This week holds a big win for the activist left of the Democratic Party over the professional centrists. A California-based “netroots” outfit founded early in this decade is drawing the presidential candidates that one of the best-known groups in American politics, credited by many for launching the first Clinton administration, can’t get.
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Once the center of the national party, or so it seemed, at least, it’s being shunned by the Democratic presidential candidates. None are attending its convention.
Instead, they will all be in Chicago later this week for the Year Kos convention of lefty bloggers and activists. The ever combative Daily Kos super-blog, founded by thirtysomething Berkeley-based Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, is joined by other online and activist groups in a confab that will boast all the Democratic presidential candidates showing up to make pitches. The Daily Kos was founded in the aftermath of the Florida recount of 2000 and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, providing a refuge, sounding board, and organizing base for activists outraged by the Age of Bush.
Some interesting things are happening with the Republicans this week, and we’ll get to them, but nothing as significant as the displacement of the once fabled DLC by a seemingly rag-tag group of angry bloggers.
Now, Kos himself, which is what he likes to be called, is somewhat more pragmatic than his fiery and not infrequently intemperate screeds would have one believe. Although his actual political experience dates back no further than the 2004 Howard Dean for President campaign, a fiery and notably self-righteous venture in itself, Kos has a pragmatic streak. He was a consultant earlier in this cycle to former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, one of the more moderate national Democrats around. And he has noted the virtues of centrist Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both to the not infrequently angry dismay of some of the most fervent hyperpartisans who inhabit his political echo chambers.
It’s an angry crowd. In fact, the hyperpartisan blogosphere of the left is the new media answer to the hyperpartisan talk radio milieu of the right.
And this is primary season, so candidates go where the most fervent are to be found. That’s not in Nashville with the DLC. Not this year, anyway. Actually, not ever, if you understand the history of things. None other than Bill Clinton chaired the DLC in the run-up to his own first presidential campaign in 1992. But there was much more to his campaign.
The DLC was founded in 1985 by Washington-based lobbyists, consultants, and politicians in the wake of Walter Mondale’s landslide defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. To turn the party away from the ossified liberalism represented by the former vice president. In fact, quite a few of the founding members were Mondale supporters. They knew that change was afoot and wanted to get in front of it.
Notably, Gary Hart, a future-oriented Democrat who didn’t think labor had all the answers and championed high tech entrepreneurship and the environment, won 26 states against Mondale in the primaries. The DLC was as much an insider effort to counter Hart, who did not join it, as it was a rebuke to Mondale. In the event, Hart’s front-running presidential candidacy for 1988 was brought down by a sex scandal that looks quaint today, and non-DLCer Michael Dukakis won the nomination.
Next time around, Clinton used his DLC cred as part, but only part, of his political mix. As journalist Sidney Blumenthal, later a key Clinton advisor, noted at the time, Clinton was part of “The Conversation” about a new Democratic politics of which the DLC – through its ties to older businesses and Washington insiders – was an important but not overwhelming part. The DLC had only limited state affiliates, and never a popular movement …
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I have heard much about the DLC in a long time.
I MEAN, I haven’t heard much in a long time.
The nutroots, the hacks, my favorite people! lol
Good for the bloggers. The DLC lost its relevancy when it decided to play footsie with Bush.
I think it happened before then. It’s a reason why they aligned with Bush.
I wonder if this will go to the Kossacks’s heads.
This is a good victory for a new style politics. Keep on keeping on!
How far left will the Demorats go?
Bill, great call explicitly comparing the rise of DK and the fall of DLC. The moderate-if-partisan Kos, it should be noted, is a veteran.
DK is a fascinating and frustrating place. Many posts (on economics, housing and energy policy, for example) are full of info and graphics that casual news observers would struggle to find elsewhere; yet, there’s also much immaturity and shrillness.
———
As for the Dems, they’re not moving left willingly, events are moving them and all of us left. Week-by-week, the complete political failure in the country formerly known as Iraq becomes clear to all but those wearing ideological blinders.
When I read it, I wonder how much of it is accurate, noting many things I know that are not.
Still, it’s an interesting phenomenon.
The DLC? Eh. Despite my own centrism, never a fan. Note the origin story.
When I read it, I wonder how much of it is accurate, noting many things I know that are not.
Still, it’s an interesting phenomenon.
The DLC? Eh. Despite my own centrism, never a fan. Note the origin story.
The Anti-Gary Hart DLC. Figures.
Chris M’s evaluation is spot-on. The site aggregates ideas and analyses that are hard to find in the MSM, but the far-lefties — the Naderites and Kucinich people — are so annoying that I find it hard to spend much time there.
On individual topics, there are better blogs — The Big Picture, for instance, which is beautifully presented — but DailyKos’s scope, and its ability to chew over information fast, is much broader because of the same collecitization that brings in the crazies…
I’m pretty sure DailyKos wasn’t founded until 2002, which seems a bit late to have been motivated by the recount… MyDD, which was a major early influence on the design of DailyKos, was founded in ’01 by Jerome Armstrong.
Although his actual political experience dates back no further than the 2004 Howard Dean for President campaign
I think that’s true of his “formal” campaign experience, but he was a volunteer on a local scale — precinct-walking and the like — as far back as the Reagan re-election campaign, when he was 13. (I forget whether he decided he could no longer support the GOP in ’92 or ’96. I think it was ’92.)
