Obama and a Brave New World : Governing a Netroots Nation

Obama addresses journalism convention in July, 2008. Photo by Jennifer Dronkers / Unity News.
'Obama isn't just trying to make government more transparent by posting online videos of himself or his transition team's doings. He is attempting to organize his campaign supporters into a political force that he can tap in tough times.'
Joe Garofoli / November 24, 2008

During the campaign, the Obama team showed how new media tools can be used to win the White House. Now, the president-elect's advisers and allies are previewing how they intend to use the power of online organizing to govern.

The effort gained national visibility when President-elect Barack Obama started posting YouTube videos of his weekly national address, and it accelerated as the transition team and others solicited supporters' ideas on what to do next with their "movement."

Analysts say Obama isn't just trying to make government more transparent by posting online videos of himself or his transition team's doings. He is attempting to organize his campaign supporters into a political force that he can tap in tough times - like when he needs to go around Congress and the mainstream media for direct citizen support.

"Just like people hadn't used the Internet in campaigning to this extent before, they haven't really used it to govern before," said Peter Daou, Internet strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. "The challenge here is trying to figure out how to use something that was used mostly for campaign advocacy - and use it in a way to advance policy."

That's tricky. A campaign runs on an adrenaline rush fueled by a deadline (election day), a person to rally against and the rush of daily polls. Shepherding policy through Washington is not as sexy, and now the candidate is president of all Americans - not just his supporters.

So on the grassroots level, the legions of Obama supporters who self-organized on social networking sites are reconvening to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, the incoming administration is trying to figure out how to engage its supporters and solicit their ideas - and continued support.

"Where they meet in the middle somewhere is where the energy will come from," Daou said.

Those efforts intensified last week when Obama campaign manager David Plouffe asked the estimated 11 million members of Obama's e-mail list what new ideas they had for the administration. Before asking supporters to complete a brief survey, Plouffe wrote, "Your hard work built this movement. Now it's up to you to decide how we move forward."

The survey asked supporters "how they would like to be engaged" and to rank the importance of "goals for this movement" such as "Helping Barack's administration pass legislation through grassroots efforts" and "training volunteers in the organizing techniques we used to elect Barack."

MoveOn's efforts

The efforts extend beyond the official Obama organization.

On Thursday night, MoveOn.org - whose members supported Obama - held more than 1,200 offline "Fired Up and Ready to Go" parties. The point of the gatherings, according to an invitation from MoveOn: "We'll launch a new campaign to help Barack win big changes - like health care and clean energy." The group will follow Thursday's meetings with a day of personal lobbying on Capitol Hill and in congressional district offices Jan. 21, the day after Obama is sworn in.

The 5 million-member liberal online hub has seen its membership transformed this year. MoveOn gained 2 million new members in the past six months - 55 percent of them are not white. (Membership was 85 percent white before.) At least half of the newcomers are under 35, said executive director Eli Pariser.

Unlike past political campaigns, where voters returned home after casting their ballots and waited for politicians to deliver results, many Obama supporters are looking for ways to continue to provide their input and offer help.

"It's clear to MoveOn members that they want to continue to focus on a few core issues," Pariser said.

In addition to posting the president-elect's weekly addresses on YouTube, the Obama transition team is posting snippets that describe the activities of some of its transition groups. A three-minute video titled "Inside the Transition: Energy and Environment Policy Team" that recently appeared may not sound like scintillating viewing, but it does give viewers a peek into the mind-set of the incoming government.

"He doesn't have to wait for CBS to use four seconds of one of his speeches as a sound bite in a story. He can send his full comments directly to his supporters - and everyone else," Pariser said.

But Obama's early efforts on YouTube have not been in the two-way spirit of new media communication - comments are not accepted, although people can repost the videos or embed them elsewhere and start their own conversation threads.

"I'm not sure of the strategy behind that," said Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics. "They're probably trying to feel out how it will work."

If the Obama administration is anything like the Obama campaign, Grove predicts it will produce a prolific amount of video. He wouldn't be surprised if Cabinet officials and other top administration leaders began posting videos, too. And, even though "day-in-the-life" videos may be hackneyed, Grove said there would be an audience for such a behind-the-scenes peek at the White House.

Obama's YouTube channel had more than 1,800 videos during the campaign, and they were viewed 110 million times. Many posted after September were seen upward of 50,000 times each and more than a dozen were seen at least 1 million times.

"Their user base has come to expect a certain level of accessibility," Grove said. "But the challenge will be to find that sweet spot now that they're governing. There has to be a certain imprimatur and gravitas when the president of the United States is involved."

'Craigslist for service'

There's no shortage of other ideas on how to engage people online. During the campaign, Obama officials talked about ways to create a "Craigslist for service" - where people interested in doing some sort of public service or volunteering could be connected with a need in their community. Others have spoken about video streaming all open government meetings. Daou said to expect a lot of "trial and error over the next few months as the White House sees what works."

