WaPo OpEd on establishment versus netroots candidate models

By: Corey
Published On: 5/7/2006 2:40:35 PM

Markos Moulitsas, of Daily Kos fame, writes an insightful and must read OpEd piece in today's Washington Post on Hilary Clinton's candidacy.  Not so much for his view on Clinton herself but on the rise of the non-establishment candidates and how Democratic candidates run on the Democratic status quo and with the same Democratic insiders at their own peril:


Moving into 2008, Republicans will be fighting to shake off the legacy of the Bush years: the jobless recovery, the foreign misadventures, the nightmarish fiscal mismanagement, the Katrina mess, unimaginable corruption and an imperial presidency with little regard for the Constitution or the rule of law. Every Democratic contender will be offering change, but activists will be demanding the sort of change that can come only from outside the Beltway.
....
Unfortunately, however, the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad.


Dean lost, but the point was made. No longer would D.C. insiders impose their candidates on us without our input; those of us in the netroots could demand a say in our political fortunes. Today, however, Hillary Clinton seems unable to recognize this new reality. She seems ill-equipped to tap into the Net-energized wing of her party (or perhaps is simply uninterested in doing so) and incapable of appealing to this newly mobilized swath of voters. She may be the establishment's choice, but real power in the party has shifted.
....
Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
....
Those failures led the netroots to support Dean in the last presidential race. We didn't back him because he was the most "liberal" candidate. In fact, we supported him despite his moderate, pro-gun, pro-balanced-budget record, because he offered the two things we craved most: outsider credentials and leadership.

Personally this is exactly why I am supporting Jim Webb for Senate and Mark Warner for President.


Comments



COMMENT HIDDEN (Alice Marshall - 5/7/2006 4:31:56 PM)


It's pretty much the same thing Markos and Jerome (Lowell - 5/7/2006 5:33:59 PM)
say in "Crashing the Gate."  Did you read it?  I think the book is brilliant. 


Alice, Alice, Alice. (Bubby - 5/7/2006 6:13:19 PM)
California has Ahnold because Gray Davis forgot that Californians want iconoclastic governors.  Earl Warren? Pat Brown?  Ronald Reagan? Jerry Brown? So what was your point?


Miller Openly Criticized Clinton (Alicia - 5/7/2006 9:05:51 PM)
What do you think about that?


Link? (Lowell - 5/7/2006 9:13:48 PM)


Yeah, Because Clinton wanted IT companies to PROVE that they needed more H1B Visas... (Loudoun County Dem - 5/7/2006 9:54:49 PM)
... that wouldn't cost American jobs, for some reason Miller found this unacceptable and threatened to withdraw support (i.e. campaign donations) for Clinton.


Here it is... (Loudoun County Dem - 5/7/2006 10:08:26 PM)
From Kathy Gerber
http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2427

Anyway, the House bill would have increased the maximum number of temporary H-1B visas granted yearly to skilled workers from 65,000 to 115,000 over a period of three years. Heavy users of H-1B visas would be required to attest that they have not displaced American workers to hire foreign workers.  Both the Clinton White House and some Republicans wanted those additional provisions.

The White House had supported raising the cap, they surprised Miller with the veto threat and requested a number of addtional conditions.

One of these conditions was to give the Department of Labor authority to investigate compliance of the visa program.  They also wanted to require that hiring companies pay $500 for each immigrant to fund it.

Miller was furious about this, and stated, "If the president continues to stand in the way of this bill, he will face a terrible backlash."

"To come in at the eleventh hour with nickel-and-dime complaints about this bill will leave a bad taste in the mouths of Silicon Valley executives."



Thanks (Alicia - 5/7/2006 10:11:08 PM)
I was just getting ready to link the diary, but have also read something independantly...  will also try to find that.


From Computer World (Alicia - 5/7/2006 10:40:24 PM)
Ashcroft "has been very, very helpful to the high-tech community," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group based in Arlington, Va. "At least in these policy areas, he has an outstanding record."

Miller believes Ashcroft will be more "sensitive" to the impact of technology issues on business.

Ashcroft fought the FBI and the Clinton administration on encryption export restrictions and opposed any government-required key escrow or key recovery. If confirmed, Ashcroft may review controversial Clinton administration projects, such as the FBI's e-mail monitoring system Carnivore, as well U.S. involvement in the Council of Europe cybercrime treaty, which has raised privacy and business concerns, said Miller. The ITAA sent a letter this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging it to approve Ashcroft's nomination.



Grassroots, Netroots, and the Establishment (Teddy - 5/7/2006 5:51:00 PM)
To Alice Marshall: I'm not sure I understand your leap to a conclusion: that the reason California has a Republican governor despite having a Democratic electorate is because the Dems there are "like Kos." I'd appreciate a short chain of reasoning to show how you reached your conclusion, and what is "like Kos." Thanks.

We all accept that California is not quite like the rest of us, that often they show us what we will become; trends begin on the West Coast and jump to the East Coast, and then only fitfully and slowly percolate back through Middle America, so it is said. Well, maybe. 

