Netroots: The Left's New Machine

If anyone is interested in Jonathan Chait's cover story in TNR on the netroots movement, here's a free link that Jonathan was kind enough to provide.

Update: Brad DeLong has lots to say.

Comments

[Bruce Webb]

Interesting but in the end a little off. Opposition to the War is a lot more central to the Netroots than Chiat would have it and the venom directed at Lieberman and TNR is not because they have compromised on some issue or another, no it is because they openly support this particular war. Much of the hostility between the Progressive Blogosphere and the DLC'ers is that people like Marshall Whitman and Lieberman constantly attack our motives in much the same way the Right does. Oddly enough when people impute that I am unAmerican for opposing the war, or that I am undermining the troops it makes me angry. It also angers me, though less, that they attack the netroots as pushing for politically damaging policies, that opposing the war is bad politics. That they have exactly no data showing this seems not to phase them, they seem to believe that tactically they took the correct path in 2002 and 2004 and that things would have been even better in 2006 if the netroots had just shut up and turned over their wallets.

Most of the netroots don't see disagreement over this war as a policy thing, for most of us it serves much like abortion on the Right. Fundamentally not something to compromise over. If you are not against the war you are against me.

Maybe not the most enlightened and charitable approach, but in my personal judgement, if you haven't concluded that Bush is simply spinning this out you really need to pay more attention. Chait is assuming possibilities of compromise where most of the netroots won't.

[Barry]

Bruce: "...the venom directed at Lieberman and TNR is not because they have compromised on some issue or another, no it is because they openly support this particular war. "

And have repeatedly condemned us as traitors, and have eagerly cooperated with the efforts of Bush and the GOP to wrap themselves in the war-time flag.

I think that the single best indicator of DLC-ism is simply to find out somebody's opinion on Lieberman.

[Bruce Wilder]

I read Chait's article, as I was long a fan of his short pieces for Slate.

His thesis is that the netroots (which he identifies with Kos and his minions) have set themselves as "their task: recreating the Democratic Party in the image of the conservative machine they have set out to destroy." From this thesis, he takes as his organizing theme, the symmetry of Left and Right. And, as corollary to this symmetry, Chait asserts that the Left has the same disdain for both truth and intellectual sophistication as the Right.

The irony that the blogosphere criticizes the mainstream media for this kind of uncritical, compulsive he said she said symmetry all the time goes unremarked.

Chait gurgitates Broderism, repeatedly. Just as Broder felt he had to slander Harry Reid to balance remarks on the Attorney General's display of incompetence, so Chait feels he has to make the netroot's championing of Cindy Sheehan equivalently "intellectually shabby" to the Swift Boat Veterans. (Here's the key, Chait: Swift Boat Liars)

Chait is acutely aware of the victimhood of the former Democratic triangulators -- institutions like his own The New Republic and the Democratic Leadership Council and individuals like Ed Kilgore and Joe Klein -- who have been so heavily criticized by the netroots.

He is so determined to damn the intellectual quality of the netroots' bloggers that he doesn't seem able to recognize the intellectual fraility of mainstream punditry. I wanted to scream at the page. Has this man never read Tom Friedman? Nick Kristof? Jacob Weisberg? Very frequently, the reasoning from these centrist pundits is melamine-laced mush.

I don't think you can get more technocratic centrist than Brad DeLong, but that man is smart and not the least shy about showing it. The New York Times rarely publishes as intelligent an analysis as Kevin Drum produces several times a week. What Digby said is always and everywhere smarter than anything Maureen Dowd ever wrote.

Of course, Chait thinks the netroots is pushing the Democratic Party to the Left. Maybe, the problem is that Left doesn't mean what it used to mean, but I read the Pew report that came out the other day. Their polls used a 1 to 6 scale, which puts the center at 3.5; the Democratic Party ends up at 4.0 and the Republicans at 2.5, which makes the Democrats much closer to the center than the Republicans. Hillary was the farthest to the Left of the major Democratic candidates; Obama and Edwards were rated to her right. (A lot of people think that's wrong, but I'm not so sure.)

I think the Democrats have actually been drifting rightward, even as the party has become more militant. Its the militancy, not the leftism, that is behind the angry rejection of TNR and the DLC. It is too bad Chait misses that. It is the shrill anger of the irate moderate that is energizing the Democratic Party, and finding voice in the blogosphere, imo.

I would like Chait better if he would have the courage to read the Daily Howler and take its lessons to heart and to print.

[Jim Harrison]

It's pretty evident Chait triangulated his conclusion before he began his research. Claiming that Kos or Atrios is somehow equivalent to Coulter or Savage is worse than dishonest. It is unempirical. The right in power supports aggressive preventative war, tortures its enemies, and violates both the spirit and letter of the Constitution. The Netroots, whose ideological and even practical unity Chait conveniently overestimates, wasn't in the business of promoting criminality last time I checked.

The funny thing is, I don't know how many times I've read some liberal blogger stop in the middle of a denunciation of TNR to point out that the magazine does publish some worthwhile people. Editorially, however, TNR, like most of the putatively mainstream institutions in this country, has a lot of blood on its hands; and Chait's plague on both your houses rhetoric isn't going to wash any of off it.

[gordon]

Spare a thought for senior citizens like me, whose political principles haven't fundamentally changed in 20 or 30 years and who are consequently labelled as "lefties" by our children. When I protest that I'm a moderate (as I believe I have long been), I get raised eyebrows. What has happened, of course, is that though my principles have remained the same the whole spectrum of politics has drifted to the Right, as Bruce Wilder implies when he says "...Left doesn't mean what it used to mean...".

But we might well ask "mean to whom?" If the "netroots" are to the left of the Democratic Party leadership in the USA, maybe that means that the "netroots" have stayed put and the leadership has drifted Right. How that could occur I leave to American Democrats to answer.

[Bruce Wilder]

I suppose most, who read here, frequently read Brad DeLong so links make no sense, but I was amused by his take on Chait:

"In fact, we all know that you learn more ideas and facts about the Middle East from a blank page than you do from reading the New Republic, don't you?"

[Mark Thoma]

Uh-oh, looks like this was a waste of time. There's a link to Brad's take on the Chait article as an update to the post.

[anne]

No; this was not a waste of time, not a bit, and the article which I would certainly not have read had the post not been here, since I have long found no reason to read the New Republic, explains much to me about division in the Democratic Party. The article was offered with no comment other than on subject, which happened to suit me. Nice.

[anne]

Jonathan Chait's article was important in showing me how much of the heritage of Democratic Party was lost on the supposed Democrats of the New Republic and the professional Democratic advisers for whom the New Republic writes. This is Republican-light leadership, the leadership that deceived us and drove us by fear to Iraq and would keep us there indefinitely while turning continually from our domestic needs. Fine, I know just where not to turn for ideas from here and just which candidates not to support from here. The need is a Democratic Party in the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, and that is on the verge. Jonathan Chait might just as well be a Republican.

[Brad DeLong]

It'[s the Jekyll-and-Hyde schizophrenia that gets me. First all the talk about how the liberal netroots have restored balance to the Force... to the debate.

And then Chait tries to get medieval on Jane Hamsher for not caring about ideas and facts.

[Bruce Wilder]

I'm sorry Mark. I was making an excuse for not providing a link myself, and not intending to criticize you for providing a convenient link. I don't think the link was there on the page I was seeing, when I added my comment.

Sorry for the confusion. Please understand that I am most grateful for the forum you have created.

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa