Using data from
the Pew study of Dean activists, in an article titled "Netroots... Revealed!" Scott Winship of The Democratic Strategist
takes up the old argument that the netroots are more ideological than partisan. I wish he had read the results of the BlogPac netroots poll of MoveOn.org members (
part one and
part two) before he made his post, because we ended up directly asking many of the questions that he simply tries to infer from the Pew data.
From Scott's article:
The portrait the Pew data paints of the netroots is one of strong political frustration.
Yes, that is absolutely true. Considering the shockingly low approval ratings the Democratic Party received on a battery of performance questions in both the Pew survey and the BlogPac survey, the sense of political frustration is clearly overwhelming within the netroots. Then again, simply spending any time in the netroots would have made that clear, even without any surveys. Progressive political activists online feel the Democratic Party is doing a terrible job at just about everything.
More from Scott's piece:
Fully 70 percent of the netroots said they wanted the Party to become more liberal, while the number who wanted it to become more centrist was no different than the number wanting the Party to "die off and be replaced". Their policy positions reinforce the view of the netroots as strongly liberal. Fully 88 percent support immigration rather than feeling threatened by it, whereas Americans and Democrats specifically are split on the question. (All the figures for Americans and Democrats are from other 2004 Pew studies that are publicly available.) Nearly all members of the netroots accept homosexuality, compared with half of Americans and 60 percent of Democrats. Nine in ten respect conscientious objection to fighting in a war. This compares with six in ten Democrats and less than half of Americans. And while minorities of Americans and Democrats said free trade agreements were bad for Americans, two-thirds of the netroots thought so.
Scot is actually writing only about Dena activists when he says netroots, but the data I have seen in a variety of studies concurs with his conclusion. The netroots are in fact more likely to self-identify as liberal / progressive than the Democratic Party as a whole. Combining the liberal tilt of the netroots with their frustration with the Democratic Party, Scott goes on to conclude that the netroots are primarily frustrated with the Democratic Party because it is not liberal enough:
So the netroots is strongly liberal and frustrated with the Democratic Party for not representing them. The clear interpretation to this point is that the netroots believes that they are representative of the country and so Democratic candidates and officials should be promoting their policy preferences. If they were to do so - by this logic - they would win. Instead, professional Democrats are timid and transparently calculating.
This is where Scott's column goes off the rails, and flies in the face of existing poll data that he apparently was not aware of. Instead of trying to infer this conclusion from questions the Pew survey did not ask, Scott should have looked at the BlogPac netroots survey, since we actually asked several questions that tried to get at this exact issue. For starters:
This data clearly shows that the vast majority of the netroots are not looking for more liberal candidates. For example, they have no problem with running moderate or conservative candidates in swing districts. Most importantly, beyond ideology, the majority of the netroots are desperately seeking
inspiration. 73% of the netroots indicated that Democrats would be better off with candidates who are "inspiration, plain-spoken and effective communicators" than with candidates who are "consistently liberal or progressive on the issues." This one question makes Scott's conclusion untenable.
In the case of the netroots, frustration arises mainly from Democrats who are viewed as timid and obsequious in the face of the conservative movement. Scott noted this in the final sentence of the last paragraph I quoted above, but he failed to connect it to its proper source. Yes, the netroots are utterly opposed to the policy agenda of the conservative movement, but what really gets their goat are Democrats who fail to stand up to the vicious rhetorical onslaughts of that movement. Calling us un-American, un-patriotic, treasonous, and inciting violence against us (among other things). What the netroots want first and foremost are candidates who stand up to Swift Boating and Republican slander00whose guts and communication skills cut through the Republican crap, throw it into the gutter where it belongs. This is evidenced by the six Democrats in the survey who had the highest favorable ratings among the netroots:
Ideologically, this is a mixed bag of Democrats. However, there is a common thread. Since the 2004 election, Feingold, Murtha and Boxer have all become famous for taking gutsy, public stances on a variety of issues when no one else would. Over the past few years, Al Gore has emerged as one of the most full-throated critics of the Bush administration. Barack Obama is famous for having a real narrative and story to support his political vision: something that is rare among Democrats (a trait also found in John Edwards, who had the highest overall favorable rating of any potential 2008 Democrat). Bill Clinton is famous not only for his communication skills, but also for his repeated victories in the face of some of the most vicious Republican attacks ever seen. Thus, while this group contains conservatives (Murtha) centrists (Clinton) and progressives (Boxer, Feingold) and those more difficult to define (Edwards, Obama), what the connects them is their inspirational powers. That is what the vast majority of the netroots wants more than anything else: inspiration and the sense that we are not going to be walked all over anymore by an extremist, manically conservative tide.
Thus, the theory that the netroots are looking primarily for inspiration and guts, rather than hard-line ideology, is fond not only in the abstract (the first graphic), but also in practice through a favorable battery of Democratic leaders. While the netroots may be generally more liberal than the rest of the party, they remain pragmatic and their frustration runs so deeply that for the vast majority their first desire is not ideology, but simply a reason to feel inspired. That is the netroots revealed: a frustrated activist base desperately in search of inspiration from Democrats of any stripe.
