has shown the extra ability to inspire as well — both on Wall Street and Main Street…Because the programs are complex, costly and politically unpopular, the dearth of administration officials who can dominate the stage is becoming a serious handicap.

Economists can be eloquent fellows talking to each other and to other policy wonks. However,

“The ability to communicate with average people was not what these people were chosen for,” said Alice M. Rivlin, budget director under President Clinton. “They were chosen for their understanding of the problem and their ability to think creatively about it and to work out solutions to what is admittedly a very complex issue.”…Selling the president’s economic plans “clearly has not been their forte,” she said

Certainly no one has identified any nascent media stars on Obama’s economic team. But has there ever been a really impressive economic policy salesman or woman, as far as the average voter is concerned ? There’s a reason they call Economics “the dismal science.” If you want to clear out a party quickly, just start talking loudly about the Laffer curve or the velocity of M1.
It could be argued that President Reagan and Newt Gingrich were effective economic policy pitchmen. But what they were really selling was simple: deregulation and tax and federal budget cuts — less economic policy. Their pitch was well-timed, if ill-considered and simplistic. Never mind that they ended up tripling the federal deficit.
Like Obama, FDR was his own economic pitchman and by all accounts, he worked the press quite effectively. But it was a simpler time then, and radio, a media industry now dominated by right-wing gasbags, was the make or break p.r. tool. Pitching economic policy to voters is now more about television than any other media, with the influence of the internet rising just as print media begins to fade into history. Moreover, FDR was really selling himself. He was able to convey a bold persona and a sense that he knew what he was doing.
It is unclear whether Obama, his extraordinary speechmaking skills notwithstanding, can sell himself as effectively over time in our more cynical era. Communications tools are more complex, and that can be a good thing for a media-savvy president (see our staff post below). He has gotten high marks from economists for his media advocacy of economic policy reforms, according to Wallsten and Nicholas. But there is a fear among his staff of over-exposure, and worse, burnout. Tonight he will face the media in his second news conference, and hopefully will do as well as in his first press conference. Generally, however, he should play to his strength — speechifying.
Bottom line is a great many people are still bewildered or bored by economic policy discussions, despite the loud arguments about economic policy taking place in living rooms, bars and at water coolers across the country. It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest salesman/woman in the world fronting your agenda. Bailouts for failed banks and auto companies, along with subsidies for imprudent homeowners are a tough sell, no matter how well-justified by the cold hard facts. Ditto for tax hikes and reassuring voters that their retirement assets will one day return from the market’s Bermuda Triangle.
President Obama’s hole card is that voters well-understand that he has inherited a horrible mess not of his making, and most get it that there is no quick fix. He has to be careful, though, not to parrot this meme so much that it starts to sound like whining. Leave that thankless task to his economic team.

Good news for the President and Dems from a new bipartisan survey of 800 LV’s conducted 3/12 and 14 by Public Opinion Strategies in conjunction with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for National Public Radio. According to GQR’s executive summary (audio here):

The first bipartisan survey conducted for NPR by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner since the 2008 election shows Barack Obama with high overall approval ratings and strong marks on handling the economy, but much more important, Democrats winning the big debates surrounding Obama’s first budget on taxes, energy, health care, and the deficit by significant margins.

Further,

On both energy and health care the Democratic message wins by 53 to 42 percent, a margin nearly twice the Democrats’ 6-point partisan advantage. A majority of voters also side with the Democratic argument on taxes (52 to 43 percent) and the deficit (51 to 45 percent).

And,

President Obama’s approval rating remains strong. Nearly six-in-ten voters (59 percent) approve of the job President Obama is doing while just 35 percent disapprove…Indeed, by a near two-to-one margin, voters think that Obama’s economic recovery package will help rather than hurt the economy (40 to 21 percent with 34 percent believing it will have little impact on the economy) and a strong majority favor the recovery package passed by Congress and signed into law by the President (55 percent favor to 42 percent oppose).

The poll findings indicate that retirement and job security are now the top priorities for LV’s. The survey found that “worries about the declining stock market and investment losses” matches “the number who mention loss of work, pay cuts or the inability to get a job” as the two leading concerns of respondents. For more, detail, see the PDF here.

