[Mb-civic] Netroots Essay by Chris Bowers of MyDD...Really Good

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/5/2/23512/47173

Teenagers and Adults: The Emerging Anti-Netroots
Narrative

by Chris Bowers

These days, so much is written about the netroots
it is hard to keep track. However, two very
recent articles by Democratic insiders caught my
eye. 

First, Mike McCurry: "You can see in blog
commentary lots of great huffing and puffing that
will get you to exactly 38% of the electorate. I
don't see a lot of useful dialogue on how to get
winning coalitions together that can win more
than 50% in closely contested elections. As
Juliet says, that is one reason we have
gerrymandered safe districts and few contested
races. It's also why we have lots of feel-good
rants on the web and not enough dialogue about
how to win close elections. I take this as a sign
that I am getting old, but also that some
newcomers in politics will need to get knocked
around and lose a few before they understand that
winning politics is not as easy as they think."

Next, Joe Klein: "Let me give credit where it's
due: I probably would not be writing this were it
not for all the left wing screeching. The
Stephanopoulos moment came and went ephemerally,
as TV moments do, leaving a slight, queasy
residue -- I knew that I hadn't explained myself
adequately, but that happens a lot on television.
So thanks, frothing bloggers, for calling me on
my mistake. You can, at times, be a valuable
corrective. At other times, though, your vitriol
just seems uninformed, malicious and
disproportionate."


Ahh, so many stereotypes, so little time. Here
are just a few aspects of the common narrative on
the netroots that we can see presented in these
two pieces:

    * The netroots are "newcomers." Certainly,
simply as a result of past technological limits,
the netroots is a relatively new force on the
American political landscape. However, as the Pew
study of Dean activists strongly suggested,
netroots activists are not "new" activists. Only
42% of Dean activists reported the 2004
Presidential campaign as their first Presidential
campaign, and we are less than one year away from
that number dropping much further. The only thing
"new" about netroots activists is the platform
from what they may pontificate. Most have been
active in politics for some time, but lacked a
forum to untie them.

    * The netroots are young. McCurry does not
use the term "young" directly, but he does
counter himself with the netroots by referring to
himself as someone who is "getting old." If he is
"not-netroots" because he is old, then the
netroots must be young. Certainly, the internet
is a relatively new technology (though much older
than, say, I-Pods or hybrid cars), and heavy
internet users tend to skew young. However, the
2006 Blogads survey suggested a median age of 46
for netroots activists, which is hardly young by
any national standard. Even though there is a
stereotype of Democratic activists being old, I
have been to DC on numerous occasions, and I have
a very difficult time believing that the median
age of the professional political activists in DC
is much over the age of 46, and may even be
younger than 46. I may be an apple cheeked 32
year-old, but I am a little young for a major
progressive blogger (which would make Matt really
young, and Jonathan a newborn). The netroots are
hardly "young."

    * The netroots are "uninformed." If by
uninformed you are referring to the 3 or 4% of
the nation that spends the most time following
news and politics, then sure, we are uninformed.
If by uninformed you mean that we are composed
entirely people who were so unsatisfied with the
political information they found in established
news sources that they have actively sought out
other, unadvertised places that offer even more
information about contemporary political events,
then sure, we are uninformed. If by uninformed
you mean highly engaged people who simply do not
operate within the political professional clique
that is Washington DC, then we are definitely
uninformed. Considering our media consumption and
political engagement habits, if we are
uninformed, than everyone in the country is
uninformed. However, the netroots is not
uninformed--it just comes from different
professional and social circles than the DC
political class.

    * The netroots are rabid. See "frothing,"
"malicious," and "huffing and puffing" in the
above articles. There will never be any way for
the netroots to entirely combat this charge.
Whenever you draw three million people together,
it is doubtful that you can get them all to stay
on message and look like reasonable people.
Within any large group, it will always be easy to
be offended by, and to remember, the most vocally
anti-social elements of that large group. Those
elements exist within any large group, and it is
all too simple a form of character assassination
to characterize an entire group as exhibiting the
traits of a small minority within that group. It
is also easy for a large group of people who feel
they are on the outside looking in to get a
little aggressive at times. Finally, it is really
easy for a small group of people in power to view
the hordes massing at their doorstep (and the
servants in their house) as rabid and overly
aggressive. It is important to remember that
characterizing the entire three million strong
progressive netroots community as all containing
identical personality traits is at best crude
generalization, and at worst grotesque,
chauvinistic stereotype.

