TBR: Crashing the Gate
Today’s book is Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, by Jerome Armstrong (of MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (of DailyKos). It’s their breezy take on why the Democrats can’t win elections, in spite of being demonstrably better at governing.
As Peter Beinart pointed out in the NY Times, Jerome and Kos deliberately don’t discuss "message" — they argue that we need to stop trying to achieve the perfect platform, and start focusing on winning some elections. (Peter, of course, has a book coming out this summer in which he argues that Democrats should be talking about a liberal foreign policy agenda.)
Parts of their analysis are totally on target — the incestuous relationship between the party committees that control the money and don’t take candidates seriously unless they hire the "right" (insider) consulting firms, the failure of progressive organizations to pay their employees enough to make them a career path for all but the most dedicated (or independently wealthy). And I liked their argument that campaign dollars don’t have to be a limited resource that need to be hoarded for the most competitive races — by running serious candidates in even less competitive districts, more people are energized to participate and contribute, expanding the pot.
But the heart of the book is, I think, their claim that the biggest problem of the Democratic party is single-interest groups like environmentalists, the labor movement, and pro-choice activists. They argue that these groups give Republicans easy targets, and hold candidates hostage to ideological purity. The explicit comparision is to the Religious Right, which has used its power to support Republicans for the long-term benefits, even when their issues weren’t front and center in a given campaign. They are particularly angry at pro-choice groups which have mobilized against pro-life Democrats.
The irony of the argument is that Jerome and Kos are generally opposed to the DNC and other party insiders coming down from above and trying to annoint a candidate. And, my reading of the situation is that NOW and NARAL have only really dug in their heels against candidates when they feel like the Democratic party leadership is trying to annoint a anti-choice candidate before the primary (cf Pennsylvania). Obviously, they’re not happy when a pro-life Democrat wins the primary, but they generally just quietly look away, and recognize that the Democrat is usually still the better candidate on their issues. But they’re trying to draw a line in the sand and say that they’re not going to acquiese when someone else tries to play kingmaker and expects them to fall quietly in line. In other words, they’re not going to be the labor movement, which has loyally provided the muscle for Democratic campaigns for decades and gotten essentially bupkes in return. (Jerome and Kos also don’t seem to notice the irony when they proudly recount how bloggers knocked Tim Roemer out of contention for DNC chair because of his pro-life stance.)
The conventional wisdom seems to be that contested primaries are a bad thing, by draining resources from the general election, and causing the victor to be tarnished. I’m not entirely convinced of that, for some of the same reasons that Jerome and Kos argue that Dems ought to be fighting in more districts. I think primaries can draw more attention to campaigns, expand the pool of interested people and reduce public cynicism about elections. The key is to figure out how to have real primaries and then still be able to talk to each other at the end of the day.
The Republicans seem to be better at this than Democrats these days, but I don’t think it’s because they have a magic strategy that the Dems are missing. I think it’s something about being the majority party. When you’re in charge and control the goodies, people fall into line even if they’re furious. When you don’t have goodies to give out, the backbiting begins.
Other interesting reviews of the book:
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:34 am
I’m so tired of the squishy liberalism on dKos that I don’t ever go there anymore, and would definitely never read this book, so thanks for doing it for me. I think the Republicans have gotten a lot better than us at mobilizing their base–there was that story in the Times in the summer of 2004 about how they were building a person-to-person network in Ohio, which seems to have really put them over the top there, for example. We’re not just losing the messaging wars, we’re also just not able to put people in the streets the way we once could, and the Republicans are picking that strength up. I’m very interested to see what will happen in the mid-term elections this year.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:52 pm
one specific response to this sentence: “And, my reading of the situation is that NOW and NARAL have only really dug in their heels against candidates when they feel like the Democratic party leadership is trying to annoint a anti-choice candidate before the primary (cf Pennsylvania). ” I’m not sure of the time period to which you’re referring, b/c the sad irony in the case of PA (where I live) is that NOW and especially NARAL really beat up on Harris Wofford in 94 for not being pro-choice enough and it hurt him significantly, possibly costing him the race. (The article about Bob Casey Jr. in the New Yorker a few months back pointed this out.) And of course we now have to choose between Rick Santorum and the progressive but anti-choice democrat Casey. I’m ardently pro-choice but the lesson of 94 is the power of single issue voting to undermine candidates on the home team.