"What's most important is that he makes government more transparent," said Raven Brooks, executive director of Netroots Nation, the annual conference of bloggers and online activists that grew out of the popular DailyKos political blog.

Brooks' idea: He would love to see Obama - or more likely an aide - use the social networking tool Twitter to update citizens on what he is up to throughout the day. "He wouldn't have to be giving away state secrets or anything, but maybe something like, 'I just met with Paul Volcker and we talked about monetary policy.'

"Now, the average voter is not a political junkie, and may not be interested in that level of minutiae, but I think a lot of people would appreciate the effort to communicate," Brooks said.

A spokesman for the Obama transition team said of its new media strategy, "Unfortunately, we're not ready to discuss further details at this time."

Perhaps the details will be posted first on YouTube.

Source / SF Gate

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makingpeace : Netroots in Fertile Ground

T-Shirt Humor.
The Rag Blog's Dreyer and Organic Consumers' Cummins
By makingpeace / July 28, 2008

Following another computer crash and a friend's valiant attempt to fix it, we headed out yesterday to buy a new machine. Now we're getting used to the new set-up and hoping the machine's memory outlives that of its predecessor (if not its owners.) I admit to feeling generally uneasy using too many things that I don't know how to fix. Wood and paper are mediums that I understand - and under the right conditions, their longevity is greater than wired circuits. Maybe Austin's supercomputer, "Ranger," knows more than a forest worth of trees -- but I doubt its memory is longer, nor are its roots as deep. But, maybe the forest and the ranger can yet develop a relationship as symbiotic as their natural counterparts.

For some insight in these matters, I spoke by phone Friday morning with a couple of other attendees of the Netroots convention: Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org), who had just returned to his home state of Minnesota after driving back with his family in their camper van, and Thorne Dreyer, who is a local blogger (and happened to have a letter in yesterday's AAS about Netroots).

On his way to Austin, Ronnie had attended the Green Party Convention in Chicago. He said he'd like to see more interaction between those who blog about electoral politics and those who are involved in public interest campaigns. He said that there were only a few folks who attended both the Green Party and the Netroots conventions, even though he feels their "world views are almost identical."

Ronnie appreciated all the networking opportunities at both conventions, and he is passionate about making connections between people and issues -- war funding and the environment, consumers and farmers, green builders and peace builders. "I think for the first time since 1970, people are seeing the whole picture," he says. He hopes the US is moving toward a "New Green Deal" or a "New Peace and Green Deal." He is optimistic, but also stresses the urgency of our global crises. "We don't have unlimited time left to turn things around."

Ronnie is still active with the Organic Consumers Association that he co-founded 10 years ago and is editor of the group's online newsletter, Organic Bytes. The network has grown to about a million people who are connected online. A new lobby arm at www.grassrootsnetroots.org aims to further green awareness throughout political campaigns, especially in local elections.

I learned that Ronnie grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, where "from an early age, I saw the power of the oil companies and how they bought off politicians." He attended Rice University and also spent a brief time in Austin in the early 1970's. He has worked in peace and justice efforts since those years. He is committed, energized and hopeful. "The Rainbow Coalition we hoped for did not come about, but now we have a real chance to make it happen," he says.

I sensed similar optimism from Thorne Dreyer, another long-time writer and social justice advocate who, like Ronnie, grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast. Thorne edits The Rag Blog (www.theragblog.blogspot.com), an online revival of the underground newspaper that flourished in Austin in the 1960's and '70's. Thorne edited The Rag then, saw the paper influence the explosive growth of underground publications around the country and is delighted to see the parallels with the burgeoning alternative press now. He likens the internet to the technology of the offset press in the 1960's that allowed more people to contribute to the media. The Rag Blog is doubling its readership every month, and Thorne is pleased with the feedback he and the other blog contributors have been getting.

Like Ronnie, Thorne expressed enthusiasm about the opportunities he had to meet folks and learn from the speakers and panelists at the Netroots Convention. "It was like the old days -- it gave you a sense of the immensity of the movement. I didn't think there was a weak moment in the convention," he said. He was glad that Netroots attendees could come to Austin to see that a spirit of populism survives and that "Texas is fertile ground for maverick thinking."

Embracing the internet hasn't diminished Thorne's passion for the printed page. He's a long-time journalist and a book collector whose father was a reporter and editor at the Houston Chronicle. He remembers three daily Houston newspapers when he was young, and not that long ago was able to have the Houston Chronicle delivered to his doorstep in Austin. Now it's not even available at most news stands here. He's not sure what the future holds for the major dailies, but he sees a real problem with their concentration of ownership.

"I still love hard copy," he says. "Something I can spill coffee on, read in bed -- I'm still old school in that sense. I don't think the internet can ever take the place of the print media. We need both."