One of the odder phenomena of contemporary public life is the enthusiasm of conservative gabbers and even elected officials for the idea of “Going Galt:” the suggestion that the oppressed wealthy of America withdraw their vast contributions to the commonweal in protest against the supposedly confiscatory taxes and redistribution of income to the morally depraved underway at the behest of the Obama administration. The allusion is to John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, that massive tome that represented the Summa of her rigorously capitalist, atheist, and anti-altruist philosophy of “Objectivism,” which has captured a vast number of adolescents and an impressive number of adults over the last several decades.
I’ve written about this in the context of U.S. Rep. John Campbell’s (R-CA) claim that “we’re living through the scenario” laid out in Atlas Shrugged, wherein the industrial leaders of the West, sick of subsidizing “parasites” and “looters,” drop out, take to the Rockies, and finally, through Galt’s voice–a radio address that took up 90 solid pages in the novel–chastise an economically helpless nation.
But Campbell was just surfing the right-wing zeitgeist, where excited talk about “going Galt” has spread like kudzu. It’s merged, in fact, with the Rick-Santelli-spawned Tea Party “movement” of “productive” people fed up with the poor-and-minority scum who cause the financial collapse by living beyond their means, and who now refuse to shuffle off into the ranks of the homeless and instead are instituting a socialist tyranny.
I don’t need to summarize the “going Galt” literature; that’s already been done quite well by David Weigel of the Washington Independent and Roy Edroso of the Village Voice (the more Galt-sympathetic Stephen Gordon of The Liberty Papers also has a long list of relevant links from various points of view). I also don’t need to analyze the absurdity of well-heeled, not-going-anywhere conservative bloggers and pundits like Michelle Malkin or Helen Smith to encourage others to “go Galt,” or of the self-congratulatory people who think it’s a license to cheat on their taxes, lay off a few underlings, or stop tipping (no, seriously!). Hilzoy has succinctly demolished the clownish and entirely un-Randian nature of these latter-day Galtists.
What I’d like to do as a public service is simply to remind folks tempted to “go Gault” or to gush ignorantly about the subject in blogs or on Fox that they are flirting with a philosophy that is profoundly and expressly hostile to anything that could remotely be described as “conservative.” And before anyone even thinks of offering the “you-don’t-have-to-be-a-fascist-to-love-Ezra-Pound’s-poetry” defense, it’s important to understand that John Galt, Atlas Shrugged, and their creator Ayn Rand represent a remorselessly unified and logical world-view that can’t be sliced and diced into bite-sized portions you can take or leave. Galt’s speech, in particular, which is the supposed inspiration for all this excited Tea Party chatter, was a painstakingly wrought distillation of Rand’s all-encompassing philosophy of Objectivism, which few “conservatives” could stomach, much less endorse. And Rand, if she were alive, would be the first to object to promiscuous use of her words and character, especially by political “conservatives,” whom she largely despised as life-hating slaves to an imaginary God, or as unprincipled demagogues little better in practice than all the other “collectivists.”
The following are a sprinkling of quotes from Rand’s work that ought to make any self-conscious conservative think twice about scribbing “Who is John Galt?” on the nearest whiteboard.

Read more…

It has taken several days for the full implications of Obama’s budget and message to sink in among conservatives and Republicans, but now the surprise has passed and the gloves are coming off.
The conservative hope that Obama might actually be the timid, dithering, “split the difference” centrist that some progressives feared he was has now evaporated. On the contrary, the scope of his ambition to be a solidly progressive Roosevelt-style president makes him appear as a genuine threat — not just for committed Republicans, but to a substantial group beyond. For many, this threat is so grave that insuring the defeat of Obama’s political program now takes priority over what might be best for the economy.
The larger group beyond the usual Republican base that finds Obama’s program threatening is essentially comprised of the substantial number of relatively un-ideological Middle Americans – small businesspeople, managers and office park voters among others — who –deep down – simply don’t accept a Keynesian view of economics or understand the need for significant, ongoing government intervention in the economy. On survey questions they will often support certain specific and appealing government programs but then will simultaneously reject “deficit spending”, “big government” and “regulations” as unambiguous evils. If you asked many of these Americans to choose between, on the one hand, a “lost decade of growth” like Japan suffered as well as continuing crises in health care, energy and the environment and, on the other hand, the unknown long-term political consequences of a wildly successful and deeply progressive Democratic Presidency, many will hem and haw for a moment but finally opt for “the devil they know” – recession and stagnation – rather than the uncharted waters of an energetically progressive future.
The result is that Democrats can’t rely on Obama’s tremendous advantage in personal popularity right now to keep the Republicans on the defensive. On the contrary, Democrats must begin preparing to defend themselves against a massive, well-financed and coordinated, three pronged offensive.
Prong Number 1 — The Official Party Line – The most familiar and visible of the three prongs of this offensive is the official Republican Party — represented by the Congressional Republicans and the Republican National Committee. By now virtually every politically involved American has heard the official Republican position. The battle against Obama is a direct clash between socialism and the free market, between liberalism gone completely berserk and the traditional American Way. Buried in the byzantine twists and turns of Rush Limbaugh’s epic , Fidel Castro- length, pronunciamento to the Conservative Political Action Conference last week lie a collection of virtually every one of his “oldies but goodies” and “greatest hits” drawn from his radio show.
By itself, however, this official Republican message will not be sufficient. It needs to be reinforced by two additional forces to successfully challenge Obama’s coalition. It needs (1) “responsible” apologists to give it intellectual cover with more moderate voters and (2) “Black Ops’ boys” to do the political “wet work” – the stuff too ugly to display in public.
Prong Number 2 — The “Responsible” Apologists — David Brooks’ retreat into the boilerplate anti-Obama rhetoric of the Republican National Committee in his recent New York Times column (misleadingly titled “a Moderate Manifesto”) signals the groveling surrender of the “responsible” and “sophisticated” conservatives to the Republican Party base. As Ed Kilgore has noted, for Brooks,’ “moderation is defined as compromise, any kind of compromise, and “moderates” are invariably urged to pursue a course of action that coincides with the immediate political needs of the Republican Party… you will note that [Brooks’] column essentially urges “moderates” to join Rush Limbaugh in derailing Obama’s agenda.”
In fact, the truth is that, without directly using the word “socialism”, Brooks’ entire column is nothing more than a euphemistic restatement of the Republican Party’s central accusation.
Just look at what Brooks actually says:
America:
• [supports] “relatively limited central government”
• “puts competitiveness and growth first, not redistribution first”
• [is] “skeptical of top-down planning”
• “has never been a society riven by class resentment.”
Obama’s administration, on the other hand, is:
• “swept up in its own revolutionary fervor…
• “caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it” …
• “a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new” …
• “expands state intervention”…
• “concentrates enormous power in Washington”…
• “is predicated on a class divide…All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward”
• [will lead to] “polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget.”
This is not even remotely subtle. It references quite literally every traditional anti-socialist cliché of the previous century except for the use of the actual word “socialism” itself. (Well, OK, the little “uber-partisan” thing hiding in there is a tiny bit subtle — a subliminal hint of Mein Kampf and Nazi jackboots to distract from the near-monotonous recitation of 1950’s anti-“pinko” buzzwords).
In fact, Brooks’ column is for all practical purposes a Frank Luntz-type “words that work” playbook for other editorial and commentary writers. The words above are, in combination, a roundabout, “responsible” way of saying precisely the same things as the Republican National Committee.
Other “responsible” conservatives are also quickly falling in line. In a Wednesday Washington Post commentary Michael Gerson describes Obama’s budget as “ideologically ambitious, politically ruthless and radical to its core… This is not merely the rejection of “trickle-down economics,” it is a weakening of the theoretical basis for capitalism — that free individuals are generally more rational and efficient in making investment decisions than are government planners.” Once again, the basic RNC charge of “socialism” is repeated while carefully avoiding the use of the actual word.
(Note: let’s be clear about this. “Responsible” conservatives actually do know that policies like progressive taxation, government regulation of business and federal protection of the environment are more accurately traced back to Theodore Roosevelt than to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. They are, however, endowed with a sophistication and nuance of perspective that allows them to see a deeper truth that lies beyond such superficial objections)
As a result, Democrats should look for each and every one of the venerable tropes trotted out by Brooks and Gerson to start showing up in editorial pages, business magazine commentaries and so on all across the country. There are a very large group of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats who would be embarrassed to turn purple while screaming “socialist” like the red-meat conservatives at a Sarah Palin rally. They will, however, be quite happy to gravely knit their brows and purse their lips in theatrical displays of preoccupation while muttering ominously about their concern over “extreme” and “irresponsible” measures.

