As an addendum to the two post-election narrative posts I made earlier today,
Just A Step Forward--But What A Step! and
Who Really Won This Election, I would like to provide a compilation of the article I wrote in October about how the netroots and the progressive movement had put Democrats in this position.
As you may have noticed from my writing, I think it is vitally important for the netroots and the people-powered movement to declare victory and be recognized as playing a (the) key role. This is important not only to break out of the cynical and aristocratic attitude of the Gang of 500 that has arisen around political consultants on winning campaigns. It is important not only because the same forces who have always sought to marginalize us will continue to do so. It is important not just because there are Democrats who will work to throw their own party under the bus for personal gain even now when we are in the majority. Perhaps most importantly, it is important because we need to all remember how we reached this point.
Taking a quick and admittedly crude look at the aftermath of our previous three landslide elections, I see a pattern where, once Democrats win, they naively assumed that the natural order of American politics has been restored and failed to act in ways that allowed them to maintain or expand upon their majorities. After 1964, Democrats governed quite poorly when it came to Vietnam, thereby dividing both the nation and their own coalition, and thus leading to defeat in 1968. After 1974, when Democrats took Depression-era leads in Congress, Jimmy Carter ran an extremely milquetoast, fluffy and image-based campaign once he sowed up the nomination. As we rested on our laurels, the conservative movement continued to dig in, and by 1978-1980, whatever gains we made were more than wiped way. In 1992, we won the trifecta back after twelve years, and then proceeded to run against tour own party once we had it. And so the 1994 landslide happened. Some of our best elections over the past fifty years have been followed up by realignments favoring the opposition. We can't let that happen this time.
We got to where we are today not through narrow targeting, risk-averse behavior, and assuming we were still the natural governing party of America. Had it not been for all of the progressive movement and netroots innovations developed over the last four or five years, there is no doubt in my mind that we would not have won yesterday. All of the things that we did--the silent revolution, the small donor explosion, the fifty-state strategy, new progressive media, confrontational opposition to Bush and Republicans, serving as media watchdogs, developing new online campaign techniques, bringing about the revival of campaign volunteer activism, keeping the base excited, building new communities and infrastructure, holding our advocacy groups and consultants up to the light, running primaries against Democrats complicit with the Republican machine--these are all thing we must continue doing in order to maintain our majority. There are a lot of people who want to immediately move hard to the center-right, pat our high level consultants on the back, and pretend the last twelve years never happened. If we follow that path, and revert to our old risk-averse behavior that assumes we can win simply by seeming pleasant, moderate, and milquetoast, we will be in for a rude awakening in 2008, 2010, or 2012. We must, instead, continue our outward push in all the ways I described above, and also work to dismantle the structures Republicans put in place to maintain a 50%+1 "majority" for so long (K-Street project, gerrymandered maps, bullied media, voter suppression, complicit Democrats, etc). And we have to keep inventing, as well. The progressive movement has been built on not only a sense of shared purpose against the right-wing, but also in a bold, entrepreneurial spirit that was always overflowing with new ideas, as well the courage and strength to implement those ideas. That is a spirit we must maintain, and that we must continue to spread through the Democratic Party and the progressive ecosystem. This is just one step, not an ending point. We must act accordingly.