[Susan Van Haitsma posts as makingpeace, news and commentary about nonviolence in action / statesman.com.]

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O’Reilly Attacks Gore For Attending Netroots Nation

Drahn Design.
‘The same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering’

On Saturday, July 19, former Vice President Al Gore made a surprise appearance at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, Texas. In his speech, Gore praised the gathering of progressives, saying that they are part of an effort to “reclaim the integrity of American democracy.”

While the attendees of Netroots Nation received Gore with enthusiasm, his appearance has caused Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly to declare that Gore has “gone off the deep end.”

On his radio show today, O’Reilly claimed that Gore was now associating himself with the most “hateful group in the country.” “And I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here,” said O’Reilly.” He then claimed that attending Netroots Nation was “the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering”:

O’REILLY: Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all credibility with me. All credibility.

It’s no surprise that O’Reilly is attacking Netroots Nation given his previous verbal assaults on its predecessor YearlyKos. Before the YearlyKos conference last year, O’Reilly compared it to “a David Duke convention.”

But O’Reilly exposes the hyperbolic shallowness of his name calling when he claims that “these Daily Kos people” are worse than “the Nazis and the Klan,” but then assures his audience that they won’t “come to your house and hurt you.”

Note to O’Reilly: The Nazis and the Klan actually hurt people.

Transcript:

O’REILLY: Ok, now he shows up on Saturday at the most hateful, there is not — and I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here — there is not a more hateful group in the country than these Daily Kos people. Now, will they come to your house and hurt you? I don’t know, probably not. But, do they want to hurt you? Do they say terrible things about Tony Snow when he dies? All day long. Ok. Hateful hateful hateful. The rhetoric that they use and the rhetoric that the Klan and the Nazis use are the same rhetoric. It’s hate. Everyone knows that.

Now why would you go to a convention sponsored by these people when you know that currently on the Kos is stuff about Tony Snow, it’s good that he’s dead, he’s in hell, all of that. But Gore did, Gore went there. So did Nancy Pelosi. That disqualifies Gore from any serious consideration by me in the future. Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all credibility with me. All credibility.

Source / Think Progress / Posted by Matt / July 21, 2008

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See the Superhero Inside Yourself

NetRoots Nation, Code Pink and why we do what we do
By The Voice / The Rag Blog / July 21, 2008

Early Saturday morning, 19 July 2008,five super sheroes and a shackled Bush in striped prison garb gathered outside a restaurant in Austin, Texas and put together a loose strategy of street theater and flyering at the Netroots Nation conference down the street. We strode in confidently and gave flyers to the largely sympathetic crowd waiting to be allowed into the auditorium where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was to speak.

Security was not as tight as we had feared. We strode around easily and quickly exhausted our supply of flyers. We did a little theater chasing Bush the war criminal around the lobby. Then the organizers took us aside to be assured we wouldn’t disrupt things once inside. Not realizing that not all of us had passes, this gave us a de facto invitation to enter the hall and when the doors opened, we did. We strode through the crowd shouting slogans such as “Our powers are your powers. Use them.” In response one woman said to me sarcastically, “What do you think we’re going to do, sit quietly by?” Well, indeed, and really to my surprise, that is what I saw unfold.

The control of dissent was masterfully orchestrated, really. First, all questions were taken through a website where anyone could post a question. On the days leading up to the talk, users voted on the “best” question. The NetRoots moderators then would ask these hard-hitting questions. So far so good, right? Well, in theory, yes. Some of the authors of the chosen questions were even there to ask them in person. However, there was no follow up question, and, certainly, no interrupting the prestigious Speaker who, in response to a question about FCC regulations, I think it was, took us back to the days of Lewis and Clark! No one called her on the carpet for evading the questions. People clapped when she referred to change coming in 107 days. She’s been Speaker for two years, people! I really wanted to shout, to rant…at the liberal –or are they supposed to be left of liberal? – bloggers in the audience. Then, and here comes the coup de grace, the rumored secret guest makes his entrance: none-other-than Al Gore. Phew! Pelosi is off the hook. No more questions. Gore has a prepared speech and gets 3 of the 4 allowed and controlled questions after it. (Though there were apparently more after we left.)


Through most of the proceedings we Sheroes, with Bush in tow, stood silently at the back aisle in the auditorium. We held peace signs aloft and some strolled around the room, keeping security on their toes. As Pelosi began on the last question – though, again, she not-so-deftly avoided answering it – we began to stroll through the hall and began shouting for the bloggers to make her be accountable and call her on her lies. Then, we walked on out, security trailing after.

