Once again today, we stand on the hilltop looking down upon a political scene where despite the turnover, little has change. The steps forward are halting, and despite our best efforts, the rotten stench of corruption and the sounds of horsetrading of lives for cash are all that reach us.
Hunter's heartfelt call for leadership echoed through the blogosphere this morning, demanding answers where we have none. How can we move beyond this dismal state? Where do we go from here? Do we even understand where we are?
That last is the question I wish to attempt to chip away at after the break. Where does the power lie? How stand things now? Where are the weak points in our stance that we need to shore up, and the weak points in our opponents that we must attack?
Classic Media
It is clear that one of the areas of strength in our opponent is the media. It is also clear that they know this, and diaries have been written about their attempts to build on this strength both in the FCC and in Murdoch's private purchases.
As thereisnospoon points out, the growth of Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Keith Olbermann are tilting the battle back our way, and a possible addition to the crew was diaried by KingOneEye earlier today.
So in this arena, while there are some signs of hope, we are still losing bigtime.
New Media
The Internet is a definite area of strength for us. A quick look through the most popular blogs list at technorati shows the Huffington Post at #5, DailyKos at #12, Think Progress at #25, Crooks And Liars (John Amato's blog) at #30, TPM at #46, Andrew Sullivan at #69,.
The first conservative blogs to show up on this list is Newsbusters at #55, unless you count the Drudge Report (#41).
Also showcasing our growing lead in this area is the rapid increase in the use of Youtube as a marketing tool for progressives, and the abject failure of the conservative attempt to do the same (can anyone find a link to one of the diaries on this? Maybe a month ago? I failed in my attempts to search for it)
The ongoing WGA strike has benefited greatly from this trend, and if (when) they are successful, it will help prove some of the gains we've had here.
Money
This area gets a lot of noise, and it should, because it is one where where we are at a disadvantage almost by definition. Since we consider progressives in the minority now, we have to look at the scene as challengers, and almost without exception, candidates that are challenging embedded incumbents and the status quo have a more difficult time raising money than those incumbents themselves. Countless diaries have chronicled the incumbent protection racket, and it is easy to see how the flow of money to candidates from corporations increases as they prove pliable.
How important is this? Barron's magazine claimed
in 2006 that a study of historical elections showed that between 1972 and 2004 in races for the House, the candidate with the most money won 92% of the time. In races for the Senate they claim 86% predictive power between 1996 and 2004. I would love more references on this... I've seen claims from the Clean Money Campaign that are very similar to this, but for state races (in Maine and Arizona before they passed Clean Money electoral reform laws)
How do we make ground on this? Looking at the landscape today, I see a twofold strategy unfolding.
First, we must continue to improve the ability to raise money at the grassroots for progressive causes. The incredible story of ActBlue, the remarkable fundraising the netroots have done both for candidates such as the Blue Majority candidates and causes like Pretty Bird Woman House show the potential of this approach.
Indeed, the success of the Edwards and Obama campaigns at fundraising without accepting lobbyist and PAC donations is encouraging that with this approach we can compete at the highest level, though this fundraising surely has warts behind the screen that we are not seeing.
The second strategic approach I think we need is to close down the flow of money from industry and business to congress. While the first is building our weakness into a strength, this is taking down their strength. I believe this is possible because the flow of money from business to congress is something that is hard to defend... because it is corruption, it has the same weakness that all corruption has: Sunlight. By continuing to expose this corruption for what it is, we can cut it off at its roots, and with it the money advantage for the corrupt corporacrats occupying too much of our government today.
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Tomorrow I will return to this topic and take a look at the lay of the land regarding institutions, human capital, and some steps forward.
If any of this diary reminded you of something, or sparked an idea, or you disagree, please comment and let me know about it. I've been thinking about these subjects a lot recently, but I'm new to the terrain and all of us can think a lot better than one of us.