MyDD's Matt Stoller is guest blogging at TPMCafe this week on the topic, "Netroots and generational politics." Stoller's thesis is that events of the past decade, including the Clinton impeachment, Bush's [s]election in 2000 (Stoller calls it a "legal coup"), "the attacks of 9/11, and then the disgraceful Democratic complacency during the Iraq debate in 2002," have all combined to create a new movement of engaged, energized, even enraged liberals (and Progressives, I would add) who "not only vote but [who] use innovative political strategies to take and institutionalize power." Aside from working to defeat Republicans and their anti-populist, corporatist/elitist right-wing agenda, this movement also aims at recuscitating a moribund Democratic Party, to make it "a vessel for change if it can be vectored in the right direction." It also aims to resuscitate or replace a deeply-flawed, top-down, corporate mass media model with a more democratic (small "d"), "flatter," netroots model. According to Stoller, "We are on the cusp of dramatic civic innovation, as the set of debates around free software, open source, security theater, and free culture become mainstream."
Finally, Stoller wonders why this is all happening on the left, why "innovation on the right basically stopped in the 1990s with the development of the Drudge Report," why "[t]he right-wing blogs don't organize, don't innovate," why "there is no right-wing Moveon, no right-wing Actblue," and why "[t]hey have no new ideas." I would argue that we witnessed the results of this imbalance right here in Virginia in 2005 and 2006, where the Democratic/progressive blogosphere ran circles around its equivalent on the right.
With regard to the Webb vs. Allen race specifically, I would argue that Dick Wad(hams) didn't know what hit him with regard to the power of the Virginia blogosphere, having had only a limited (and skewed) exposure to blogs when he ran John Thune's dirty-but-successful race against Tom Daschle in 2004. One is almost tempted to say, "Dick, you're not in Kansas...er, South Dakota anymore!" The question that Stoller asks, essentially, is whether American politics in general are still in "Kansas," or whether they have entered a radically different world. To extend the metaphor - perhaps beyond its breaking point - one might recall the shift from drab black-and-white to brilliant Technicolor in "The Wizard of Oz." To extend it even further, one might ponder what lies "over the rainbow."
It is the forward thinking politicians who participate, but even these candidates have to make a bow to their own political leadership once they are elected. So, how is the progressive grassroots going to accomplish their reforms? My suggestion has been to infiltrate, subvert and suborn, and then dominate the existing party structure. It turns out, at least in Virginia, that the Democratic committees have strictly limited membership, and it is easy for mavericks to be shut out, rendered powerless within the party itself. Now what?
The progressive grassroots will accomplish their "reforms" (in your words) by constantly blogging, shining light on problems, making constructive suggestions, and pitching in to help where needed. The establishment of the party will have to change or the Democratic candidates will continue to lose and you and I'll get our fill of it and move on.