It is actions like these and more confrontational ones that bring questions from within the movement as well as from others of “Why be disrespectful?” “Why disrupt?” “Aren’t we just alienating people who would otherwise be our friends?” I have contemplated the effectiveness of our actions frequently and Cintra Wilson recently wrote a piece about Code Pink tactics which was posted on Salon.com. My experience at NetRoots convinced me of the need for the actions and here’s why.

Many of the conference attendees gave us the thumbs up as they passed us. One woman early in Pelosi’s talk urged us to “Make some noise…” though making every effort to be indiscrete herself. As I later read the bloggers’ chats taking place during the event on the Daily Kos and Netroots Nation sites I was amazed to see how many were as disgusted with her responses as we were and there were some comments about wishing we would do something and they were glad we were there. You certainly wouldn’t know it standing in the hall, watching the respectful silence as she droned on, and enthusiastic applause as she spouted liberal truisms as well as lies. Here’s the thing, it was their conference! This was a largely sympathetic crowd and we were mindful of not alienating our allies. This was their conference to disrupt. It was their job as independent media to demand real and thoughtful answers of Pelosi and not demagoguery. And to expect the organizers to focus less on control and more on facilitating true dialogue.

I think of our work this way: according to the diffusion of innovations theory and Malcolm Gladwell’s the Tipping Point, (please forgive my gross simplification here) you have to have a critical mass of adopters of a thought or behavior before mainstream acceptance of it. Do some of our allies cringe at CodePink tactics? Sure, but, believe me, Pelosi isn’t refusing to initiate the impeachment process just to spite Code Pink. By being among the many groups that keep antiwar sentiment in the news, CP provides pressure on public opinion towards

• ending the war,
• bringing the troops home,
• impeachment, and, goddess forgive,
• keeping our troops and Israel’s bombs out of Iran.

If the anti-war movement were purely a fringe movement, we could be said to be ineffective, but “fringe” tactics on an issue that at least two-thirds of Americans support keeps the ideas out there and encourages people to use more mainstream strategies such as letter-writing, signing a petition, calling a representative or making a donation to a citizen lobbying organization, for example. That is, perhaps people will make the same point in the best way they know how and feel comfortable.

Perhaps this morning, in this we failed: Our signs should have/could have been more specific if they couldn’t hear our words. So, if you were there and didn’t get it, and I’m not being facetious here:

We are the Code Pink Super Sheroes. Our powers are: Truth, Justice, Peace, Reason, Observation, Organizing, Love and more. And these, indeed, are everyone’s powers. We want everyone to see the superhero inside them and use their powers.

You can do it in costume if you want or from your computer as many of the NetRoots Nation attendees do, but don’t rag on us for calling for accountability among our elected officials and the media, including independent media. If you wanted Pelosi to be accountable and answer the questions and know that you wanted a real answer, you could have stood with us. Can you imagine the effect if even a third of the room had gotten up and stood silently with us? Blogging is great and necessary, an important tool in the political discourse, but it is not enough, just as putting on a pink dress and gold mask isn’t going to change the world today. It takes both of us and all of us and action beyond these.

Okay, now I’ve done what you do (though it’s taken me much longer than you no doubt), maybe you can do a little of what I do toward the same end. You don’t have to wear a tiara when you do, but you might have more fun if you do!

[Disclaimer: These opinions are mine and I don't speak for Code Pink.]

Photo credits: Anne Elizabeth Moore, 2008

Source / Peaceably

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NetRoots Nation: Al Gore Blasts Oil Drilling

Al Gore speaks out against drilling for oil as a wrongheaded attempt to address America's energy crisis at Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas.

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NetRoots Nation: Press the Politicians

First planning meeting for July's Netroots Nation in Second Life 2008.

We expect to post live material from the conference in the coming days. The intrepid Thorne Dreyer is attending NetRoots Nation in Austin and will one day soon resurface to tell us what happened there. Please stay tuned ...

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Netroots Nation at the Crossroads: Move Over MoveOn
by Ronnie Cummins / July 18, 2008

“MoveOn is not a movement although it wants to be perceived as one. It is a brilliant and effective fundraising and marketing machine, but 95% or more of their so-called members ignore any particular email appeal. These 3.2 million people on the MoveOn email list are the object of marketing and fundraising campaigns, but they have absolutely no meaningful or democratic control over the decisions of organization, there is no accountability from the leadership to the MoveOn list members, and those of us on the list are unable to organize and communicate amongst ourselves within the list because it can’t be accessed by the grassroots at the local or state level. MoveOn, the Democracy Alliance, and the various liberal think tanks that have arisen to fight the Right are clearly a force able to raise millions of dollars for Democratic candidates and launch PR and messaging campaigns, but none of them are about empowering a populist grassroots uprising.”

