Frustrating as
Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics is, mercifully it's also a quick read.
The rehash of Republican wrongs is unnecessary. Long on criticism and short on advice, the list of Democratic failures and shortcomings is familiar to regular dailyKos readers. For a book claiming to be about netroots, the topic gets very little coverage. Readers hoping to learn about people-powered politics will have to continue searching.
More follows...
The preface includes the disclaimer "Most people wanted us to write a book about blogging, but that seemed to self-indulgent for our tastes." Which is really too bad. The single most interesting thing authors Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga have to offer the world is blogging and that thing they call netroots. Building communities, breaking through the media blockade, getting people activated, identifying critical opportunities and responding quickly, etc. To articulate whatever it is that the left blogosphere is doing that's making a difference.
I'm not surprised by this lack of reflection. They probably don't understand the phenomenon themselves. I've been active online for 20+ years and I'm no closer to grokking it.
This book's criticisms of the left are legit. We tear each other down, whereas the right keeps it in the family. The right has message and party discipline, but the left is all over the place. Democrats waste resources, rely on lame consultants, pay too much for media buys, and don't let the local campaigns succeed on their own terms.
Sadly, Jerome and Markos can't make the jump from description to prescription. This dis-ease (sic) afflicts most books from the left. The tragically recurring inability to transform grievances into action. Anyone who has read George Lakoff, Mark Crispin Miller, Molly Ivins and all the others, is left with the same question: "Great, things are really bad, I get that. Now what am I supposed to do about it?"
Here's an example. Risk adverse Democratic campaign consultants are more worried about their jobs than winning. Great. What's the fix? None is offered. So here's my suggestion: Baseball has Sabermetrics. We have dKosopedia. Devise a rating system, compile the data, publish all, and then argue about the details and methodology. This would immediately promote the idea of a meritocracy. Give candidates the information they need to push back against the moneybags. There. Problem solved. In four years time, the manner campaign teams are assembled will be completely changed. Our own Moneyball for politics (note the subtitle).
Nitpicking aside, what really troubles me are the author's assumptions and worldview, which taint what little advice they do offer. Democracy itself is under assault. And they're obsessively kibitzing on politics, the scandals, the horse races, each critical vote, every new revelation. The irony of the authors saying the Democrats are indifferent just kills me.
Example: Republicans have think tanks, so we need them too. As though the problem isn't the system, but that the Democrats need to be better Republicans. Low voter turnout is the single biggest problem identified in all mature western democracies. The reason is believed to be disengagement. The right are top-down. The left is bottom-up. That's just how it is. We should use it. You want to engage lefties? Then solicit their input. Activate people. Rebuild our communities. Grow the progressive platform from the local level. Nurture it and bring it to life. (Most people haven't seen this kind of joint problem solving activity, don't believe it can work, so won't buy in. I've done it. It works. You just have to show people how.)
Example: Democrats have been losing, because of their message. This one actually offends me. Deeply. I think the Democratic Party is deeply flawed. But losing elections isn't the problem. They've been winning elections and the Republicans have been stealing them back. The authors briefly mention the problems from Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004. Correctly identifying targeted voter suppression and disenfranchisement as a bigger problem than rigged elections. Hot tip: It's national and it's getting worse. Don't expect to win in 2006. Or 2008. And if that happens, what are you going to do about it? Still claim it's about "values", superior GOP GOTV, and framing? Talk about denial.
Having read dailyKos and MyDD for a while, and now this extended blog entry rebundled as a $25 hardcover book, it sickens me that the leaders of the left blogosphere can't bring themselves to acknowledge the elephant in the living room. (Horrible pun, I know.) Sadly, they're not alone. Despite motive, means, opportunity, and metric boatloads of evidence, bring it up and you're dismissed as delusional.
Because I don't think it's fair to criticize without actually having suggestions, here's my best effort at a thesis to date. My rebuttal to Crashing the Gate and the status quo.
What we have here in America is minority rule. National GOP politicians represent fewer voters. They've been more successive at stealing elections than the Democrats. The fix is election reform, to strengthen our democracy, to ensure election integrity by making voting open, fair, and verifiable. Some bigger, more meaningful reforms are restoring the fairness doctrine, public financing of elections, opening the ballot to third parties, more democratic voting systems (IRV, proportional rep, fusion voting), creating Federal guidelines for consistent elections and uniform enforcement, and electing the President with a popular vote. Among others. So get with the program. Before there's none left to get.
The hard right is defined by their opposition to the left (real or imagined). They want to reverse the Enlightenment and all the advances of the 19th and 20th centuries. The authors correctly observe the right finally figured out how to rephrase their opposition in the affirmative (Contract With America). That's framing. By losing the initiative and playing defense, the left can never win the debate. Period. Atwater's contribution to political wisdom is that if you're explaining, you're losing.
Sadly, the left is also still stuck in the worldview defined by the détente between labor and the hawks formulated as The New Deal and The Great Society. A détente reached to resolve the class tensions and address the great wars brought on by the Industrial Revolution.
Hot tip: The world changed. The old dichotomies no longer apply. Here's a small list. (I'm sorry if these ideas are unfamiliar. If you haven't heard them before, you will, in time.)
- The free market ideology has been thoroughly debunked and replaced with the science of efficient, well-designed, regulated, open markets.
- Evolutionary theory has been joined by the sciences of emergent behavior, self-organizing systems, and scale-free networks. It's a whole new world and we're just starting to understand it.
- The nature vs nurture debate has been replaced with the knowledge that experience and gene expression are interwoven such that you can't separate one from the other. Consequently, developmental factors hugely determine a person's makeup and fortunes in life. The range of "personal responsibility" is constrained.
- Archaic philosophies of individualism have been replaced with the understanding that cognition is social.
- Our ideas of continuous improvement and total quality management allow us to replace our economic policies of growth through increasing production and consumption with practices based on conservation and efficiency.
- Environmental economics explains it's economy and jobs, not economy versus jobs.
- Game theory and graph theory illustrate why the rich get richer. Without constant downward pressure, gross inequity is inevitable. Comparatively, merit is but a small factor. Fortunately, circumstances continue to change, opening up opportunities.
The progressive solution is to embrace progress. New solutions for a new world. Change the conversation, talk about new things, and it'll take the hard right another 60 years to figure how to oppose it effectively. As Kevin Phillips explains in
Wealth and Democracy, this cycle is the defining characteristic of American politics.
The answers are right in front of us, staring us in the face. The struggle is convincing people to seize the opportunity. With or without the Democratic Party.
Perhaps the true value of Crashing the Gate is pointing out the Emperor has no clothes. Perhaps the value is the book tour. Jerome and Markos are traveling around, generating excitement, serving as a catalyst. Post 2004, re-energizing the troops, if nothing else, is incredibly valuable.