    * The netroots are inexperienced and
arrogant. Once again, this was not a direct quote
from either Klein or McCurry, but there is a
clear implication of this charge. Related to
Klein's "uninformed" claim, and more directly to
McCurry's "some newcomers in politics will need
to get knocked around and lose a few before they
understand that winning politics is not as easy
as they think" charge, the direct implication is
that the netroots are simply not used to losing
campaigns and that they lack the experience of
using a variety of different tactics before
accepting the tried and true tactics that
actually work. Yeah, right. If there is one thing
that the netroots have direct experience with, it
is losing.

      The netroots were basically formed out of a
long series of losses by progressives: the
Clinton impeachment (MoveOn.org), the 2000
Florida recount (Talking Points Memo, the first
major progressive blog), the conservative
exploitation of the charged atmosphere following
9/11 (I know that was the case for me), the war
in Iraq (the rise of Dailykos and of Howard
Dean's campaign), Howard Dean's campaign (DFA and
a huge percentage of the netroots and new
internet consultants, not to mention the Silent
Revolution). Losses have consistently built and
solidified the netroots. Progressives getting
slaughtered while conservatives get away with
murder are what formed this movement. The entire
reason why the progressive netroots are so much
more popular and powerful than the right-wing
netroots are because we are lacking in useful
alternative avenues to express ourselves and find
representation within the broader political
ecosystem. The netroots is born from progressive
defeat, which perhaps somewhat explains why we
stopped growing in September 2005--the exact
moment when approval ratings for Bush and
Republicans once and for all feel through the
floor. I have said it before, and I will say it
again: if "leaders" of the Democratic Party and
progressive movement do not like the rise of the
progressive netroots, the number one way to
stymie its growth is to start winning campaigns.
We wouldn't be so pissed off, active, and into
"do-it-yourself" mode if we were winning. The
netroots know what losing is like, and we have
had enough of it.

Five stereotypes in two posts--not bad. Upon
further reflection, these stereotyped all seem to
combine into a larger caricature. What else is
inexperienced, overly aggressive, arrogant,
uninformed and young? I am not a parent, but I
was a teacher for while, so I now the easy answer
to that question:

Teenagers.

In the Joe Klein / Mike McCurry narrative, the
netroots are teenagers while career political
professional are adults. I suppose I could have
been more provocative and pointed out how the
characteristics they ascribe to the netroots were
also ascribed to indigenous peoples (childlike
savages) by the European ruling classes (mature,
experienced, cultured adults) for centuries in
order to justify mass colonization, slavery and
genocide, but using such provocative language
would probably only help to end the discussion
rather than continue it. Besides, considering
that the netroots over sample the well to do,
white, male, "creative" over-class in America,
the teenager analogue just makes more sense
anyway.

This is the dominant narrative concerning the
netroots within much of the "gang of 500." The
netroots are teenagers who think they know what
they are doing but don't, while the
establishment, both media and political, are
adult professionals who know how to get things
done. This is a narrative based on a series of
faulty assumptions about the netroots that I have
detailed above. It is also based on a general
lack of appreciation of the sophistication and
cohesion of the netroots. Through mass popular
discussion and debate, the netroots are
developing a new consensus entirely separate from
that of the establishment:

    * Long term fifty state strategy versus short
term selective targeting;
    * Being a partisan Democrat versus an
ideological Democrat of some sort;
    * Directly challenging Republicans versus
letting Republicans self-destruct;
    * Changing progressive infrastructure versus
changing progressive policy;
    * Altering the conventional wisdom versus
accepting the conventional wisdom.

Already, at least one of the five major netroots
ideas, the fifty-state strategy, has thoroughly
infected the establishment to the point where it
has reached the coveted status of conventional
wisdom. That is hardly something that "teenagers"
could achieve. This is, of course, because what
is happening among the netroots is not childlike
or adolescent in any way. These are the people
who have funded and supplied the volunteer
resources for the progressive movement and for
the Democratic Party for a long time now. Highly
politically engaged and voracious consumers of
media, the only thing that separates the netroots
from the DC political culture is that the vast
majority of netroots activists are not political
professionals, and do not live in DC. As such,
they consume different media, and travel in
different professional and social circles. While
DC conventional wisdom is forged in those social
and professional circles, as well as in beltway
media, conventional wisdom for the netroots
activist is forged online in blogs, email
listservs, message boards, and social networking
sites. That "our" collective thinking has
resulted in different conclusions from those
reached in "their" collective thinking should not
be a surprise to anyone. It is the inevitable
product of the different circumstances under
which our collective thinking occurs. This does
not mean they are adults and we are teenagers, as
much as Klein and McCurry would like to think
that is the case. It just means that their CW was
forged in different material conditions than our
CW. Of coruse that is going to result in
different CWs.