John Stauber, Center for Media & Democracy, July 2008

* * * * * * *

The energy crisis and Peak Oil. Bank failures and economic recession. Climate chaos, crop failure, and unpredictable weather. The health crisis. The food and farming crisis. An endless, murderous, multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security, an evermore-powerful Shadow Government. An ongoing, pre-meditated assault on Constitutional liberties. An epidemic of social and psychological malaise, hopelessness, and ethical disorientation. Bought and stolen elections and an indentured mass media. Out-of-control politicians, corporations, and technology. Self-destructive hyper-consumerism and the Wal-Martization of the economy. Institutionalized robbery by a billionaire class oblivious to growing poverty and misery… Will we look back on 2008, as the year we tried to change drivers, but still couldn’t stop the car from going over the cliff?

Millions of Americans, especially the “netroots,” those drawing their information and inspiration from the open sources of the internet, are finally connecting the dots between the burning issues, moving beyond limited concerns to radical awareness. A politicized new majority is waking up to the fact that the proverbial “end” is near. We must move beyond “business as usual” and tepid reform. We must link together our burning issues, unite our heretofore-fragmented forces and communities into a qualitatively more powerful current, and press and confront the Fortune 500 and the nation’s thousands of elected public officials — before it’s too late. In these dangerous, careening times we have no choice but to grab the wheel from Democratic Party hacks and fake netroots and grassroots leaders, make a sharp radical turn, and accelerate along the path of grassroots and netroots resistance, from Main Street to Manhattan, from City Hall to the Capitol.

The crazed neo-con project for world domination, aided and abetted by profit-obsessed multinational corporations; countered feebly by the “loyal opposition” of centrist Democrats, single-issue public interest groups, and top-down “progressive” organizations like MoveOn, have brought us to the precipice. Radical crises demand radical remedies. The “road to the right” that the Democrats and Obama are taking is suicidal. Either we mobilize a revitalized Movement to take to the streets and the suites of the corporations and the politicians or we’re going over the cliff. Move over MoveOn. We will not sit by and watch our Netroots Nation devolve into a nation of sheep and lemmings.

Linking Issues & Constituencies: From Protest to Resistance

A potentially world-changing segment of the body politic is finally waking up to the fact that single-issue politics and limited-focus organizing cannot address the current Crisis. Facing a generalized breakdown of the political and economic System and a rapid degradation of global life-support systems, it is obviously insane to keep repeating, “My issue and my organization or my blog is more important than yours,” or to wait for the Democratic Party and its latest middle of the road messiah, Barack Obama, to save us. Watering down our life-or-death concerns and urgency in the mistaken belief that we will attract the “silent majority,” is a dangerous illusion. The doomsday clock is ticking. The climate, food, health, political, economic, and energy crisis already impacting our lives, and the lives of everyone on the planet, will soon become catastrophic.

The multi-trillion dollar war for oil in the Middle East can no longer be separated from the energy crisis nor the climate crisis, nor the growing global food crisis, nor the erosion of Constitutional liberties, nor the lack of funding for health care, housing, jobs, education, clean energy, infrastructure repair, and public services. In order to avoid economic and climate meltdown, and to secure the funds to make our emerging green economy the economy, we must force the Democratic majority in Congress to use their Constitutional power of the purse to cut off all funds for the war, with or without the support of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. “Live Wire” grassroots leaders in our movements for peace, justice, sustainability, health, and democracy must subordinate our tactical or secondary differences, reach out to the disenfranchised majority, connect the dots between the burning issues, and create a massive new netroots and grassroots synergy.

Pledge of Resistance

And lest we forget. We haven’t seen the last of the Bush Cheney gang. Before leaving office, evidence is mounting the maniacs in the White House are preparing to carry out two final maneuvers to derail democracy and advance their insane project for world domination: stealing the 2008 elections with voter suppression and electronic vote theft, and precipitating or fabricating a terror attack or other incident, and then attacking Iran.

What is to be done? Again my friend and fellow activist, John Stauber, hits the nail right on the head:

“If and when populist forces build an email list as big as MoveOn’s — and most of that list was built by MoveOn’s posturing as an ardent anti-war organization, which it is not — and harness it for real grassroots empowerment, that is when we might see some exciting political developments that combine the Netroots and grassroots for fundamental change. I’d love to see a MoveOn-type organization that would actually trust and empower the millions of people on its email list so that the decision making, organizing and money benefit the grassroots and grow power from there upward, one in which the structure at the top is accountable to and elected by the members. It’s hard to have a political democracy when we don’t even have democratic organizations or movements. I’ve talked with some of the leadership of MoveOn about this, but they have no intention to democratize and will remain a top-down marketing and fundraising organization.”

Here are five, immediate steps to head off catastrophe and to begin to build a radical populist alternative to MoveOn:

1. Move beyond single-issue politics and embrace a multi-issue, radical but practical, platform. You can read and comment on the 40-point Grassroots Netroots Alliance (GNA) platform and Candidate Survey at www.GrassrootsNetroots.org.

