I thought he was pretty much spot on. It is the most cogent analysis of the liberal blogosphere to my mind that I have read yet.

He portrays us as a disciplined group of vicious propagandists, liberals with attitude who win regardless of the obstacles put in our way by more detached liberals and party regulars.  We emulate the right in our strategic ruthlessness, and promote partisanship above all.

If only we could be that successful...  I hope someday we WILL reach that level of effectiveness, but, we still have a long way to go.

Until then, it is a learning process...

Thanks,

Mike

Chait said: "The netroots' dream is of a liberal army of grassroots activists, pundits, policy wonks, and politicians all marching more or less in lockstep."

I think this can be dismissed as an another instance of status quo types feeling correctly threatened by the collective intelligence which the nettroots emobodies. Sure, we have our Instpundits and Redstates (who can be, as Lieberman said, 'vitipuratively toxic'). But really, the netroots are comprised of people who EXPRESS THEIR BELIEFS irregardless of what the privileged Washington crowd  happens to be saying.

Personally, I think all the so-called liberals - in addition to the corporatist/statist who wear their allegiance on their sleaves - who criticize the netroots are in fact fearful of real participatory democracy. They have been seduced by the classist, establishment line that democracy only works if you have a ruling class.

As evidence, I reference the major, agenda setting blogs, who consistently (sometimes exclusively)  post articles which merely  CORRECTS THE RECORD from lies and distortions to a representation based in fact. I believe that what the educated elites, who think they are entitled to 'set the agenda', really fear is an educated electorate.

Nicely stated, Matt.  I can't speak for the writers (who can?), but as for your readership, I believe you've well described where a great many of us are coming from -- the motivations driving us to this medium and its content, and the benefits we're deriving from it.  Keep up the good work, y'all.

~Rob McC

I in general liked the article. It did have some valid (though I disagree with them completely) criticisms, such as the dividing on the left vs. dividing on the right (we are the left-wing party so, we on the left win). It recognizes that we are a serious force, and one that is helpful to "the movement." He did miss some significant things, but overall it was well written.

we're a group of people who feel very betrayed by the leadership of our country, our media, and our party.  

That's pretty much what started me blogging, actually right after the last presidential election to keep my despair under control.

say about us, we'll be a movement. Meanwhile, we're potential struggling to be more fully realized. :-)

Although maybe I shouldn't be so hard on him, being very little acquainted with the man or his works. Takin' it on your say-so Matt, as thousands will. What, he has a column or something? Who gives a rap. It's like reading an essay of Lord Macaulay about some long forgotten statesman and you are kind of fascinated by all the in-and-outs and what a fine job the great one does tying him to his time, his peers, and all that was important around him. But the man himself? An utter cipher.

Take (perhaps unimportant) exception to this part:

Where else are you going to find arguments about a cap and trade versus a carbon tax?  Where else are you going to be able to read about net neutrality resolutions in California, or offshore drilling in Virginia?  The local blogs are incredibly substantive in their states, and I like to think that we go into depth into subject areas on MyDD and the rest of the blogs as well.

Cap and trade versus carbon tax arguments of great depth are easy to find on the web and in scholarly sources, all outside the blogosphere of which MyDD is an important part.

Net Neutrality, on the other hand, being a subject vital to the blogosphere, is an issue on which we have unique expertise and depth of argument. Same with many state/local issues.

Stoller is right, it's not a good article. There is no "propagandizing" in the netroots any more than any other politically motivated organization or magazine with a political agenda. We advance our agenda from our point of view. Are we supposed to push our agenda on somebody else's terms?

They will be eaten alive.

Netroots are very sophisticated to fall for propaganda.

Because netroots are very educated--39% post grad.  

Chait has no clue, but readers of TNR couldn't be more misinformed so it will probably be applauded by the idiots in Chevy Chase and Bethesda.

We are liberal because we believe in liberal ideas, and by and large, we've been proven correct.

I have to remind myself periodically that this is what separates us from the right-- as much as it annoys me to admit it, the grassroots right probably felt the way we feel now, back in the oh-so-degenerate sixties (and this is another reason why feelings alone are a damned poor substitute for informed debate).  The difference is and always has been in our respective visions of what this country should be: my position is that the liberal vision is simply a better one, and history almost always puts us on the side of the angels.

Oh, and Chait's piece is mostly annoying... but the worst part by far is the comments, with the TNR subs patting themselves on the back for being so much more civilized than those nasty Kossacks.  I do try to follow discussions over there, and except for the commonly-held belief that Marty Peretz is batshit crazy, it's the worst kind of beltway blather imaginable, like a college bull session without the mitigating/anesthetizing effects of booze.  

Jon Chait does not get it.  The netroots transcend left and right.  It is about American values and the American people.  

May be, it's just my warped perspective as a European immigrant but if one looks at the evidence in some ways, our frames and our politics capture not only lefty ideas but also most of what is good about conservatism.

