Here is the deal: Hillary Clinton is not, and never was, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. It does not matter how much money she or any other candidate has in her bank account at this point. It does not matter at this point how well known she or any other candidate is. This far out, what matters is the ability of the various candidates to inspire the still growing wave of grassroots and netroots activists on your behalf, and to inspire non-active, rank and file Democrats to become activists on your behalf. At this early point, that ability to inspire is worth far more than any bank account, any family name, or any meaningless lead in national primary trial heats. Of course it is still necessary to conduct all of the organizational and media steps required to run an effective campaign, but without the ability to inspire the new movement, your campaign will have a much tougher go of it.
And that is why grassroots jes’ folks and candidates themselves must ignore the opinions of Those Who Are Paid To Know Such Things: The wiseguys don’t know anything more than you.
I get the distinct impression that most grassroots folks who pay attention do indeed have their eye on who will be effective as campaigners and as elected officials. We’ve got as good BS detectors as anyone — both for unprincipled phoniness and for pie-in-the-sky romance. We damn well know what’s possible. That’s not to say we win all the time — not by any stretch. But due to the increased speed and comprehensiveness of information about candidates through the blogs, MoveOns and DFAs, no one is better suited to vet candidates for BS-or-skypie than the kinds of folks who read and post here. After all, we’re the people who will be voting in primaries and November — and dragging our friends and family along.
That’s how the progs-n’-blogs found Deval Patrick in 2005: He sounded intriguing to us. He said things that really spoke to our aspirations. He didn’t sound like an ordinary, experienced but over-polished politician. And we went to Democratic Town Committee meetings and conventions and house parties and read the blog interviews etc. etc. etc. and vetted the heck out of this guy.
When a candidate is genuinely able to get traction in the grassroots, Those Who Are Paid to Know Such Things need to pay attention. Both partisan and skeptical observers need to constantly re-examine their criteria of evaluation: What matters to people right now? What’s clicking, and what’s flopping?
What “clicks” is rarely a checkbox of ostensibly “centrist” issue stands. I’ll take a candidate who can draw people in any day over one who must straddle enough ideological ground to cover 51%. Persuasion beats pandering, and folks know the difference when they see it.
UPDATE: Just heard on the radio that Patrick spoke to a group of journos today; and in asking them to “set aside their cynicism”, apparently got in some “told you so” digs. Sweeeet.
FURTHER UPDATE (by David): Kim’s got a brief rundown of today’s Patrick/journo event.
Yeah, but the progs-n-blogs crowd kind of whiffed on Ned Lamont, didn’t we? And now the Party is forced to placate Lieberman. We thought we could run a political novice against an institution on the Iraq issue alone. Turns out we needed more than that. Was it the candidate? Was it too narrow an issue? What lesson do we learn there?
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I don’t disagree that we know as much, if not more, than Those Who Are Paid to Know Such Things. But I think its what we do with the information that we have that will count as we move toward 2008. Put another way: There still remains a gulf between what the progs-n-blogs crowd thinks will work, and what the remainder of the voting public thinks will work. There are a great many lessons to be learned from the 2006 election cycle, but it’s which lessons we chose to learn that will matter.
Re: Lamont: It was incredible that he beat Lieberman in the primary. A real “holy @#$$” moment. But as you say, it wasn’t enough. Progs-n’-blogs won the battle and lost the war. OTOH, what are you going to do with someone like Joe? Just let him walk? Laugh it off? “Ha ha, Joe just loves his torture, but we love him warts and all … “
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I think it would take someone who was really familiar with the CT race on a day-to-day basis to talk about why Lamont didn’t win. But I’ll try: I would chalk it up to 1. the debates, where Lamont’s inexperience seemed to show; and 2. the fact that the real GOP candidate didn’t peel off enough Republican votes from Joe. Joe’s victory was a result of Schlesinger’s meltdown as much as Lamont’s inadequacies. CT was a unique situation this year, so I think it’s tricky to draw broad conclusions from that race.
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My point was that P&Bs will be successful if they can find inspiring candidates — particularly ones who can be positive and visionary in some way. Indeed, the P&Bs have laid the groundwork for such candidates of principle to be able to jump in and have some chance of success. IOW, the candidates themselves are “checking back in.” That’s very, very cool.
That’s a pretty good fig leaf there, but it sure seems to me that the cyber-grassroots DailyKos world put an X on a sitting senator’s photograph, and then pulled out all the stops in an effort to unseat that senator, all in the name of true blue liberalism.
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The result is that (i) the senator retained his seat, (ii) the senator has been excommunicated from the Democratic party, (iii) because the senate is so closely divided, the targeted senator is now in the catbird seat, and (iv) the Democrats in the senate are manifestly weaker, and the targetted senator is manifestly stronger, than each would have been had this particular crusade been kept in the can.
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You might not be ready to draw conclusions, but I can see that you (standing in here, metaphorically, for the blogging liberals, which incidentally would be a good name for a rock band) absolutely emptied the magazine at Lieberman, and no longer have any toes. I can draw conclusions from that
If Schlesinger hadn’t been the worst Republican candidate for Senate since Alan Keyes, Lieberman probably wouldn’t have won the general election. So Lieberman lucked out in that an incredibly and bizarrely weak Republican candidate allowed him to take a lot of votes that in a normal election he never would have gotten. As you’ll recall, even the Republican party abandoned Schlesinger.
