Bloggers and Billionaires, MoveOn and Howard Dean: The Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted August 21, 2007.

As anyone who follows politics knows, there's been a revolt against the "old" Democratic Party represented by Clinton insiders and an array of powerful political consultants, pollsters, and gate keepers.

Frustrated by Clintonian triangulation, two losses to George Bush in elections that were widely perceived to be stolen or given away too easily, and enraged by the party leadership's support of the invasion of Iraq, outsiders have risen up in an attempt to displace the insiders and their losing ways and bring more progressive values and vision to the political process.

It is a widespread uprising, which, according to Matt Bai's new book, The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, is "led by baby boom liberals, wealthy investors and defiant bloggers whose faith in party and country had been severely shaken by 12 years of Republican rule."

Battle for the Democratic soul

Make no mistake: this is a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. It's primarily a fight between the grassroots and the elites. It's a struggle that has been fought many times in political history, but it's never been fought at a time when the insurgents could tap into the kind of power represented by the Internet, probably the single-most significant shift in political organizing and communication capacity in decades.

Who will eventually prevail in this donnybrook is unclear, and of course there will be compromises and détentes reached along the way. But many feel that if Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic party nominee, those who have exercised power for the Dems over the past two decades will keep their hands on the reins, while if it ends up being Obama or Edwards or someone else, it may usher in a new era of Democratic politics.

Arrayed on the establishment side are a host of recognizable names including Terry McAuliffe, former head of the DNC; James Carville, longtime Clinton advisor, author and talking head, who is married to chief Dick Cheney protector Mary Matalin; Harold Ickes, another former Clinton official who raised many millions of dollars for media on behalf on the Democrats leading up to the Kerry nomination in 2004; and Bob Shrum, media consultant-cum-campaign manager who led the failed Kerry campaign in 2004. It was Shrum's fifth consecutive defeat in the presidential sweepstakes.

In Mathew Yglesias's Washington Monthly article: "Shrum and Dumber: Memoirs of the Man Who Thrice Saved Us From a Democratic Presidency," the writer explains that "Democratic consultants are in the enviable position of both earning a percentage of their client's ad buys and deciding how much money their clients spend on ads. This is an obviously absurd arrangement; it can hardly be expected to do anything but hurt the effectiveness of Democratic campaigns …" It is circumstances like these that have the grassroots rebellion savaging the corruption and parasitic nature of the Beltway insiders who have their grips on the election process. As über-blogger Markos Moulitsas likes to say: "I went into politics to eliminate the middleman."

And lest we forget, perhaps the most formidable factor in the "old" political establishment is none other than Bill Clinton, to many still the most popular politician in America and by all accounts a savvy strategist who appears engaged in his wife's ongoing campaign at many levels, including stumping for her on the campaign trail.

On the legislative side, establishment leaders include Rahm Emmanuel, former Clinton aide, and current House member who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's successful 2006 effort to win back a majority for the Dems for the first time since 1994, and Chuck Schumer, Emmanuel's counterpart, who led the Dem effort in the Senate and who has received particular notoriety of late for breaking with his party and promising to work very hard to maintain the 15 percent income tax rate for hedge fund billionaires, while the rest of us frequently pay a tax rate twice as high.

For the grassroots insurgents, the key players include the hugely successful citizens group MoveOn.org and the influential blogosphere made up of thousands of activated and informed citizens. Both have excited, large constituencies, aggressively campaigned against the war in Iraq, mobilized grassroots activism and money and supported a wide array of Democratic candidates, working both within and outside the party infrastructure. MoveOn raised $27 million in 2006 for the Democratic takeover and has more than 3 million internet members. According to leading progressive blogger Chris Bowers, the progressive blogosphere attracts between 2 million and 4 million readers each week. This August the second YearlyKos convention was held in Chicago, attended by the top six presidential candidates, 1,400 progressive activists and the national political press.

The grassroots insurgency has already scored major blows against the Dem Party establishment. They supported Howard Dean's campaign for chairman of the DNC in 2005 and truly panicked the Beltway insiders who mounted a failed attempt to stop him. Soon after, Dean embarked on his 50-state strategy, which had given party insiders conniption fits. In his campaign, Dean insisted that the Democratic Party was never going to get its mojo back unless it stopped being a triaging, pollster-driven operation, collecting money from big donors and parachuting in outsiders to focus only on key "swing" states, while starving the rest of the party's political infrastructure nationwide.

See more stories tagged with: blogosphere, moveon, progressive, democratic party, bloggers, third way, matt bai, democracy alliance, the argument

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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