2. Join up and help GNA build up a multi-million email list, a netroots army of multi-issue progressives and radicals, who understand the need to transform the System and literally overthrow the dictatorship of corporations and indentured politicians. The Grassroots Netroots Alliance (with 200,000 people currently on our email list) is currently approaching a dozen or so large, like-minded networks with comparable lists to jump-start this process.

3. Press the politicians to take a clear stand on all the burning issues. You can send the GNA Candidate Survey to all of your elected officials and candidates for office — local, state, and federal — at www.GrassrootsNetroots.org.

4. As we “press the politicians,” we need to consciously and deliberately integrate electoral insurgency and netroots lobbying with non-electoral resistance — including boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, and other pressure tactics. In the face of an unprecedented Crisis, we must move beyond polite protest to resistance.

5. Sign the Pledge of Resistance. We must prepare now to roll back the next aggressive moves by the Bush/Cheney gang: stealing the elections and attacking Iran. If you are willing to sign up to take collective action in your community in the weeks following another Republican theft of the elections on November 6, or in the event of an attack upon Iran, send an email to pledgeofresistance@grassrootsnetroots.org.

Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Grassroots Netroots Alliance.

Source / Common Dreams

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Could Alabama Gov. Siegelman Bring Down the House of Cards?

Former Alabama govenor Don Siegelman accompanied by his wife Lorie reports to the Federal building in downtown Tuscaloosa in 2004.
Gov. Siegelman at Netroots Nation: Bush's Undoing?
By Sam Seder / July 14, 2008

As more and more corruption and law breaking at the highest reaches of our Government reveal themselves, will the scandal surrounding the use of the Department of Justice as an electoral tool be the one that finally holds the Bush administration to account? If so, there is one man who's story may seal the unraveling of this criminal regime.

Former political prisoner and former Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman will be making a court sanctioned trip out of Alabama to join me at Netroots Nation to discuss his case and what it can tell us about the unprecedented corruption that exists in our nation's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice.

By now many are familiar with the case of Don Siegelman.. A very popular former Democratic Alabama Governor seen as an electoral threat to unseat Republican Bob Riley. Faced with the most popular Democrat in generations, Congressional testimony reveals that Republican operatives in Alabama and Karl Rove's dirty tricks shop in the White House used the prosecution powers of the DOJ's United States Attorneys to send Don Siegelman to jail on trumped up charges.

The dogged reporting by on-line journalists like Talking Points Memo, Larisa Alexandrovna and Scott Horton, Congressional hearings and a sixty minutes interview forced an appellate Court to reexamine the Siegelman case. Within days Siegelman was released from prison pending his appeal and the court found "that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact...". Reagan's Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and 54 former US Attorneys of all political stripes from across the country smell a rat. Not surprisingly, that rat smells a lot like Karl Rove, the Fox news commentator and former White House dirty trickster.

For over a year and a half now we have known of the US Attorney firings scandal that has forced the resignations of countless DOJ officials. The Siegelman case is the other side of the coin of the corruption of the Department of Justice under the Bush administration. Those US attorney firings took place because those US Attorney's would not play ball with a DOJ hell bent on using it's powers to provide Republicans an advantage at the ballot box. Some refer to this scandal as the politicization of the Department of Justice, but the Siegelman case and other such prosecutions over the past six years go well beyond a mere infraction of the Hatch act. These cases are indicative of an agenda that has literally torn at the fabric of a nation built upon the rule of law and justice for all. This is a corruption of the very foundations of how the United States of America is supposed function as a democracy. When the chief law enforcement agency has become crooked, who do you call?

Fox commentator Karl Rove, through his attorney, has claimed that simply because he once worked at the White House he need not comply with a Congressional subpoena to testify as to his involvement with this prosecution. Karl Rove may not be traveling to Washington anytime soon, but Don Siegelman will be traveling to Austin Friday at Netroots Nation to give us some insight as to just how far we have fallen as a a nation.

If you have any questions you'd like me to ask of the former Governor, feel free to head over here and offer them up.

[Catch it live. This conversation with Sam Seder and Gov. Siegelman will be streaming live exclusively at AirAmerica on Friday, July 18th 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM.]

Source. / The Huffington Post

Also go to Free Don Siegelman.

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Texas Democrats Riding High

Barack Obama campaigning in Austin during the Texas Democratic primary. Photo by AP.
How Democrats Could Turn Texas Into the Blue Star State
By Bob Moser

The followinig article on the resurgence of the Democratic Party in Texas appears in the July 21, 2008 edition of The Nation.

"Did I mention that it's fun to be a Democrat in Texas?" asks Matt Glazer, editor in chief of the Burnt Orange Report, the state's leading progressive blog. He has, in fact, mentioned it a couple of times over beers at Scholz Garten, a legendary liberal hangout in Austin, and always with the same glimmer of happy bemusement behind his black-frame blogger specs. I'd been seeing that look in Democrats' eyes all over Texas in early June--at their raucous, record-breaking state convention, at local Democratic shindigs, in giddily overburdened Obama HQs.

