Progressive political blogs are abuzz with the fallout from the vote expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to permit warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. You can read about it all over the pro-democratic blogosphere.
But Glenn Greenwald has the most persuasive argument that Dems who voted against the FISA expansion need fear no political repercussions. As Greenwald explains in his Salon post “Attention Democrats: GOP fear-mongering does not work“:
The Rural Voter
The new book White Rural Rage employs a deeply misleading sensationalism to gain media attention. You should read The Rural Voter by Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea instead.
There is a sector of working class voters who can be persuaded to vote for Democrats in 2024 – but only if candidates understand how to win their support.
The recently published book, Rust Belt Union Blues, by Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol represents a profoundly important contribution to the debate over Democratic strategy.
Democrats should stop calling themselves a “coalition.”
They don’t think like a coalition, they don’t act like a coalition and they sure as hell don’t try to assemble a majority like a coalition.
The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy
The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy The Fundamental but Generally Unacknowledged Cause of the Current Threat to America’s Democratic Institutions.
Democrats ignore the central fact about modern immigration – and it’s led them to political disaster.
Democrats ignore the central fact about modern immigration – and it’s led them to political disaster.
The Daily Strategist
April 20, 2024
Not having worked in the 2004 Dean or Clark campaigns, or lived in Montana, my personal acquaintance with bloggers has been pretty much limited to those in Washington, and even there, given the ever-shrinking amount of time I spend in the Emerald City, there are many I haven’t met.
I struck partial paydirt my first night in Chicago, at a party sponsored by Time Magazine’s Swampland blog at some sushi bar. After a few minutes of random conversation with people who weren’t particularly amused by my ancient and unoriginal joke about southerners inventing sushi (“We called it ‘bait'”), I found myself chit-chatting with a mild-mannered middle-aged guy who turned out to be Duncan Black, better known as the fiery Atrios. Within minutes, I also made the acquaintance of MyDD’s Adam Connor, TAPPED’s Ben Adler, not to mention Joe Trippi and two editors of realclearpolitics.com. Later that night, at an informal gathering at the conference hotel, I met Mark Schmitt of the New America Foundation, a blogger and wonk whose work I have admired for eons. And then I spent some time talking and drinking Jim Beam with a tall young man who finally introduced himself as Bob Brigham, formerly of Swing State Project and now a political consultant in California. Brigham, you see, has probably written more abusive stuff about me than anybody else in the blogosphere. But we wound up trading war stories and even talking about possible projects we could cooperate on in the future.
On Saturday, after the presidential forum, I grabbed a very late lunch at a cookout sponsored by the Teamsters, risking the possibility that the sponsors, offended by my DLC-free-trade associations if not my pink polo shirt, would figure out who I was and beat me up. Instead, I ran into Joan McCarter (better known as the DailyKos front-page blogger McJoan), who was getting well-earned props from everyone there for her role in co-moderating the forum. Joan, whom I’d never met, is far and away the Kossack who’s been friendliest to me (succeeding Armando Llorens as my personal link to KosWorld), and she was generous enough to spend some time introducing me to other Kos front-pagers (e.g., Georgia10, DavidinNYC), not to mention several congressional candidates who were there in hopes of getting endorsed for ’08.
I didn’t have a chance to finally meet Markos Moulitsas himself (with whom I’ve exchanged many an email). Closest I got to him was at the Teamsters event, when he performed the unlikely task of introducing James Hoffa.
None of this personal outreach experience matters much to anyone other than me, but I have to say that all the folks I met at YearlyKos, including the people familiar with my background, were unfailingly polite and often positive about my own work (though sometimes only relatively, as in “Yes, you’re one of the reasonable ones Over There”). It’s often said that the relative anonymity of the blogosphere sharply reduces the perceived need for civility. Whether or not that’s true, “downloading” bloggers into real people can’t hurt.
After sitting through a couple of panels, I decided to “float” for a while in order to get a better sense of all the topics under discussion.
One of the largest panel discussions (never did quite figure out the distinctions between panels, workshops and roundtables) was entitled: “Ned Lamont for Senate: What really happened?” This session was enlivened by an apparently unexpected appearance by Lamont himself, who credited the blogosphere with the initial viability of his candidacy.
During the time I was in the room, all the discussion of the Lamont campaign focused on his primary win rather than his general election loss. This brought home once again that the whole Lamont-Lieberman experience can be used to reinforce diametrically opposed points of view about the future direction of the Democratic Party (personally, I think the contest was entirely sui generis, and of limited predictive value).
