Amen!

Although that won't stop the media from trying to pigeonhole us (storylines must be kept simplistic, even if they're too simplistic to be correct).

"Democratic version of Christian Right."

Heh.  I like it.

They are AFRAID of us.  We must be doing our job right, eh?

Side note: I was part of the direct-mail fundraising trend of the 80's, back when my old boss and I were involved in right-wing causes.  I wasn't involved long enough to know any players, but I know how that whole thing worked.

One difference I can point out between the blogosphere and the Viguerie-ites is that the direct-mail fundraising right was full of scoundrels looking for easy money.  Mailing lists were worth money.  As a 501.c, you could hire family members and put them on salary, buy yourself some nice high-tech items and do it all as a big tax write-off.  The esteem that the targeted audience was held in was not generally all that high.  I imagine today's e-mail spammers today must not be very different in character.

From the CBS News web page by Eric Boehlert. He talks about the "dirty little secret" we've known about for some time: the incestuous relationship between reporters and politicians inside the beltway.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/1 1/opinion/main1889856.shtml

Great post.  Excellent points--every one of them.

It made me wonder if the the Lamont race hasn't changed our relationship to 'place' in a way that also scared the Dem leadership in the Congress quite a bit.

This is what I mean:  

Until Lamont won, the Progressive movement was located in an abstract notion of 'place.'  Blogs were 'places' only metaphorically.  

Initially the blogs succeeded only to push funds here and there--which was something that really appealed to the Dem leadership in Congress.  Why not?  They are obsessed with getting money and here was a new way to to do it, easy.

But suddenly--the Lamont campaign succeeds and the blogs now exist in a real, live place.  And not just a pinball arcade or the basement of a computer repair shop (e.g., the stereotype), but a Senate district--a whole state.  And that just so happens to be the exact same place that also brings into existence 100 people in the Senate, 435 in the House, etc.    

Suddenly, even if a Senator or a Congresswoman doesn't know what a 'troll rating' is or thinks a 'snark' is an exotic bird--they know the bloggers are in Connecticut and is wondering if they are in her state, too.

I really think that is the genius of the Lamont campaign--a small state, a big name Senator, a fast campaign--all resulted in the 3-dimensionalization of the blogs in the terms that elected officiasl see.

One distinction I still don't get is why the bloggers seem to scare the Federal elected politicians more than the state- or municipal-level officials.  

Being present during those times I see what you are saying about the New Left at that time. I see why you would say they "failed as a political movement". By then I have to assume that you mean an "electoral political movement" since as a "social political" movement the successes are emmense. Civil rights, feminism, environmental awareness and gay accepetance being the hallmarks of that times social political accomplishments.

But perhaps you are defining "New Left" more narrowly than I am taking you. If you mean the "Weatherman" offshoot of SDS, then yes that version of the New Left was a miserable failure (of a different sort than George Bush).

But keep in mind that the "Old Left" was responsible for left and progressive electoral politics. Labor Unions, Socialist and Communist parties, and ADA Democrats where the folks that had access to sufficient resources to run effective electoral campaigns. You are taking for granted the fact that today my laptop computer has more power than the mainframes that were beginning to maintain those voter mailing lists.

Should we have "reformed" the electoral machinery of the Old Left, just as bloggers and progressives are now attempting to reform the Democratic party? Maybe, but then many actually tried. And we shall see whether today's version of the New Left will actually have any more success than yesterday's version.

But hey, I hope we do better this time too.

Another theme that finally struck home is how all the talk shows (like This Week) are abuzz about the effect of the blogs on the Democrats, with most of the talking heads saying us left-wing zealots are on a disastrous course. Yet, has anyone ever heard those same spouters of vacuous blather talk about the red state blogs? I've been to the "other side" only a few times, and have seen some excerpts posted at Kos and here. My goodness. Such vitriol. Such disregard for the sanctity of life. For those of you old enough to remember General "Bomb 'Em to Hell" LeMay, some of the folks who post on the red state blogs make him look like a piker!
Why aren't the talking heads all a quiver over these absolute wingnut postings.

[Note to the person who maintains the spell check list: wingnut should not be flagged :-) ]      

Those politicians that would have the reaction you describe must be at their core fundamentally allergic to change and incurious to a remarkable degree.

I contrast them with those like John Conyers and Russ Feingold and many others who have embraced the blogosphere for the opportunity it affords them to get their message out and in effect broaden their support.

