Crashing the Gate
The chances were close to zero that a 52-year-old white guy who is a registered independent and who has spent pretty much the last 33 years living and working inside the Capital Beltway would agree with all or most of what the two most prominent liberal Democratic bloggers in America, one 34, the other 41, would write in their scathing attack on Washington and the political establishment.
In fact, I winced a great deal while reading "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics." I often disagreed with the characterizations and interpretations by the book's authors, Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD.com and Internet strategist for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and Markos Moulitas Zuniga, better known for his blog, Daily Kos, which gets over 1 million unique visitors a day.
I especially differ with their attacks, individually and collectively, on a number of friends whom I like and respect a great deal. That said, it is one of the two best books I've read in years about the Democratic Party, its myriad problems and challenges. The other is "Gods Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," by Jim Wallis, which addresses how and why Democrats should reach out to fundamentalists and other church-going Christians if they are to survive as a national party.
Why Democrats, and others seeking to understand Democrats, should read "Crashing the Gate" is simple. The world and American politics are changing, yet the Democratic Party is not. As the "in party," there is less of an immediate imperative for the GOP to change, so the revolution in that party is probably a few years off, but it is also overdue. For Democrats, though, the revolution is here and now.
The 2004 campaign, in which previously unfathomable amounts of money were raised and political communities were instantaneously organized via the Internet, changed the present and ushered in the future. Armstrong was one of its principal architects and Moulitas its spiritual leader.
But more than that, the authors look at some of the biggest problems facing the party through fresh eyes, and see what many Democrats have grown accustomed to seeing and are now reconciled to live with, no matter how dysfunctional it makes their party.
While the book starts off with the prerequisite Bush-bashing, some of "Crashing the Gate" was truly unexpected and not at all the bleating of a pair of naive ideologues. Indeed, early on "Crashing" confronts head-on the entrenched interest groups in the party that keep it from being a whole party and instead make it a loose confederation of interest groups that too often are pretty much out for themselves.
The authors suggest that conservative activists and interest groups, such as anti-tax movement leader Grover Norquist and evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson and James Dobson operate outside of but in close coordination with the GOP, expanding its reach "...but on our side, the issue groups and the identity groups are the Democratic Party."
The authors, who are pro-abortion rights, take swipes at environmentalists and labor, but save some of their harshest criticism for women's rights and abortion rights groups, suggesting that overly stringent litmus tests are ultimately hurting their cause. Armstrong and Moulitas say that the leadership of today's women's rights groups are stuck in the mindset of the women's liberation movement where abortion is celebrated as a choice and a political victory rather than the tragedy, albeit sometimes necessary, it is.
Their discussion of how the attitudes of younger voters on the abortion issue differ from their older siblings and parents is quite thought-provoking.
The next target of a broadside is Democratic campaign consultants inside the Beltway, and their cozy relationships with the party's campaign committees. Relying heavily on an article by Amy Sullivan in the Washington Monthly last year, they suggest there appears to be little if any relationship between the consultants' personal earnings and whether their clients are victorious.
While Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's program of putting DNC-funded organizers in every state to ensure Democrats have a national party is a good one, the book's suggestion that Democrats field and fund candidates in every single Republican-held district is unrealistic. Armstrong and Moulitas blame the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for targeting just 30 or so GOP-held districts in recent years as small thinking that limits the party's possibility for success.
The authors are seemingly unaware that Democratic Party strategists such as Mark Gersh and the DCCC itself have sought for years to expand the playing field, hoping to target more Republican-held districts, but were restricted by an inability to entice and fund quality candidates. Democrats have had to settle for smaller playing fields, but it was certainly not by choice. Throwing money at a marginally qualified candidate with little chance of victory is hardly expanding the playing field.
"Crashing" represents a fresh view of the Democratic Party, its problems and challenges through new and uncynical eyes. It is clearly worth a read by us older fossils, if only to remind us that we sometimes overlook that which is in plain sight.
In fact, I winced a great deal while reading "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics." I often disagreed with the characterizations and interpretations by the book's authors, Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD.com and Internet strategist for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and Markos Moulitas Zuniga, better known for his blog, Daily Kos, which gets over 1 million unique visitors a day.
I especially differ with their attacks, individually and collectively, on a number of friends whom I like and respect a great deal. That said, it is one of the two best books I've read in years about the Democratic Party, its myriad problems and challenges. The other is "Gods Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," by Jim Wallis, which addresses how and why Democrats should reach out to fundamentalists and other church-going Christians if they are to survive as a national party.
Why Democrats, and others seeking to understand Democrats, should read "Crashing the Gate" is simple. The world and American politics are changing, yet the Democratic Party is not. As the "in party," there is less of an immediate imperative for the GOP to change, so the revolution in that party is probably a few years off, but it is also overdue. For Democrats, though, the revolution is here and now.
The 2004 campaign, in which previously unfathomable amounts of money were raised and political communities were instantaneously organized via the Internet, changed the present and ushered in the future. Armstrong was one of its principal architects and Moulitas its spiritual leader.
But more than that, the authors look at some of the biggest problems facing the party through fresh eyes, and see what many Democrats have grown accustomed to seeing and are now reconciled to live with, no matter how dysfunctional it makes their party.
While the book starts off with the prerequisite Bush-bashing, some of "Crashing the Gate" was truly unexpected and not at all the bleating of a pair of naive ideologues. Indeed, early on "Crashing" confronts head-on the entrenched interest groups in the party that keep it from being a whole party and instead make it a loose confederation of interest groups that too often are pretty much out for themselves.
The authors suggest that conservative activists and interest groups, such as anti-tax movement leader Grover Norquist and evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson and James Dobson operate outside of but in close coordination with the GOP, expanding its reach "...but on our side, the issue groups and the identity groups are the Democratic Party."
The authors, who are pro-abortion rights, take swipes at environmentalists and labor, but save some of their harshest criticism for women's rights and abortion rights groups, suggesting that overly stringent litmus tests are ultimately hurting their cause. Armstrong and Moulitas say that the leadership of today's women's rights groups are stuck in the mindset of the women's liberation movement where abortion is celebrated as a choice and a political victory rather than the tragedy, albeit sometimes necessary, it is.
Their discussion of how the attitudes of younger voters on the abortion issue differ from their older siblings and parents is quite thought-provoking.
The next target of a broadside is Democratic campaign consultants inside the Beltway, and their cozy relationships with the party's campaign committees. Relying heavily on an article by Amy Sullivan in the Washington Monthly last year, they suggest there appears to be little if any relationship between the consultants' personal earnings and whether their clients are victorious.
While Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's program of putting DNC-funded organizers in every state to ensure Democrats have a national party is a good one, the book's suggestion that Democrats field and fund candidates in every single Republican-held district is unrealistic. Armstrong and Moulitas blame the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for targeting just 30 or so GOP-held districts in recent years as small thinking that limits the party's possibility for success.
The authors are seemingly unaware that Democratic Party strategists such as Mark Gersh and the DCCC itself have sought for years to expand the playing field, hoping to target more Republican-held districts, but were restricted by an inability to entice and fund quality candidates. Democrats have had to settle for smaller playing fields, but it was certainly not by choice. Throwing money at a marginally qualified candidate with little chance of victory is hardly expanding the playing field.
"Crashing" represents a fresh view of the Democratic Party, its problems and challenges through new and uncynical eyes. It is clearly worth a read by us older fossils, if only to remind us that we sometimes overlook that which is in plain sight.
posted by The Last Word | 8:14 PM
