The Age of Internet politics is upon us, and what better manifestation of the new era’s resounding techno/political success is there than the Democratic activist MoveOn.Org — or IS IT?
At issue is a meaty Rolling Stone piece by Tim Dickinson which has this underlyling message: don’t you Democrats think you’re possibly putting too many of your eggs in an iffy Cyberspace basket?
Dickinson notes that MoveOn has lots of enthusiastic volunteers, highly commmitted bigwigs, and big bux galore. But let’s cut to the heart of his article by going to the last paragraph with this intriguing thought:
Like so many other Internet start-ups, MoveOn has raised — and burned through — tens of millions of dollars, innovating without producing many concrete results. Any reasonable analysis shows its stock may be dangerously overvalued. Those banking on MoveOn had better hope it is more Google than Pets.com. Because should the group flame out, the Democrats could be in for a fall of Nasdaq proportions.
Indeed, as he notes early on:
They signed up 500,000 supporters with an Internet petition — but Bill Clinton still got impeached. They organized 6,000 candlelight vigils worldwide — but the U.S. still invaded Iraq. They raised $60 million from 500,000 donors to air countless ads and get out the vote in the battle-ground states — but George Bush still whupped John Kerry. A gambler with a string of bets this bad might call it a night. But MoveOn.org just keeps doubling down.
Now that Howard Dean has been named chair of the Democratic National Committee — an ascension that MoveOn helped to engineer — the Internet activist group is placing another high-stakes wager. It’s betting that its 3 million grass-roots revolutionaries can seize the reins of the party and establish the group as a lasting political force. “It’s our Party,” MoveOn’s twenty-four-year-old executive director, Eli Pariser, declared in an e-mail. “We bought it, we own it and we’re going to take it back.” The group’s new goal is sweeping in its ambition: To make 2006 a watershed year for liberal Democrats in Congress, in the same way that Newt Gingrich led a Republican revolution in 1994.
And, yes, he’s correct: MoveOn.Org DOES seem to have galvanized the party faithful — particularly the party-faithful on the left and center left.
But, yes, he’s also correct: MoveOn.Org runs the risk of scaring people in the middle who might normally go with the Demmies but find some of MovedOn’s rhetoric exessive and at times as extremist on the left as some of the adjective-hurling rhetoric on the right:
But some insiders worry that putting left-wing idealists in charge of speaking to the center seems about as likely to work as chewing gum with your feet. “There’s a built-in tension between the views of people who are part of MoveOn and contribute to it, and the people they’re trying to reach,” says Ed Kilgore of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
NOTE: The DLC is associated with one of our favorite blogs: Bull Moose. A MUST read. We digress:
If speaking to the center was MoveOn’s goal, “they failed miserably,” says Greg Strimple, a media consultant who advised the Senate campaigns of three GOP moderates. “None of their ads had an impact on the center electorate that needed to be swung.” If the group’s leadership saw anything broken with its advertising during the campaign, though, it shows no signs of fixing it. In a rush to get its new Social Security ad on the air, MoveOn didn’t even test it.
As we see it, a fundamental issue is whether MoveOn.org is trying to reach the center and attract centrists or, rather, trying to convert centrists to move a bit more in their direction. And that, in a nutshell, is the Democratic party’s struggle as it heads towards the mid-terms and 2008: does it choose to define its identity by moving more towards the center, or does it consider that me-tooism and opt to accentuate differences with the GOP by taking sharper, more confrontational, positions?
If it miscalculates and makes a choice that doesn’t turn out to be the wise one, than all of MoveOn.org’s volunteers– and big bux –won’t make a dime’s worth of a difference.
BUT THERE ARE OTHER VOICES ON THIS ISSUE:
—Glenn Reynolds, aka InstaPundit:”I think that this insurgency will be around a lot longer than the one in Iraq.”
—The New Editor:”This piece in Rolling Stone magazine does not bode well for the Democratic Party, and only adds to our convictions, which we’ve previously expressed…about where the Democrats may be going. And we don’t think it’s a good place for the party itself — or for the country as a whole.”
—Stephen Green:”Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson doesn’t seem much impressed with MoveOn.org…Ouch.”
—Kevin Aylward:”Now is the time at Wizbang when we get a good laugh at the expense of MoveOn.org and it’s founders Wes Boyd and Joan Blades.”
—Pejman Yousefzadeh:”Look, every opposition party goes through a period of radicalization that it eventually outgrows in the process of convincing the populace that the opposition is actually ready to govern. The scary thing for the Democrats, however, is that every loss seems to cast them even further away from the mainstream where they can actually present themselves as the governing party. You have to wonder when they will eventually right their course.”
—Centerfield’s ufrh4:”Has MoveOn.org changed the political landscape of the United States? To be honest, it’s probably to early to tell. One of the interesting things mentioned in the article is the fact that their TV ads are prepared by their core leadership, produced by them, and rarely screened before being sent to the airwaves. I guess 2006 could be a good guage of their long-term impact. Will their embrace of Hitler analogies to depict Bush resonate with the American public? Have they truly changed the playing field or have they just racheted up the rhetoric a notch?”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.