Ron Brownstein has an interesting cover story in the latest National Journal on the use of the Internet by the Democratic party (sorry, subscription only or cool university paid for unlimited journal access). Brownstein first shows convincingly that the Democratic Party has put the Internet to far more use than Republicans. This is shown by the amount of money raised via the Internet in the 2004 election cycle. It was the only way Kerry kept pace with Bush. The use of the Internet shows a strength, but also a weakness. Democrats cannot depend as much on traditional sources of money as can the GOP. Also, those who donate and are active online tend to be on the left of the Democratic Party (I think the South Dakota Democratic blogosphere tends to bear this out). Brownstein reports:
These projections are encouraging Democrats about their ability to compete financially and organizationally with the GOP. But one of the most profound truths in politics is that no money, or any other form of support, is free; it all arrives with some kind of price tag. Few Democrats have thought seriously about what that price tag may be for the lifeline the Internet base is now offering them. The Internet activists believe they are liberating the Democrats from the demands of "special interests" by creating an alternative source of grassroots money. But the Internet support, financial and otherwise, comes with its own strong demands, as recent visits to two of the movement's leading figures demonstrated.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. You get activism and money out of the online world, but you also get a louder voice for the far left of the Party. Note this bit referring to Marcos Moulitsas Zuniga, aka Daily Kos:
[Kos] sweepingly dismissed the Democratic Leadership Council, Joe Lieberman, and The New Republic magazine as "tools of the GOP." In 2004, Kerry's campaign cut its link to Moulitsas's Web site after he wrote that he felt "nothing" when four American contractors were killed in Falluja, because "they are there to wage war for profit."
And also:
After years of uncertainty, he had discovered his niche. Kos quickly found an audience by expressing the unmediated anger of the Democratic base toward Bush, and even more so toward Democrats who cooperated with him, especially over the war in Iraq.
Kos's "niche" is fueling anger and resentment towards all who do not share his extremist views. Or take this about Eli Paiser, who is now head of MoveOn.org PAC. Praiser seems to have gotten his start opposing not the war in Iraq, but the one in Afghanistan. And then:
But they define the Democrats' left flank on foreign policy. MoveOn as an institution, and especially Pariser as an individual, not only opposed the war in Iraq, but resisted military action in Afghanistan.
It was just this extreme dovish mindset Peter Bienhart argued against in his now famous New Republic piece defending an aggressive foreign policy for the Democratic Party. While Kos and Paiser disagree on the war in Afghanistan, they do have one thing in common:
In the long run, both want Democrats to move away from the Clinton model of courting swing voters through "Third Way" moderation and turn instead toward a Bush approach that tries to build a majority mostly by inspiring a large turnout from its base with an unapologetically polarizing agenda.
I would dispute the idea that Bush has an "unapologetically polarizing agenda." In fact, the whole idea of "compassionate conservative" is an attempt to bring moderation to the Republican Party, especially when it comes to the knee-jerk anti-government wing of his party. I think describing Bush as a conservative ideological polarizer says more about those who use that wordage than it does about George W. Bush (and no, I am not disputing that Bush is a conservative, I am suggesting it is not he who is polarizing, but his mad and desperate opposition). But to the point at hand, I think it is interesting that the very part of the Democratic Party that is gaining power is rejecting the only part of the Party that has won an election in the last 40 years (remember Carter ran as a moderate Southerner). Here is where an analogy Brownstein makes to the conservative movement fails. Brownstein says the online Democrats are like the conservative Republicans who used direct mail and talk radio to push their message in the 80s and 90s. The difference is this: those conservatives used those means because they recognized that the elite culture of media and academia were against them. Thus they needed alternative ways of getting their message out. The left still dominates academia and the national media, so the "alternative media" left of today is less mainstream than the "alterntive media" conservatives of the 80s and 90s. The alt media left is defining itself against mainstream politics, even in its own Party, while the conservatives were defining themselves against a MSM they perceived (correctly, I think) to be little more than a wing of the opposing Party. You might say they were promoting garden variety conservativism, while the online left is with the fruits and nuts of the produce section. The fact that Kos and others like him feel shut out of a largely left-wing media world only shows how far out they are. If the Democrats hope to win elections they would do well to listen to people like Joe Lieberman, the New Republic, and the Democratic Leadership Council, not the extremists in the online world.
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