Excellent post on MyDD by Chris Bowers, inspired by Matt Taibbi in an inspired mood:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/8/24/135757/246by Chris Bowers, Thu Aug 24, 2006 at 01:57:57 PM EST
After Lieberman's latest outrage, I am in the mood for a good rant today. Matt Taibbi provides it (emphasis mine):
The unspoken subtext of this increasingly bitter debate between the Democratic Party establishment and the supporters of people like Ned Lamont and Hillary Clinton's antiwar challenger, Jonathan Tasini, is a referendum ordinary people have unexpectedly decided to hold on the kingmaker's role of the holy trinity of the American political establishment - big business, the major political parties, and the commercial media. The irony is that it's the political establishment itself that has involuntarily raised the consciousness of its disenfranchised voters.
The surge in support for Lamont initially came from people motivated by two simple things -- a desire to protest the war in Iraq, and physical revulsion before the wrinkled, vengeful persona of Joe Lieberman. But the party, in fighting back, attacked not on the issues but on the means of protest -- blogs, grassroots activism, Lamont's independent wealth. In doing so it threw into relief the essential parameters of the problem, which is this; the Democratic Party has been operating for two decades without the active participation of its voters.
It raised money by appealing directly to companies in private fundraisers, and it used the commercial media to enforce its policy positions, in particular its desire to "clearly reject our antiwar wing," as Al From put it a few years back.
On one point, Tabbai seems to miss a rather essential fact: Lamont is the nominee of one of the major parties that we are supposedly attacking and trying to tear down. However, he has an extremely salient point that I had not previously put together in my mind. The general response to the progressive movement from large sections of the Democratic establishment has been to attack the very means by which any challenge to their supremacy has operated. As the progressive movement rises, just look at the following attacks that have become prominent during this election cycle:
* Primary elections. The progressive movement has overwhelmingly decided that the best route to change and power is through the primary system rather than through a third-party. Thus, as we have repeatedly seen form Joe Lieberman his supporters, the establishment attacks the primary process.
* Partisanship. In concert with our nearly-unanimous decision to work within a party rather than form a new one, we have adopted a strong pro-partisanship stance in order to protect the image of the Democratic Party. And so, as we have repeatedly seen from Lieberman supporters, comes a convenient and empty attack on partisanship. Since Lieberman's defeat, I have never seen people launch more vicious attacks against other people than those who claim that they are opposed to partisanship. The attacks lack completely in substance, in that Republicans are never denounced, no one ever points out that Republicans have become far more polarizing than Democrats, the only issues we are supposed to be bi-partisan on are unpopular ones among the public but popular among the establishment (aka, "stay the course" in Iraq), and that people who are anti-polarization only seem to be anti-partisan when it suits them (in other words, when they are running in a general election instead of a primary, or when Bush's apporval ratings are low). But hey, they can sell anti-partisanship to low-information voters as a means of painting the progressive movement in a negative light, so why not use it now?
* Grassroots activism. Faced with a huge institutional deficit, the progressive movement has been forced to turn to ordinary citizens for the main source of its political activism. And so grassroots activists themselves become the target, whether overtly by the DLC, or covertly through endless and inaccurate comparisons to Vietnam.
* Blogs and the netroots. It is no secret that the blogosphere and the netroots have been instrumental in the rapid rise of the new progressive movement, and that they are much harder to control than a medium such as television, newspaper or radio. And so, the solution for the establishment has been to launch character attacks against bloggers and netroots activists in an attempt to discredit them.
* Lamont's wealth. The progressive movement is woefully lacking in terms of institutional and financial support compared to the establishment, so for us it came in handy that one of our candidates could largely self-finance. However, even though the combined personal wealth of the people and institutions that supported Lieberman was exponentially higher than the combined personal wealth of Lamont donors, suddenly the establishment decides that wealthy people are bad. Lieberman repeatedly has made Lamont's wealth an issue in this campaign despite the income demographics of his donors.
Every mechanism the progressive movement uses to try and affect change, no matter how abstract, immediately finds itself under attack as soon as it makes any headway in actually affecting said change. And so the primary process is attacked. And so partisanship is attacked. And so blogs and bloggers are attacked. And so MoveOn.org is attacked. And so our email listservs are attacked. And so our employment histories is questioned by lobbyists with massive conflicts of interest. And so the self-starting Liberal Blog Advertising Network is tarnished. And so grassroots activists are attacked. And so netroots activists are attacked. And so Lamont's wealth is attacked. And so fundraising requirements are instituted as barriers to debate participation after poll requirements are met. And on and on.
When it comes to the progressive movement, what the establishment repeatedly attacks above all else is the means through which the progressive movement operates. In so doing, their attacks throw this entire struggle into stark relief. As Glenn Smith wrote, this really is about elitism versus democracy. They attack voting. They attack popular means of information distribution, such as blogging and the Internet (via Net Neutrality). They attack ordinary people who get involved in the process. For those elements within the establishment who are doing everything they can to suppress the progressive movement, their chosen means of doing is to prevent popular action against, and infiltration of, the powerful, entrenched institutions that the establishment has ruled for decades. This is why the Democratic Party itself has now become a problem for many members of the Democratic establishment: through its primary system, that institution allows for an avenue of mass participation that could actually change the institution. Thus, it become necessary to leave that party, and develop new institutions where they continue to rule over low-information voters who are not allowed to participate (when was the Connecticut for Lieberman primary, anyway?). Of course, that will only work as long as large sections of the electorate remain in the low-information category, and our new avenues of mass participation are making sure that it is changing. As Tabbai notes at the end of his piece, this schism really is the most interesting thing that has happened in American politics in at least two decades, because it has the potential to overthrow the aristocratic elite that have ruled our democracy for decades. The progressive movement is not just a battle over who runs the Democratic Party, but rather a broader attempt to further the ongoing project of American democracy. That is a cause worth fighting for.
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