Keep ’em coming!
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First of all, just as a matter of principle, I don’t see how the crrrrrazy libs at Dkos and MyDD could really espouse running a race as a referendum on the Iraq disaster and not include Lieberman, who went farther than any Dem to carry water for the Bush administration’s recklessness and incompetence. I mean, I think it’s OK to look at the merits.
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Furthermore, as Kos often points out, the map looks bad for GOP Senators in ’08: they’re going to have to defend a lot of weak seats. So Lieberman has to think about his long-term interests, too. Catbird seat? Maybe not.
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“No longer have any toes”? Indeed. I guess you don’t need any toes for a Senate majority. Maybe we’ll lose our fingers next time and get a 66 vote supermajority.
The liberal grassroots movement in the aggregate is interesting, in large part because it is ideological but in general also more pragmatic than often perceived in the media. While true that a presenting a checkbox of “centrist” issues isn’t enough, presenting a checkbox of liberal issues isn’t enough either. I believe many grassroots members look at “electability” as much as the more establishment-minded, but simply have a different set of criteria defining electability — in large part the qualities (inspirational, persuasive, etc.) Charley mentions here.
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It should be interesting to see which Presidential contender picks up steam with the grassroots in the critical next few months. My guess is with Wes Clark, but we’ll see what happens.
It’s not just about “electable” – it’s about “accountable” and “transparency.”
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Again, the bullshit detector.
… ok, it doesn’t have the same ring to it, but still.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. And what has impressed me the most about the blogosphere as it’s expanded in the last several years has been its emphasis on persuasion and practicality. People mistake bloggers for being dogmatic, for being too far to the left, for requiring blood tests of progressiveness. But if that were true, then there wouldn’t have been such massive and early netroots support for Webb or Tester, who are far from standard liberals. And while Joe Lieberman feels like more of an institution from where we stand in New England, George Allen was just as much of an institution in Virginia (although he probably beat himself more than Webb defeated him). What Webb and Tester share in common with someone like Deval or Feingold or Barack is persuasiveness, earnestness, and a refreshing lack of pandering. If those are the qualities that will be championed by the grassroots and netroots, then may we keep on bloggin’ till we get this country back on track.
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Now, does that mean we’ll get it right every time? Of course not. I don’t think Lamont’s loss somehow shows that the netroots are out of touch with the American mainstream; that loss was a unique case, one of the stranger senate races in memory. Jim Webb opposed both Iraq wars from the very beginning, and, like Lamont, he never really managed to talk much about any other issue. And yet there he is, speaking a little truth to power.
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We’re not going to win every race, but our concerted efforts might prove to be a true paradigm shift in the selection of candidates — away from the polls and the focus groups and the talking points and the Bob Shrums of the world, and toward a more direct, citizen-oriented, grassroots vetting process. From pandering back to persuasion.
Joe ran on two tickets – Democrat and Republican.
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That’s really why Lamont lost. In a real, fair three-way race with a decent Republican opponant that garnered more respect from his own party, Lamont could have easily won.
Though I appreciate your pie-in-the-sky romantacism about the wonders of grassroots politics, the realist in me think you might be overextending your analogies.
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Running for President is distinctly diffent than a state legislative race, a gubernatorial primary, or even a CT Senate race. Just ask Howard Dean. Or Wesley Clark.
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You say:
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Really? While I prefer persuasion to pandering as well, I’m not convinced that the majority of voters (let alone people) truly know the difference. Most people “get” charm (that’s what makes it so charming) but only a small percentage of voters recognize pandering.
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Paticuarly when it comes to running a Presidential campaign, it has been shown time and time again that a candidate with persuasive but unpopular arguments will lose 9 out of 10 time to the candidate with standard but popular views (all other things being equal).
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That’s why Kerry said stuff like “I oppose the death penalty other than in cases of real international and domestic terrorism.” (2004) when his real view is “I know something about killing. I don’t like killing. And I don’t think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing. Now, that’s just a personal belief that I have.” (1996).
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My two cents.
In 2000 we were non existant. In 2004 we were about 50% or less where we’re at today.
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I say wait another cycle or two and then tell me it’s pie in the sky…we could well be affecting this next Presidental race in an unprecidented way.
“A lot of the Internet traffic may represent an echo chamber of virtual activism rather than meaningful protest. The web allows people who agree with each other to talk to each other and gives them the impression of being part of a much larger network than is necessarily the case.” – Barbara Epstein, University of California Professor
I am constantly being challenged by what I read on the blogs, it helps me sharpen my opinion when I read multiple points of view. Hell, just even on my own blog, there’s tons of disagreement.
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You are mistaken if you think the “left” is a monolithic group. We have lots in common, sure, a basic philosophy which informs our premises, but lots of differences to discuss and hash over.
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It’s also a tool. Unlike most other tools, but still just a tool. It connects people with other people and makes them stronger, especially when it’s taken offline into the “real world” community.
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I neither believe that “netroots” is going to be the only thing that changes the world (stupid corrupt Republicanism goes a long way just by itself) but I also don’t believe it’s inconsequential, either.
They’re so quaint.
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Seriously, what is her basis for making that statement? “A lot” of the internet activism “may represent…”? What kind of scholarly assertion is that?
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Here’s a much more thoughtful assessment.