I’m flying out to Chicago Wednesday night…
BTW, regarding the presence of inaccuracies on DailyKos… This makes it unlike cable news and the major papers, how?
The NYT has had to publish huge editor’s notes apologizing for Jason Blair’s lies, and Judith Miller’s credulous twaddle. (Knight-Ridder ate their lunch on that story…) Heck, Fox News can’t even correctly identify the party of various Senators and House members (e.g. listing Mark Foley as a Dem repeatedly, and just the other day tagging Arlen Specter as a Dem). I think the moral is that you shouldn’t believe everything you read (or watch); regardless of the source, you need to bring some skepticism, think about who’s funding the message, etc.
As you said on another thread, there is a very high noise to signal ratio at Daily Kos. And I simply don’t trust what active partisans have to say on a lot of things.
collecitization
Gah, I don’t know what happened to that. Should’ve been “collectivization” (which was supposed to be a humorous nod towards a certain other far-left philosophy which is still different from socialism).
I simply don’t trust what active partisans have to say on a lot of things.
You talk to campaigns’ press folks, right? You don’t print their words verbatim as if they were truth delivered from on high (which puts you a cut above a lot of reporters, sadly), but you talk to them.
Yes, I reported it was founded in 2002 and recall at the time that he and many other were still very angry about the Florida recount.
I think it’s fair to say that the rise of Bush and the Iraq War is encompasses most of the actual experiential base of the principals and most participatns of the netroots. Most everything else seems looked up to pound home a hyperpartisan point, except by the old New Lefties who have joined in the fervor.
The problem at Daily Kos goes far beyond Naderites and adherents of Dennis K.
There is a fundamental toxicity there that reminds me of right-wing talk radio.
>Auros :
Chris M’s evaluation is spot-on. The site aggregates ideas and analyses that are hard to find in the MSM, but the far-lefties — the Naderites and Kucinich people — are so annoying that I find it hard to spend much time there.
On individual topics, there are better blogs — The Big Picture, for instance, which is beautifully presented — but DailyKos’s scope, and its ability to chew over information fast, is much broader because of the same collecitization that brings in the crazies…
I’m pretty sure DailyKos wasn’t founded until 2002, which seems a bit late to have been motivated by the recount… MyDD, which was a major early influence on the design of DailyKos, was founded in ’01 by Jerome Armstrong.
Although his actual political experience dates back no further than the 2004 Howard Dean for President campaign
I think that’s true of his “formal” campaign experience, but he was a volunteer on a local scale — precinct-walking and the like — as far back as the Reagan re-election campaign, when he was 13. (I forget whether he decided he could no longer support the GOP in ’92 or ’96. I think it was ’92.)
I’m flying out to Chicago Wednesday night…
Jul 30, 2007 12:04 PM
It’s funny you use that example, because the hyperpartisan blogosphere reads like endless spin.
>Auros :
I simply don’t trust what active partisans have to say on a lot of things.
You talk to campaigns’ press folks, right? You don’t print their words verbatim as if they were truth delivered from on high (which puts you a cut above a lot of reporters, sadly), but you talk to them.
Jul 30, 2007 12:17 PM
There is a reason it’s called the nutroots. lol
This is not a surprise. The DLC is a spent force. It lost its remaining credibility in the sands of Iraq.
The sands of IRAQ, slipping through our fingers like the days of our lives.
I think this is much ado about nothing. Note the location of the Kos event. That guarantees Obama’s presence, which in turn guarantees Hillary’s presence. Besides, this is the pre-election year. In 1999 and 2003, the Dem nominees skipped the DLC shindig too. They dutifully showed up the following election year both times.
In reality, the DLC has never been shut out before.
the hyperpartisan blogosphere reads like endless spin
A lot of it does, yes. And yet, it still contains a lot of valuable information. I don’t find these two facts difficult to reconcile. Press secretaries say important and interesting things too, sometimes.
I think the blogs contain a higher percentage of interesting and useful info, but also contain a MUCH higher percentage of obnoxious, stupid, and offensive stuff. Campaign-speak tends towards fluff — no actual content that would either inform or offend. Ari Fleischer elevated that technique to an artform.
It’s a mixed bag, a fascinating phenomenon, and a primary phenomenon.
It’s a mixed bag, a fascinating phenomenon, and a primary phenomenon.
A CRAZY phenomenon. lol
Bill Bradley said:
Here are some facts for you from demographic polls done at DailyKos:
60% of DKos users are between 35-59 years old
78% have a bachelors degree or better
61% report income of $57,000 or better
The vast majority of these folks did not fall off the apple cart yesterday. Yes, it is fair to say that Bush/Cheney and their Iraq fiasco has been a galvanizing force. However, you will find many well researched and reported pieces on health care, energy independence and the environment, to name but a few of the multitude of topics covered.
There was a reason that Time magazine’s Person of the Year was “You” – the internet user. Get used to it.
Maybe that’s true.
Maybe that’s not true.
It’s not the way it comes off.
“In reality, the DLC has never been shut out before.”
What are you basing that statement on? The ’99 and ’03 attendees are a matter of public record and they clearly did not include Al Gore, John Kerry, etc.
Read what I wrote.
You’re talking apples and oranges on my time. Eventual nominee vs. the field.
I don’t know what you imagine you’re doing spinning away the fact that all the Dems are at Yearly Kos and none are at DLC.