For the others to so cavalierly dismiss the blogosphere also shows inherently that those politicians prefer a smaller tent and within that smaller tent VIP seating -despite what they say to the contrary. What disturbs them is that they know we are on to them and can use this technology to "pull the curtain back" and expose their records and their real values to an ever growing audience of progressive blog readers.

That small tent is folding and the VIP seats are are coming out to make room for a more active informed citizenry.

They have invented this "rule":

it is an unwritten rule to support the incumbent, but to rally behind the primary winner, no matter what the outcome -

That is pure crapola. Nothing but. What precedent do they invoke for elected Democrats to buck the will of the voters and support a losing incumbent against a primary winner?

There is no rule, written or otherwise that covers this situation. What is emerging is the desire of some Democrats to fight the will of the Democratic voters of Connecticut for their own personal political reasons. Pretending it is based on precedent or upon a "rule" is nothing but a lie.

To gauge how the pundits feel about Lamont needs no futher investigation than the first question posed to Lamont on 'Face the Nation' yesterday.

"given the events that occurred in England Wednesday, do you feel you are yesterday's news"
This wasn't an interview, it was an inquisition.

In 2004, Dean was the first candidate to make use of the internet for fundraising.  He was for all intents and purposes beyond the reach of the DNC.  It was no secret that party was not behind his candidacy.  In 2004 the pundits constantly railed against the moveon.org wing of the party, in the way they now talk about the radical bloggers behind Lamont.  Nothing has been said about who the actual people who voted for both Dean and Lamont really  are.  Which in both cases are similar, people who have an income over $30,000, have a college degree, and pay attention to political issues.

It would appear even after Dean's sucess in 04, that Democrats ignored the internet, preferring to keep tight control at the party level.  Perhaps they thought computers might just go away?

This post is focused very much on movements as objects, rather than as manifestations within a larger political history.

This perspective misses the fact that the context for both the New Left and the New Right was the per-existing battle between the New Deal and its enemies.  And this context, in turn, was part of a larger, mega-context--the development of welfare states in the industrializing world, as the failures of classical & neoclassical free market ideologies became evident.  The US's position within this larger development was unique for a number of converging and interacting reasons--our British free-market, trading heritage as a dominant ideology; our status as a settler herrenvolk democracy; our substantial dependence on slave labor, and its evolution into a peonage system; an ethnically  and religiously fragmented working class, etc.

A second mega-context was illuminated by Kevin Phillips a couple of books ago in Wealth and Democracy, which is the pattern of how dominant world powers turn reactionary after an unforeseen military shock, with the emergence of a bifrucation between a more-wealthy-than-ever elite and the of society in prolonged decline.  This pattern plays out for about two generatios, Phillips notes, before an egalitarian correction sets in.

What all this amounts to is that both the New Left and New Right were riding currents of history.  As we are now.  The participatory democracy aspect of the netroots was, in fact, a core tenet of the New Left, not just articulated in the Port Huron Statement, but lived in tens of thousands of group meetings, and feed and supported by similar ideas that came from other sources, most notably the Civil Rights Movement via the influence of Ella Baker and SNCC.  It went on to characterize the vast majority of women's movement--the 9/10ths of the iceberg that wasn't televised, wasn't NOW's national leadership, wasn't directly involved in electoral politics.

Thus, to a large extent, what we are seeing today is a continuation of the New Left project, but with a technology finally widely available that's commensurate with that vision.  It's less "ideological" in the popular sense of that term, but this is entirely commmensurate with the larger historical currents I spoke of above.  It's much broader and more demographically diverse, which is likewise commensurate with the larger historical currents.  And the establishment it's up against is radically different from the 1960s as well.  It's not so much a political party, more a trade association of political consultants, lobbyists, fundraisers, pundits, officeholders and hangers on.

This establishment is aligned with the elite political order that has dominated our politics since Vietnam (ala Kevin Phillips), but as the "softer side" and "loyal opposition," which is more a matter of captive mindset than lack of spine.  And the major clash that Lieberman/Lamont is a flashpoint for has its roots in these deep historical forces that are far, far larger than the netroots themselves, and far more powerful than the DC political establishment. Both are, ultimately, vehicles for these larger forces that are driving us forward through history.  But that hardly makes them trivial or unimportant.  The larger forces have to have such vehicles, they cannot play out without them.

Consider that a compliment, not a slam.

A coalition of militant progressives with militant centrists...united in the cause of crushing the Republican Right, and the Bush Administration in particular.