"It's like everyone who toiled on that Democratic death march for years, when it was so difficult, is now seeing daylight," says Josh Berthume of the Dallas suburb Denton, editor in chief of TheTexasBlue.com and another key player in a vigorous blogosphere that has helped ignite the startling Democratic flare-up here, in the bright red heart of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove's "permanent" Republican majority.

The very notion of Texas Democrats glimpsing daylight--of America's biggest chunk of Republican real estate being shaded pink on the '08 election map--seems almost absurd, a contradiction in terms, even to those who are making it happen. Like many of the nuevo pols, bloggers and progressive activists who are constructing a state-of-the-art Democratic machine in Texas, Glazer and Berthume are too young to remember the last time skies were blue for the party that ruled Texas politics from Reconstruction clear through to Reagan/Bush. So is Burnt Orange publisher Karl-Thomas Musselman, who's 23. "The last time Democrats won my hometown"--a small outpost in the central Hill Country--"was 1964," he says. "And that was only because President Johnson brought the chancellor of Germany to Fredericksburg for a visit."

The last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Texas was Jimmy Carter in 1976. The party hasn't won a solitary statewide election since 1996. Every November from 1972 to 2004, the Democrats bled seats from their once-unanimous majority in the Statehouse. By the 1990s, national Democrats like Bill Clinton had come to see Texas as "a money pot, period," says Molly Hanchey, a retiree who leads an 8,000-volunteer grassroots group called ObamaDallas. They flew in to raise cash, but they didn't stick around to scare up votes--and Clinton's party did nothing to help rebuild the state's hopelessly antiquated Democratic infrastructure. Neither Al Gore nor John Kerry tried to compete here. By 2004, Democratic fortunes had sunk so low that they carried just eighteen of 254 Texas counties at the top of the ticket.

Four years later, the Realm of the Bushes is now being described--in the Wall Street Journal, no less--as potentially "the next California." The next big Republican stronghold, in other words, that is headed for a seismic partisan flip. It won't happen tomorrow, of course. But unmistakable signs of a Democratic breakout are all around. In Dallas, linchpin of the Republicans' statewide ascendance in the 1980s, an innovative grassroots campaign in 2006 earned Democrats a sweep of more than forty contested judicial races--and Harris County (Houston) seems poised for a similar switch. Democrats won back six Statehouse seats in 2006, bringing them within five of regaining the majority and having a hand in revising Tom DeLay's infamous Republican-friendly redistricting after the next census.

Recognizing the outsized influence of the state's estimated fifty active left-leaning bloggers, this year's NetRoots Nation (formerly called Yearly Kos) is coming to Austin in July. And in the March presidential primaries, a startling show of Democratic enthusiasm was the big story buried under the Clinton/Obama headlines: just 1.3 million Texans voted Republican, while nearly 2.9 million voted Democratic--more than voted here in either of the last two general elections for Gore or Kerry. Political scientists are projecting that Bush Country will morph, by 2020, into the nation's second-largest Democratic state. "Texas," Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean enthused during the DNC's rules committee showdown in May, "is ready to turn blue."

Yes, Texas.

"Until three years ago, the Texas Democratic Party was just brain-dead and prostrate," says Southern Methodist University professor Cal Jillson, author of Texas Politics: Governing the Lone Star State. "They were beaten down. During the Bush years, people wouldn't even admit to being Democrats in Texas. Now they're up on their hind legs, feeling confident. It's the Republicans who are sullen and downcast."

What in the name of Sam Houston is going on down here? Pretty much the same partisan upheaval that's roiling several of the Southern and Western states that became staunch Republican turf in the Reagan '80s--and are now surprisingly tempting targets for Obama '08. Even more powerfully than in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, a demographic tide is washing away the political dominance of older white conservatives in Texas, which in 2005 officially became the nation's fourth "minority white" state (after California, New Mexico and Hawaii). At the same time, anti-immigration, ideologically rigid, starve-the-government Republican leaders are giving the GOP an ugly reputation with the rising generation of younger Hispanics--the swing voters who are displacing the old Reagan Democrats--and simultaneously alienating independent-minded, middle-aged "office populists" massing around booming metropolises like Dallas.

While Texas' swelling Hispanic population still registers and votes in smaller percentages than blacks or whites, turnout soared in this year's primaries, and Hispanics--once courted lovingly and successfully by Bush--are leaning increasingly Democratic. While GOP leaders spout anti-immigration tag lines, Texas Democrats are brimming with ambitious young Hispanic leaders like this year's US Senate nominee, Afghanistan veteran and progressive populist Rick Noriega, who until recently trailed by single digits in his long-shot race to unseat Republican John Cornyn; State Senator Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, a firebrand who delivered the party's Spanish-language response to this year's State of the Union address; and smooth-talking State Representative Rafael Anchía of Dallas, whom Texas Monthly recently predicted would be "El Gobernador."