We are fighting to preserve the United States Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, but also support for veterans and veterans candidates.  The netroots also support responsible fiscal policy by opposing cronyism and other financial crimes.  And while the Republicans might not get it, in the end good conservatives have to be environmentalists.

We are struggling to preserve the middle class, which real conservatives ought to embrace as well.

Jon Chait is just trying to paint us into a corner.  We love liberty, America, and America's values.  That's something that the Republican party has abandoned a long time ago.  And that is why they are losing and we are winning.

I don't think propaganda is a bad thing, and I don't think Chait thinks it is either. It doesn't mean lying or being dishonest, it means spinning and framing things to make your side look good and the other side look bad. This is very important and necessary for any sort of "progressive movement," and it's also entirely respectable. Daily Kos exists for this express purpose.

Chait is right. Movements are about winning. Intellectual debate is simply a subordinate goal.

P.S. I had no idea this website was originally about finance and astrology. Quite an evolution to what it currently is.

Ever since they backed Reagan's terrorist war in Central America, shilling for the right has been part of TNR's mix.  So of course their house writers are going to get all hysterical over people striving for honesty, consistency and principled action.  What else is new?

They can't see the wide-ranging debates and vast differences that characterize much of the left blogosphere on a wide range of issues?  Well, gee, they couldn't see the holes in Bush's Iraq War propaganda, either, so near-total blindness seems to be part of the package as well.

The thing is, we're smarter and less prejudiced than they are.  TNR has some very good, very smart writing from time to time, and folks in the left blogosphere are smart enough to realize it. We don't wildly over-generalize the way TNR true believers in the Chait/Bienart mode do.

This isn't rocket science. Once upon a time, TNR was able to pretend that they had the smartest people in the world writing for them.  It was never true, of course.  But they had reasonably smart people writing for them, and their weren't a lot of other places for equally smart or better, similarly-inclined people to get published regularly for a wide, general audience of politically oriented people.  Well, that's no longer the case, and boy, is TNR pissed.    At bottom, it's just as simple as that.

Shystee made another one of his diagrams on the Overton Window that defines the boundaries of acceptable discourse at any given time, and makes these points, which I think are profoundly right:

Definition and discussion of the concept is below. The main points I want to convey with this image:

- There is, or there should be, a constant tug-of-war on the edges of the Overton Window on any issue.

- There is a place for everyone and anyone along the Left side of the rope, as long as we're all pulling in the same general direction.

- The current location of the Overton Window is so far to the right of any objective political spectrum, that what are now considered Extreme Left Positions are really not extreme at all.

The way to shift the Overton Window is by moving the edges, by pushing ideas that are even more extreme than what is actually desired.

Chait's "lockstep" notion is particularly silly. (Not even Big Orange does this). It's silly because it's not true, and it's silly because it would be a bad idea if true. To reiterate:

- There is a place for everyone and anyone along the Left side of the rope, as long as we're all pulling in the same general direction.

They promoted the Iraq war, and many of their writers continue to shill for it.  They are also promoting some of the most incendiary lies about Iran, like the notion that they are close to getting a nuke.  Look at the recent article by Dennis Ross, the guy Clinton put in charge of the Israeli Palestinian peace negotiations.  If you want to wonder why that fell through just look at the bullshit he is peddling on Iran.

...He portrays us as a disciplined group of vicious propagandists, liberals with attitude who win regardless of the obstacles put in our way by more detached liberals and party regulars.  We emulate the right in our strategic ruthlessness, and promote partisanship above all....

While were at it, can you fix a detached liberal the same way you fix a detached retina?

I personally found Chait's piece a mixture of insight and bullshit - with the ratio being about 3 to 2 in favor of the bullshit.  I'm a regular reader of every blog that Chait mentions by name, and I kept on thinking, "WTF?!"

Take his DLC paragraph, for instance:

This ethos of political detachment among liberal intellectuals finds its natural counterpart in the strategies of the DLC. The DLC's basic idea is to embrace the political center--a model that is incompatible with movement politics. Movements require unanimity against external critics. The DLC model not only permits divisions among Democrats; in a sense, it relies 'upon them. The premise of the DLC's strategy is that the left wing of the party is unacceptable to the majority of voters. The answer is to explicitly disavow that left wing--to create a Third Way between the left and right poles.

Here's what a detached, scholarly intellectual would do: she'd define what was meant by the left wing of the party, find out what it stood for on a group of major issues, and see what polling had been done to get a feel for whether the voters found those stands acceptable or not.

We know how that would turn out.  The lefty netroots are in harmony with the majority of the American people, and there's little evidence to demonstrate that the DLC speaks for much of anyone anymore.

Chait's contention that the blogosphere is involved in the "propaganda" misses the most important thing about the blogosphere - the interactive nature.  The most useful/entertaining parts of mydd and dailykos are the comments sections, where I ordinarily find information and links that deepen and change my understanding of the issue.  (Of course, sometimes I find trolls, hijackers and random double posters).  The whole point of propaganda was the centralization of the message, which was then to be drummed into the masses.  