It may be the most pragmatic populist movement ever seen.

Bloggers are the Democratic version of the Religious Right?

Well, lets see...

Bloggers want the Democratic Party to get a spine.
The Religious Right wants Armageddon.

Well see which happens first. Sigh.

The connective tissue, or underlying theme, of the New Left is anti-corporatism.  We "bloggers" give voice and organization to the deep distrust of the corporate agenda -- including that of the corporate media.  We see the corporate agenda destroy the middle class while congress fiddles, and we aren't going to take it anymore.  

Varous grievances lead us to anti-corporatism, so you'll find all kinds of people with all kinds of basic issues here, mostly having to do with human rights that have been/are being quashed in furtherance of the corporate agenda.

In fact, the term "corporate agenda" is so pejorative and so succint and travels so wide, the New Left can use it to label the bad guys as effectively as the right used "liberal agenda."

Joe Lieberman is a servant of the corporate agenda, and he has to go.  

I'm sorta glad the party bigwigs are starting to get scared of us - but they wouldn't HAVE to be, if they'd just engage us in a conversation, and back down when they realize they can't really justify what they're doing.

Can they justify their condoning of Lieberman's independent run?  Maybe in an op-ed piece, where they don't have to reply to other points of view.  But can they do so in a conversation with a group of well-informed critics?  I doubt it.

The main thing is, they don't try.  They don't talk to us, so all they can do is get worried about us.

Yeah, we can get kind of acerbic at times.  These times call for a bit of acerbicness, if that's a word.

But Lieberman is running against Lamont in the general election by attacking a good portion of the Democratic Party, using Rove's and Cheney's and Mehlman's words to do so.  That hurts the party.  I don't see how they can justify that.

And I guess I won't see how they can justify it, because they won't try.

Chickenshits.  

This is exactly why we need to start replacing some of the Liebermans of the party - because too many Dems lack the courage of their convictions.  What it needs more than anything else is a spine transplant.  If the Democratic Party doesn't stand for anything, why should anyone vote for it?

I'm afraid that we are being pigeonholed, and not in a good way. The conventional wisdom is coalescing around the idea that we are rabid left-wing extremists. It may not be true, but the mainstream media has been spewing that message lately.

And it's very damaging. Independents will trust us less, and the Democratic establishment will see as a group to be appeased, not as a group to be absorbed. My understanding is that we would much rather be absorbed, since we want the establishment to adopt our strategies, not to listen to our ideology (whatever that would be).

I think we should stop thumping our chests over the Lamont victory and fight for our image. As soon as possible, since we're in the spotlight right now.

"They are a little bit scared of the bloggers," the operative said of the party leadership.

They may be a little bit scared right now....but if bloggers don't make them pay for failing to support the CT primary winner Lamont, they won't be for long. And many who are currently supporting the movement to change the Democratic party into a party of the people will get discouraged and stop doing so.

This is a cusp moment for the blogoshere and reformers. Do they let D(L)CDems rob them of victory in the end and go back to falling in line behind the corrupt establishment, or use it as a springboard for more change? The time to decide is already here.

I couldn't agree more.  Of course we have an ideology; if not, we wouldn't care who was in power.  It isn't like we look at the Christian Right and say, "hey, that's a winning ideology; why don't we adopt their message?"

The reason why we don't is that we've got a very different vision of what our society should be like than they do.  And implicit in that vision is an ideology.

It is panoramic and complex, and not all of us agree on all parts of it.  But we do have an ideology, a vision, whatever - no question about it.

Damnit! We Progressives are Not the New New Left! We are in fact, the New New Center of the Democratic party. I'm a little tired of accepting the right wing framing of who we represent. We aren't advocating Burning Humvees, Or Mc Mansions. We don't advocate Socialism or Communist revoluntionist movements! I don't consider Chris, Matt, Kos or Myself for that matter as Leftist. I consider we progressives as Centerists. It is the Repuglicans who have Dragged the entire party to the extreme right. They go out of their way to proclaim Joe Liberman an extreme rightist Democrat as a "Centerist! We have to stop and think of where we actually are in the political spectrum and not where the conservatives say we are.

The old new left was extraordinarily ideological... too much so, I'm sure. The new new left is much more practical and goal oriented within its challenge to George Bush and the establishment of the Democratic Party. Values may be widely shared, but ideology is a bit lacking.

Just look at the various confusions about what "our" ideology is in the comments of this posting.