To my eyes, having recently shed the scales of Republicanism, the unorganized and bumptious Democrats have seemed to arise quadrennially like Lazarus from the tomb and rush valiantly if tardily off to rev up for another national election. When I enquired about the slipshod arrangement, the lack of coherent and ongoing organization not to mention the lack of coherent and ongoing message, I was told the problem was that there was no Democratic President to provide leadership.

Say what? You mean without a sitting Democratic President there can be no real Party organization or philosophy? How do you expect to GET a sitting president, then? This is a kind of circular reasoning that ill becomes a political party which suppoedly should be prepared to be both in power and, sometimes, out of power in loyal opposition.

That sort of mind set I believe has produced this odd ball anomaly of a "national leadership" composed of those Democrats actually in national elective office (Congressmen, Senators, their hangers-on and inside the Beltway remnants of old policymakers who used to be in power) and, across a deep canyon, the outlying Party in cities and states that are on a different electoral schedule and often have, it turns out, completely different views of things political.

And then here are the Democratic roots, utterly frustrated by their supposed Party leaders who seem only to live from election to election and have little concept of any other way, who seem incapable at either national or state level of recognizing that nowadays their old opponents (the Republicans) are not doing business as usual, and cannot be trusted to play their normal part of taking turns: in power now, then out of power and yielding gracefully for another round. The Repubs are going for permanent power.

Just in time the Internet and blogsphere arrived on the scene to link these frustrated, diverse roots with each other, performing a function not unlike that performed by the Revolutionary Committees of Correspondence and Safety at the start of the American Revolution. Nobody thought those silly little inflammatory scribblers would ever accomplish much of anything, either... until 1776.  When uneasy old Dem machine leaders, angry at the "radical" independence of their roots, try to cramp our style, they are often finding it impossible, even dangerous.  Another power, people power, is arising in America as well as, say, in the "color" revolutions of Europe, or in Nepal. Business as usual is no more, boys. For now we still need the old machine; we need each other. Wake up and accept us; or ignore us at your peril.

That's how it looks to me, Alice. I haven't read Crashhing the Gate yet, by the way. Does it say something to the contrary?



It's a question of "blame the candidate" (Alice Marshall - 5/7/2006 7:15:11 PM)
Kos suffers from that. In that respect I think he missed the entire point of Howard Dean's You have the power campaign. I am not a Hilliary Clinton fan, but to say Clinton was a failed President is way out of line.

Yes, I read Crashing the Gate, and even saw Kos & Jerome when they were at GW. I have mixed feelings about the book, but think it is doing wonderful things about getting people involved.

If you go back to the Kos archives you will see him dither about the recall. The recall was never anything but a successful radical right attempt to subvert California democracy and Kos was revealed to be the sort of Democrat who lets his political differences with a politician get in the way of understanding the big picture. You compare Digby's writing about the recall with Kos and you understand how completely Kos missed it and continues to miss it.



I agree Alice (Ben - 5/7/2006 11:36:54 PM)


Poor Hillary (Bubby - 5/7/2006 6:54:23 PM)
She used to rock. She was an inspiration to those that worked with her in Little Rock - her devotion and spirit for women's and children's health issues was legendary.  But that was Little Dogpatch.  She went on to the Whitehouse and now the Senate, in the course becoming a high profile member of the Party establishment. She forgot how to gamble. In fact she forgot that in politics, everything is a gamble.

Maybe you only get so many years to be fresh, and then you become calcified. You start using the past as an indicator of the future.  You keep reaching for the same tools. Which is right when you talk about human nature, but not aspirations and innovation.  When things finally get bad enough, and you don't understand how bad, you find yourself outside of the solution.

At that point, future leaders are either 1)New, or  2)Adaptive.  For the adaptive leader the rear-view mirror gets ripped from the dashboard and tossed. It's only you and your instincts now. You may be alone. 

Hillary, remember how Bill was a radical? Remember when you took no pause? No fear?  That was cool. When are you going  to jump? 



What? (jefferson - 5/8/2006 9:16:38 PM)
What is this pencil neck Markos Moulitsas smoking?  People need to stop making so much of the Dean campaign. Howard Dean won a state in the primaries and came in second only once.  His campaign was not transformational, it was an outlet for Democratic wacktivists who were mad about Iraq. 

As for his charge that Clinton enabled Bush to be president is foolish.  It was Gore running as a populist (who remembers the People v. The Powerful?) when most people were optimistic about the economy that doomed Gore's campaign.  If Gore had run as a Clinton-style centrist he would have won not only the popular vote, but also the White House. 

As for this pathetic charge that Clinton did nothing, what the hell is he talking about?  I guess the Family Medical Leave Act, Brady Bill, Assault Weapons Ban, Welfare Reform, Deficit Reduction, Americorps, Kennedy-Kasselbaum Health Care Reform, 100K more cops on the street, and NAFTA are all nothing.  Give me a break.  Why doesn't this bozo spend his time writing a book no one will buy, he proved he can do that.

The sooner the Democratic Party tells this joker to take a hike, along with his failed populism and class warfare, and gets back to the DLC Centrist vision of Bil Clinton the better they will be. 



Keep going Jeff (Bubby - 5/8/2006 9:58:40 PM)
You are only 1/3 there. You still have to explain 2002 and 2004.  Extra points if you can include the benefits of the DLC centrist visionaries in those races.