The piece is ostensibly about why Hillary Clinton isn't a good candidate for the Dems in '08. But the type of criticisms Kos brings to bear, and the justifications behind them, offer a window into the struggle for the Democratic Party that is currently underway.
Kos' article ever-so-briefly mentions the widespread fear among Democrats that Hillary is unelectable because she's an easy target for right-wing attack. But his main reason for giving Hillary the boot is a fundamental rejection of the direction Bill Clinton took the Democratic Party in the 90's:
[S]enator [Hillary Clinton] is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband [Bill] -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad.
According to Kos, Bill Clinton wasn't the most successful Democrat in the last 40 years; rather, Kos suggests that Bill was the reason for Republican successes in the 90s and 00s:
Democrats haven't won more than 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election since 1976. Heck, we haven't won more than 50.1 percent since 1964. And complicit in that failure was the only Democrat to occupy the White House since 1980: Bill Clinton.This is one of those moments when I wish I could stop a writer right in the middle of a piece and politely inquire "What the [deleted] are you thinking?!!!". Democrats have been failing since 1976 - and the main culprit is a man who wasn't even nationally prominent until 1991? Did Clinton somehow conjure up Ronald Reagan? Was the "third way" responsible for Republicans' crushing defeats of Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis? Does this sound a little loopy to anyone else?
Despite all [Bill Clinton's] successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his "third way" of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.
While Republicans spent the past four decades building a vast network of small-dollar donors to fund their operations, Democrats tossed aside their base and fed off million-dollar-plus donations...Clinton's third way failed miserably. It killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party and...delivered nothing. 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.
The fact is that Democrats fared better in presidential elections in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 than they did in 1976, 1980, 1984, or 1988. That's Clinton's legacy. Exactly what elections did the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party win, again?
As for losing Congressional seats, most of the Democrats' losses came in 1994 - only two years after Clinton was elected. Is Kos really suggesting that Clinton had time to kill off the Democratic base and grassroots fundraising organizations in two years?
The straight fact is that the Democrats were doing terribly before Bill Clinton ever showed up. Kos admits this, and then somehow goes on to conclude that things are all Clinton's fault. Totally loopy, folks. I stand open-mouthed.
But I understand full well why Kos is conjuring up this revisionist history. Blaming Clinton for the Democrats' ills is necessary for Kos to support his main argument - the defining statement of his career - namely, that "netroots" activists are the savior of the Democratic Party.
He writes glowingly of the Dean campaign, the origin of the "netroots" movement:
Even as the establishment mocked Dean...his army of hyper-motivated supporters organized across all 50 states. This movement exploded onto the national scene when Dean began reporting dramatically higher fundraising numbers than his opponents...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.
Kos asserts that Hillary's failure to cultivate the netroots will be her downfall:
[I]n late March, the Daily Kos's bimonthly presidential straw poll delivered bleak results for Clinton, with just 2 percent of respondents making her their top choice for 2008...[she is] surrounded by the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party's grassroots in utter contempt...
Money and star power go a long way, but the netroots is now many times
larger than it was only three years ago, and we have attractive alternatives to back (and fund), such as former governor Mark W. Warner and Sen. Russell Feingold.
I wouldn't expect Kos to say anything else - if not the founding father of the netroots movement, he is certainly its leading light. But I have several big problems with his faith that the netroots movement will prove to be the groundswell of activism that unifies and empowers the Democratic Party.
Kos defines the netroots as comprising the Democrats' "base." They certainly are the most dedicated and prolific grassroots fundraisers in the party. But Kos confuses an activist base with an electoral base. The netroots raise a lot of money (at least in local races where no other big guns are present), but they don't comprise a large block of voters. The Republican base - evangelical Christians who believe conservatism=Christianity - is both a source of money/volunteers and a source of votes. The netroots is the former but not the latter. The electoral base of the Democratic Party includes black people, union workers, teachers, and retired people - none of whom can be counted on to support netroots candidates either in primaries or the general election.
So the netroots, fancying themselves the Democratic "base," often assume that candidates who appeal to the netroots will be the most authentic and electable Democrats. That just isn't the case. Ask netroots activists for an example of a successful netroots candidate, and like Kos they can only name one - Howard Dean. But Dean lost every single major primary in the 2004 election. All. Remember that only registered Democrats - the real party base - can vote in most primaries. And did that base vote for Dean? No. Sure, the netroots raised rivers of money for Dean - and when they poured those rivers of money into Iowa, along with massive legions of Deaniac volunteers, Kerry won anyway.
Some "base."
And the fact is that neither of the netroots' annointed 2008 saviors, Mark Warner and Russell Feingold, has much chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Democrats' fear that Hillary is unelectable, but those fears probably go double for Warner or Feingold. If Hillary loses the '08 primaries (and I predict she will), it'll be because of Democratic doubts about her electability that have been around for 15 years - not because Kos and the netroots snub her.
Kos has become a celebrity with his simple message - that the Democratic Party establishment has fallen out of touch with the party's base, and that the netroots are here to reclaim the party for the masses. That makes for a nice soundbite, but it represents a distortion of reality. The netroots have raised decent chunks of cash, but they haven't been able to get large numbers of voters to support their "movement."
I'm guessing that this is not because the netroots are too left-wing; rather, it's because they're not ideological enough. Read the Daily Kos and you won't see many arguments about policy, ideology, or principle; it's all about electability, spin, and fundraising. Kos' self-confessed "political junkies" are exactly that - news addicts who follow every bit of political spin and add their own, but are not driven by any common ideology or political philosophy beyond the desire the Beat The Republicans. Kos' constant paean to online fundraising confuses a method with a message.
Message, ideology, and direction are what Bill Clinton tried to give the Democrats. He tried to move them away from socialism and toward free trade and growth-based progressivism, while continuing Democrats' historic quest for social equality. And, despite the Gingrich revolution of '94, it looked like Clinton was slowly turning the tide against the Republicans - until a bunch of Democrats decided they didn't like their party establishment, backed Nader, and threw the 2000 election to Bush. Bill Clinton's "third way" viewed liberalism as a vibrant, living, evolving philosophy with continuing relevance to American society. Kos sneers at that vision, and in its place offers - online fundraising.
Until we Democrats get back to concentrating on our message, our ideology, our raison d'etre, we will drift durther and further toward becoming, in the words of Bernard Henri-Levy, "fundraising automatons gone mad." We'll raise more money, and win the hearts of fewer voters. Please, Democrats, don't listen to this voice of unreason.
PS - Why does Markos Moulitsas Zuniga insist on using all three of his names when he writes articles or goes on TV? Isn't "Markos Zuniga" a perfectly fine name? Even John F Kennedy only went with the middle initial...
PPS - I sent Robert Kagan an email, which was basically a copy of part of my last post, asserting that the "clash of civilizations" is between the West and the Arab world, not with Islam in general. Looks like he read my email...
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