This is an interesting and thoughtful thread, containing a range of views as to what the "new new left" is and isn't and how it should be described.  A problem I see, however, is that if we don't have some common and concise language that's broad enough to make most of us comfortable with its use, the forces that want to weaken us, aided by the MSM's inherent tendencies, will increase the likelihood that the media framing of this movement will be defined by those who seek to weaken it and slow its growth.  I see mainly disadvantages in this outcome, and go back to my suggestion of a contest to come up with a short descriptive phrase that we'd be happy to see the MSM adopt...I'm sure we've got some budding Frank Lutz's out there who can come up some phrases we'd all enjoy using (and repeating and repeating).  MSM can't digest substance and complexity....it needs simple frames and objects within them.  That doesn't remove the need for substance, it just adds the need for the simplistic framing that sits above it in the mass consciousness.

It all depends on what the meaning of "we" is, not to mention the meaning of "ideology."

In fact, this goes back at least to the New Deal, which was an enormous mish-mash, ideologically speaking.

But rather than write a 2,000-word essay here, I'll just cut to the chase:

(1) We are a lot more united on what we oppose than we are on what we are for.

(2) We are lot more interested in finding thing that work (bottom-up empiricism) than we are in ideological purity (top-down rationalism).

(3) American progressive politics has long been hampered by the fact that it draws on widely diverse traditions.  One simplistic division puts native traditions based on our predominant 19th-Century Protestant culture against immigrant traditions than came in with the largely Catholic and Jewish immigrants of the late 19th & early 20th Century wave of immigration.

Both these traditions have their pragmatist and ideological sides.  But the most fully articulated frameworks for thinking about politics were William James's pragmatism on the Protestant side  and Marxism on the immigrant side.

The past 30-40 years has seen new traditions come to the fore as well, in part from the new waves of immigration, in part from the social movements born in the late 60s and 70s.

IMHO, we are now ripe for developing a common recognition that Jamesian pragmatism is a framework we can all live within, even if we interpret and apply it somewhat differently.  This is not at all the same thing as compromise-based politics.  It very much is reality-based politics.  (Pragmatism started as a philosophy of science, explaining it as a rigorous application of common sense to intensely studied reality.)

This sort of pragmatism is not hostile to ideology, any more than empirical science is hostile to scientific theories.  It simply does not deify ideology.  It values ideology as it does all other thigns--not by what it claims for itself, but by its fruits.  Not by how it talks the talk, but by how it walks the walk.

I agree with most of your analysis, Matt, except the "New Left" part.  A failed political movement?  In some ways, yes, those of us on the Left were aware by the early 80s that we weren't winning hearts and minds.  But rather than disbanding, the tactics changed to trying to overtake the Democratic Party from within.  This was a conscious strategy--I know because I was in constant meetings and spent hours canvassing for left-moderate Democratic candidates.  In the process, the Left moderated its tone and, to a degree, its ideology.  Progress was depressingly slow or nonexistant, felt particularly in isolated enclaves, but "New Left" people have been in the Democratic Party along with (or butting against) the moderates for years.  When the blogosphere emerged,  a lot of the "New Left" people--who never went away--jumped on the bandwagon and have helped to set the tone.  I don't think there is any discrete New or Old Left or New New Left--it's the same movement from the Abolistionists forward.

One Democratic official, and a one-time Lieberman backer, said for Reid and other Democrats "it is an unwritten rule to support the incumbent, but to rally behind the primary winner, no matter what the outcome -- to unite the party."

Another well-placed Democratic source said, "Publicly they have to support Lamont," adding that if they didn't they would be crucified by the liberal wing of the party and most notably the growing number of bloggers,

Nonsense. We believe it at our peril.

Anyone old enough to remember and have lived through Chicago's mayoral election of 1983 would not buy into the notion that party unity is going to count for much with this bunch. If they feel their position is threatened, and they do, all that stuff flies straight out the window, amazingly fast.

Harold Washington was a threat to Chicago's political machine that year, just as Lamont and the "netroots" are now. And their reactions were the same. There was the ridiculous "Write in Jane" campaign on behalf of the defeated Jane Byrne. And of course most of the Democratic committeemen backed the Republican Bernard Epton.

Ned Lamont has to bring himself front and center and take the fight to Lieberman and his allies. Don't expect these guys to have any shame, any honesty. This is going to be a bare-knuckles political fight. We need to stop talking about Lieberman and stop obsessing about the miserable performance of the media (what else did you expect) and work to elect Lamont.