Read more…

It’s hard to see a downside to having the most charismatic Democratic Party leader since JFK. But there is one, and it’s well-stated in Daniel J. Galvin’s article in The Forum, “Changing Course: Reversing the Organizational Trajectory of the Democratic Party from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama,” written during the ’08 campaign. As Galvin’s opening graphs explain:

In a 2005 New York Times op-ed now considered a “classic essay,” former senator Bill Bradley observed a peculiar trade-off in party politics between charisma and structure. Over the previous 40-plus years, he wrote, each party dealt with this tradeoff differently and met with different degrees of success. Republicans, he argued, gained a competitive advantage over the Democrats by emphasizing structure over charisma. They “consciously, carefully, and single-mindedly” built a “stable pyramid” of money, ideas, organization, and action,where “all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.” Because the structure was stable, the personality of the party’s titular leader was of secondary importance. Charisma was a decidedly second-order concern.
Democrats, meanwhile, were “hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality.” While searching for the next JFK, Democrats neglected the less glamorous but ultimately more important work of organization-building. The problem was that “a party based on charisma has no long-term impact,” Bradley wrote. Bill Clinton’s charisma, for example, “didn’t translate into structure,” and while “the president did well,” he wrote, “the party did not.” Now, Democrats found themselves with “no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on” and with a grim outlook for the future

Most of Galvin’s article is optimistic about Obama’s commitment to party-building and the accomplishments of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy during his tenure at the helm of the DNC (For another positive assessment of Dean’s tenure at the DNC, see Alexander Zaitchick’s recent Alternet post).
However, Democratic gains in November, ’08 can be as credibly attributed to a host of other factors, like Obama’c coattails, the economic meltdown, an edge in internet fund-raising or voters’ general weariness of the GOP, to name a few. Geographic saturation is an important aspect of party-building, but the discussion should be broadened to include concerns like structural reform, the role of a strengthened labor movement (a hallmark of strong progressive political parties in Europe), candidate recruitment and training and how to get rank and file Democratic voters organized into lobbying groups. There is also room for an expanded discussion about party discipline, including the role of pro-Democratic reform initiatives like the Accountability Now PAC.
Galvin’s article was written before Governor Tim Kaine was appointed as Dean’s successor, and it’s too early to evaluate Kaine’s track record thus far. Kaine’s plan for building the Democratic Party will be rolled out in April, according to Zaitchick. Democrats face a different kind of party-building challenge now, with the enormous advantage of the President’s bully pulpit. Much depends on the eventual success of the stimulus and other Obama reforms.
Most of the recent debate about the pros and cons of bipartisanship has centered around it’s effect on the quality of legislation. But there is also a legitimate concern about how it impacts the growth and development of the Democratic Party, as noted in this comment, from a poster named Steve at The Last Chance Democracy Cafe:

I know it isn’t politically correct to say it right now, but the truth is that helping to build a strong Democratic Party — one that can win consistently — is the single biggest contribution Barack Obama can make to achieving positive progressive change in this nation. A single gifted president, even serving for the full eight years, can only do so much to improve this nation. A strong progressively rooted Democratic Party, able to effectively fight the good fight for a generation or more, on the other hand, can change the world.
I think Obama knows this: but, to be honest, he’s starting to scare me a little. He played the GOP masterfully during the stimulus bill debate. But there’s a danger in his incessant talk of bipartisanship. It has the effect of putting the GOP — and its response to Obama’s proposals — into the very center of the story, while at the same time marginalizing other Democrats. Why should anyone care what congressional Democrats have to say about the economy, when the whole storyline has become how the GOP will respond to Obama’s proposals?
…I understand the siren song of bipartisanship sounds loudly in the spirit of our new president. And making a public show of reaching out to the GOP is probably good politics — at least for Obama himself. But building a strong Democratic Party is better politics. And it is also an essential element to building a better and more just America over the long haul.
So two words, Barack: party building. Press them to your chest and put them under your pillow at night. Never forget them and never neglect them. Because when all is said and done, they may just represent the single most important inheritance you can give this nation.

Not that sparingly applied bipartisanship, and party-building are necessarily antithetical. But Steve’s concern about media ‘storyline’ is well-taken as is his challenge to Obama to keep focused on strengthening his party. Same goes for Sen. Bradley’s point about the focus on charisma, which is media-driven.
While there is not much the Democratic Party can do about lazy or shallow msm reporting, the growth of the pro-Democratic blogosphere and the telecommunications revolution hold out the hope that we can make better use of our own media. The explosion of streaming video, for example, means that there is no longer much of an excuse for Democrats not having their own 24-7 television station. As this technology becomes more seamlessly interwoven with television, the possibilities for educating voters will multiply dramatically. Ditto for a Democratic Party 24-7 internet radio station, long overdue.
A lot of interesting questions could be addressed, including: How do we make the party platform more of a unifying force? What is the future role for party-related interest groups, such as Dean’s Democracy for America or perhaps some future green Democrats caucus? What sort of ad campaign would attract young voters to become active in local Democratic groups?
It’s a lot to think about. But a broader, ongoing and inclusive discussion of future directions in party-building would help lay a solid foundation for a new era of progressive reform.