I also stopped by a session called “Blogging While Female,” featuring Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte (one of the famous former Edwards bloggers), TAPPED’s Garance Franke-Ruta, Feministing’s Jessica Valenti, and YearlyKos organizer Gina Cooper. The talk there focused to a large extent on the hate mail and very personal threats of violence many women in the blogosphere routinely encounter, to the point where some have felt constrained to enlist protection from law enforcement officials. The chilling examples the panelists provided certainly shamed people like me who have in the past gotten agitated and aggrieved by the occasional email or comment-thread insult (you know, corporate whore, AIPAC stooge, Republican Lite, etc., etc.).
There was also some discussion of the overall lack of diversity in the blogosphere, which has been a source of general anxiety at this and at the first YearlyKos. To tell the truth, the overall gender (and for that matter, age) balance at the conference, as measured subjectively, seemed to be better than I would have expected. But it was most definitely a highly honkified event, with less racial diversity than, say, the DLC conference in Nashville (something the DLC has worked on for many years). Diversity concerns were reportedly one reason YearlyKos organizers have decided to rename next year’s event “Netroots Nation,” as part of an effort to expand participation well beyond the readership of DailyKos.
Trippi’s rap mainly dealt with the vast growth of internet-based campaign organizing and fundraising in the current presidential cycle, and especially with the concentration of this growth on the Democratic side of the partisan
divide. The Democratic nominee in ’08, he argued, will enter the general election battle with an extraordinary advantage over the GOP nominee in terms of pre-mobilized citizens (including campaign contributors) and new media savvy.
Armstrong got into the nuts and bolts of how internet-based politics was affecting the internal organization of campaigns, beginning with small “internet-outreach” efforts and quickly changing the structure of most campaigns’ political, communications, and fundraising departments.
All the panelists agreed that the long era of domination of campaigns by paid broadcast media strategies was coming to an end.
In answering a question from a Texan about technology and Hispanic voter outreach, Rosenberg talked about last year’s monster pro-immigrant rallies as an example of where new media trends may go next. These rallies, said Rosenberg, were largely organized, almost overnight, via Spanish-language talk radio (the third largest radio format in the U.S. today) and text messaging. With the continued evolution of cell phone technology (e.g., the I-phone), it is increasingly likely that this will become the dominant medium for political communications in the near future.
I’m about to do a series of posts about the YearlyKos conference in Chicago this weekend (having chosen against weekend blogging, which hardly anyone was going to read).
It was quite an event, aside from the presidential forum on Saturday. The most frequent comment I heard, uttered by confirmed Kossacks and more mainstream types alike, was that the conference reflected the maturing of the netroots from an anguished collection of self-conscious outsiders into an accepted constituency group (overlapping with many others) of the Democratic Party. The focus was less on intra-party disputes than on the question of how to win in 2008. And the atmosphere was more ecumenical and less left-triumphalist than I expected. These are all relative terms, and I’m not suggesting all or even most of the participants have lost their edge, for good or for ill. But the whole thing felt like a normal and healthy Democratic gathering–with about 800 laptops. (I’ll mention a few stranger moments as I go along).
As indicated in my Friday post, the first thing I attended in Chicago was a panel on public opinion. If you read the previous staff post about Democracy Corps’ latest strategy memo, you’ll get a sense of what Stan Greenberg had to say: the basic dynamics of public opinion going into 2008 are actually better than those Democrats enjoyed two years ago. Indeed, said Greenberg, the deterioration of Bush’s approval ratings and the intensification of “wrong track” sentiment has accelerated more since 2006 than it did between 2004 and 2006. All seven of the targeted Republican Senators up in 2008 have terrible “re-elect” numbers. And given the very strong position of the “Class of 2006” of House Democrats, and the persistent vulnerability of many Republicans, additional House gains look plausible as well.
On the same panel, Mark Blumenthal, a.k.a., the Mystery Pollster, focused on the Democratic presidential nominating contest, and stressed the exceptional volatility of public opinion in the pre-primary period, with John Kerry’s astonishing rise in 2004 being just one of many historical examples. One particularly interesting nugget he offered was the hypothesis that Iowa and New Hampshire’s impact represents an inchoate feeling that voters there have paid greater attention to the candidates than those in “later” states, and essentially serve a vetting process for the rest of the country.