Chait's idea that all blogs on the progressive side march to a called tune simply is wrong.  As much as Mickey Kaus would like people to think that there is a secret e-mail of the day which is spread to the progressive blogs, the stories that get pushed are the stories that engage the readers/commenters.

The only thing that I think Chait got right is that there is a difference between electoral blogs and wonk blogs.  Outside of election season (post-Labor Day plus four weeks into local primaries and four months into Presidential Primaries), I am more partial to talkingpointsmemo and washingtonmonthly, because I am very happy to read progressive substantive articles/threads.  On the other hand, mydd does a much better job of covering labor/union issues then anyone else.

Having read Crashing the Gate recently, I was struck by its descriptions of how conservatives have plowed millions of dollars into think tanks that churn out position papers, nurture political candidates, and provide talking heads for the MSM.  As the book points out, there is nothing like that in scope on the left.  The liberal blogosphere, however, is in effect a distributed think tank that accomplishes the same goals in a radically different ways.  As Stoller puts it:

"We like to hash things out.  And hashing things out tends to create a sense of community and natural discipline, since you kind of figure out where the obvious areas of agreement are and move in that direction."

To this, I would add that hashing things out focuses our vision, hones our ideas, and details the strategies and tactics that are most likely to make our vision and ideas a reality.  This is what the big think tanks of the right do for conservatives; the distributed think tank of the liberal blogosphere can and should do the same thing for progressives.  

[Excerpted from a longer post in Framed.]

...and by the way Chris, I am intrigued by your title, "The Open Left."  Have you explained that term in greater detail somewhere?  I like it.

The main thing about the Open Left as it is taking shape over the Internet is that it is a web-enabled self-organizing movement aimed at overthrowing the status quo in American politics. IMNSHO, its  underlying goal is to foment a progressive political revolution to undo the damage of 30 years of government by corrupted politicians in both major political parties beholden to the corporations that are running both the U.S. government and the economy.

The movement is directed by its self-selected members. They comprise a large spectrum of people who are activists in some self-determining way. They adopt their own courses of action without being forced to adhere to any dogmas, orthodoxies, formal organizations or political parties. People opt into and out of the movement and dialogue on their own free will.

This dialogue among the members of the movement can comprise statements of fact, interpretations of fact, opinions and polemics, to name just a few components. Because the movement is driven by a web-based conversation on websites like MyDD, which involve millions of people who post or read posts on a daily basis, the movement is constantly evolving and EXPANDING.

It is leaving the major political parties and its candidates in the dust. I would bet that more people read and contribute ideas to MyDD and DailyKOS than read and contribute ideas to the websites of political parties or candidates. I would also bet that the candidates' spend as much time reading what is said on the political blogs as what they receive on their websites because the blogs are where the political action is.

Bottom line: the "Open Left" and left-leaning progressive blogs are the leading edge of political change in America. The candidates, political parties and pundits are Johnny-Come-Latelys to this party which, overtime, will reshape the face of American politics and American political parties.

Thanks for that explanation, Nancy.  I have some reservations about how much influence an internet-based phenomenon such as you describe has in terms of actually getting people elected; I think some bloggers overestimate their importance.  However, I agree that their influence is on the rise.

Does the "open" in the name refer to open source--i.e., the idea that anyone can take an idea and improve on it?  Or is there some other etymology I am missing?

I actually found Chait's article to be a fairly accurate representation of the "netroots", written for (and by) an outsider.  The parallel with the '60s "New Right" and its road to success in the '80s is well put forward, and is in line with what Gov Dean has often discussed. I know that many here might wish to believe that the 'netroots' or 'Open Left" is de novo, wisdom sprung from the head of Zeus, but it is a good thing to trace one's own history and place -- and often an outsider like Chait can be of help in that.

I've been reading (and contributing) to Kos and DD and others since the Dean campaign, and I greatly appreciate what has developed. I am an older '60s New Leftie, and I admire the commitment, practicality and effectiveness of this younger generation. Our generation had a passion that was much attached to particular leaders, and that dissipated when they died (and for a variety of other reasons). I think we were much more romantic and idealistic, and I dont say that as a compliment.

I didnt particularly like Chait's snark-laced dig at Markos' "libertarian Democrat" thesis, with which I identified when Markos first discussed it.  No matter. Chait has his attitude, just like most folks here have their attitude (look at all the comments on the DLC). Sometimes it can help to hold back on your feeling of being attacked and take what you can from (perhaps pseudo-) intellectuals like Chait.

And I found Chait's discussion of 'propaganda' to be fair and important.  I have no problem with propaganda, as long as it is generally grounded in reality (i.e: reality-based, rather than faith-based). FDR was a master of propaganda and mass communication. Of course, so was Hitler, on the other side of the coin.    

Keep up the good work, but keep perspective.