In the Q&A after this panel, one audience member asked about the disconnect between Hillary Clinton’s popularity among rank and file Democrats, and her lack of support in the blogosphere. Chris Bowers jumped on the question with encyclopedic thoroughness, going through the demographic characteristics of progressive bloggers (disproportionately white, male, upper-income, self-identified liberal, and secular) and concluding: “If the Democratic electorate looked like the blogosphere, Hillary Clinton would be in big trouble.”
A new DCorps strategy memo by James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Ana Iparrraguirre, “2008 House Battle Moves Into Republican Territory,” discusses DCorps second battleground survey of the 70 most competitive congressional districts. The authors see class of ’06 Dems holding solid leads and Republican House members lagging by an average of 5 percent — for a net Democratic gain of 20 seats as a realistic goal. “There really could be another wave election,” say the authors.
As for the Senate. MyDD’s Todd Beeton has an interesting post, “How Realistic Is A 60 Seat Majority?” Beeton reports that MoveOn’s Washington Director Tom Mattzie sees a path to a 60-seat fillibuster-proof majority. Want a little icing on the cake? David Brooks, never unduly optimistic about Democratic prospects, said on the Chris Matthews show that the GOP is in such bad shape that Dems could run congress for a decade.
I’m in Chicago for the next three days, at the YearlyKos gathering of bloggers and other netroots folk. It’s quite an assemblage, with a massive, complex schedule of workshops, panels and roundtables, requiring a color-coded schedule that requires several moments to figure out. The big national news will be the appearance of presidential candidates at a forum tomorrow. But most of the candidates are also holding smaller, break-out sessions. When I registered, Obama’s and Edwards’ had already closed out.
I’ve just entered a panel discussion called Public Opinion Matters, featuring TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg, independent pollster Joel Wright, OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers, MoveOn.org’s Tom Mattzie, and Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal (a.k.a. The Mystery Pollster). It was (or at least seemed like) a mile walk up various escalators at McCormick Place to the appropriate meeting room, but there is a great view of Lake Michigan for those who tire of poll numbers.
I’ll file a report a bit later.
Rudy Giuliani’s loud if not very specific comments on health care policy yesterday pretty clearly signify an ever-greater polarization of the two parties on this subject, and perhaps a hightening of the issue’s importance in the 2008 presidential campaign. Giuliani’s hard-right position on health care also reinforces my earlier argument that Democrats need to make up their minds where to draw the lines between Ds and Rs on health care.
Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn skillfully dissects RudyCare, and demolishes it as a serious effort towards universal health care. It’s really just a restatement of George W. Bush’s thoroughly discredited “thinking” on the subject, accompanied by massive demagoguery aimed at tapping conservative hatred of Michael Moore and of “Old Europe.”
The Progressive Policy Institute’s Dave Kendall has a piece up at the DLC’s Ideas Primary site going a bit further, stressing the Giuliani-Bush approach’s atavistic, Social Darwinist demands for individual health care purchasing.
So why is the supposed “centrist” Rudy Giuliani embracing this position, which he would undoubtedly have mocked as mayor of New York? Aside from the obvious fact that he wants to burnish his credentials for economic conservatism in order to obscure his less-than-conservative credentials on cultural issues, Rudy may be preparing a major Assault From the Right on Mitt Romney over the health care plan the Mittster signed in Massachussets, which heavily depends on “socialist” collective purchasing schemes. This could get tricky for Giuliani, complicating his efforts to get an endorsement from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed a health care plan similar to Romney’s. More generally, it would create the interesting spectacle of the two leading GOP “moderates” battling to outflank each other on the Right on different sets of issues.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d repeat that the GOP’s lurch to the Radical Right on health care forces Democrats to make a fundamental choice: Do we accept the universal/non-universal or government/private distinctions GOPers are seeking to make between their health care plans and ours? Or do we focus on exposing the GOP’s fundamental hostility to even the status quo’s efforts to encourage pooled purchasing and community rating?
The answer may depend on whether Mitt Romney or someone else is the Republican nominee, but it’s not too early to begin thinking about it now.
Good News for Democrats, as well as America’s kids. The U.S. House of Reps. has passed legislation providing health care coverage for 4+ million uninsured children in low-income families. The legislation which passed by a vote of 225-204 (10 Dems opposed, 5 Republicans supporting), also prevents cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and is partly financed by a 45 cent per pack increase in the federal cigarette tax (NYT coverage here).
Of course President Bush has threatened a veto, should similar legislation pass the Senate, which will provide a clear demonstration of which party gets it that health security — especially for all American children — is a cornerstone of true national security. Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-MD) said it well: “If America is the greatest country in the world, then all of our children should have health insurance.”
Despite Bush’s threatened veto, the principles undergirding the legislation enjoy the support of the American people, explains Ruy Teixeira, in his recent post on the topic at The Century Foundation‘s web pages:
The public, on the other hand, seems very supportive of expanding health coverage for children and even thinks that we should make such coverage universal. A June Democracy Corps poll last month found that almost half the public—47 percent—chose “expand health coverage to every child in the U.S. through the existing State Children’s Health Insurance Program” as one of the top two priorities that Congress should focus on in the coming year. They chose this more than they chose any other option, including immigration reform (36 percent), promoting alternative energy and energy conservation (29 percent), reforming the alternative minimum tax (29 percent), reforming lobbying (15 percent), and putting labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (15 percent).
One objection that has been made to the proposed bills is that increased cigarette taxes would provide some of the funding for the program expansion. Would that faze the public? Not according to a May 2007 CNN poll. Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of the public surveyed said they would favor “a national health insurance program for all children under the age of 18, even if this would require higher taxes,” compared to just 25 percent who dissented.
Back in January, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined by a group of children of House members, called the House to order, “in the name of America’s children.” Predictably, the GOP accused her of grandstanding. Apparently she meant business.
The appearances by Democratic presidential candidates at the YearlyKos conference (which begins tomorrow) will undoubtedly intensify the “Dems rush to the left” story-line beloved of MSM pundits and conservative bloggers.
At this point, It’s worth following Kevin Drum’s example by asking if the presidentials really reflect, on a substantive level, an abandonment of Clintonian “centrism.” Here’s Kevin’s take:
if YearlyKos were genuinely more substantively powerful than the DLC, you’d see the big three candidates taking public positions considerably to the left of the party’s positions ten years ago. If that’s the case, though, I’ve missed it. No one’s talking about rolling back welfare reform. No one’s proposed a healthcare initiative even half as comprehensive as the 1994 Clinton plan. All three candidates continue to claim they’re personally opposed to gay marriage. Their rhetoric on guns and abortion is much more muted than in the past. They mostly agree that some of the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, but not much more. They want to get out of Iraq, but that’s a thoroughly mainstream position, and none of them are willing to commit to a complete withdrawal in any case.
I’d add a few flourishes here. A year and a half ago, when the editors of The New Republic followed Al Gore in endorsing a single-payer health care system, I’d have bet serious money that at least one if not more of the major Democratic candidates for president in 2008 would support the same idea. But they didn’t.
The same trend, or lack thereof, is visible on an issue that matched welfare reform in signifying the “centrist” credentials of Democrats in the Clinton years: fiscal discipline. Despite quibbles over exactly how high this candidate or that ranks deficit reduction in his or her hierarchy of priorities, the fact remains that most Democrats are more committed to fiscal discipline–and can prove it–than most Republicans. That would not be true in a party “rushing to the left.”
More immediately, where are the candidates on the intra-party disputes that are most animating the progressive blogosphere at present? One is definitely the “residual troop commitment” issue with respect to Iraq; yet the two leading Democratic candidates persist in supporting residuals, despite netroots arguments that this represent a desire to continue the war indefinitely. And another is impeachment. If any of the major Democratic candidates is going to go to Chicago for YearlyKos and thrill the audience with support for impeachment, it’s a closely held secret.
Kevin doesn’t mention trade policy or education policy, where the case for an abandonment of Clintonism is strongest. But both issues are hard to pigeon-hole ideologically; globaphobia comes from the Right and Center as much as from the Left, and the same is true of deep hostility to No Child Left Behind.
The whole effort to use the DLC and YearlyKos conferences, and who attends one or the other, to show a vast ideological shift in the Democratic Party is misbegotten on several levels. The “Left” nature of the Kos-centered netroots has been grossly exaggerated; and the DLC’s reputation for willingness to support Bush policies has never been well-earned. We’re in a political context right now where Bush’s extremism has simultaneously made virtually all Democrats much more partisan and combative, while opening up the political “‘center” in ways that tend to unite rather than divide progressives on most policy issues. Let’s don’t get too distracted by the “rush to the left” argument.