Demographics and immigration aside, Texas wouldn't be swinging so far so fast without a rejuvenated Democratic Party, which was hard to imagine just four years ago. Nowhere did Southern (or Western) Democrats fall so far in the 1980s and '90s, and nowhere have they lifted themselves back up so quickly and dramatically. As The Return of the Democrats becomes the latest legend in the colorful book of Texas politics, many will date the beginning of the tale to 2003, when Democrats in the Legislature reconnected with their party's hell-raising roots in the fight against DeLay's Machiavellian (and legally dubious) redistricting scheme.

"That's when Democrats really started to get our legs under us in Texas," says Matt Angle, former chief of staff to Dallas Congressman Martin Frost, who lost his reconfigured district in 2004 when the dust had settled. After all those years of being stuck in what Donna Brazile, Gore's 2000 campaign manager, calls the "fetal crouch" of agreeable, Lite Republican centrism, Angle says, "we fought back tooth and nail. And the public began to see that the Republicans were really overreaching, that they were willing to do anything, that for them it wasn't about what was good for Texas." In the process, "Democrats realized that not only do we have a moral commitment to fight back but also that we have a chance to beat them."

By the time the redistricting fracas kicked up, Democrats had lost every significant vestige of power in Texas. Nearly forgotten were the many generations when "calling yourself a Democrat was like declaring you had a pulse," in the words of former Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes. "If you were alive, you were a Democrat." But there was an ironic upside to the Democrats' struggles: during its three decades of slow, steady decline, the party shed most of its white conservatives. While the loss of those Reagan Democrats meant short-term pain at the ballot box, it also gave Democrats a chance to remake their party practically from scratch (as Republicans did in the 1970s), with the state's urban-centered, multiethnic future firmly in mind, and with a whole new set of high-tech, grassroots techniques and resources on hand, thanks in part to Howard Dean's fifty-state national strategy.

Elected in 2005, new party leaders like Dallas chair Darlene Ewing are reconstituting the historically disorganized party--in urban areas of the state, at least--into a precinct-by-precinct, voter-by-voter, high-tech machine. Angle's Texas Democratic Trust, a Washington-based group funded by legendary trial attorney Fred Baron, the "Texas George Soros," lent organizers and polling expertise to the "coordinated campaign" that took Dallas's long-entrenched Republicans by surprise in 2006, and it's providing similar aid to the Democrats' takeover effort in Harris County this year.

The GOP should have seen it coming in Dallas County, which lost 130,000 white residents--and gained more than 220,000 Hispanics--just between 2000 and 2006. In 2004 George W. Bush had carried the county by a scant 10,000 votes. But it wasn't the population shift that turned Dallas blue in 2006; it was, in the words of local organizer Kirk McPike, the fact that local Democrats "took a good situation and made it extraordinary." Ewing persuaded most of the Democratic judicial candidates in Dallas--there were more than forty--to contribute to the party's new coordinated campaign and trust their prospects to a radically newfangled approach: a nonstop flurry of phone-banking, precinct-walking, direct-mailing and vote-targeting. Every judicial candidate won, as did Dallas's first African-American district attorney, progressive Craig Watkins.

"It was a triumph of grassroots politics," says Angle. "Dallas Democrats spoke one-on-one to the voters, and more important, they communicated. It was research-based, targeted to things voters really cared about," like the nation's highest utility rates, statewide cuts in children's healthcare and an unpopular Republican push for toll roads.

Which brings us to the other indispensable contributor to the Democratic upsurge: Texas Republicans.

Back at Scholz Garten, Burnt Orange blogger Karl-Thomas Musselman hoists his beer in a toast of sorts. "The best thing that ever happened to Democrats in Texas is that the people who took over the Republican Party in Texas are running it into the ground," he says.

"They're out of touch because they're fanatically ideological," says editor Matt Glazer. "They've failed to govern effectively by every measure you can come up with."

"Say you've been voting Christian values, or along small-government Republican lines," says Musselman, who comes from a place where most folks have been doing just that. "At some point, you have to start thinking, What does it do for me? My taxes are not lower. My kids are not smarter. My job is not better. What are we getting?"

Right now, folks are getting a heaping dose of right-wing bluster from the Texas Republicans--most notably, and most disastrously, on the sticky subject of immigration. Party leaders like Senator John Cornyn and Governor Rick Perry have veered from Rove and Bush's formula and become fence-building border warriors. "They're just digging themselves deeper in a hole by moving right on immigration," says Cal Jillson. "The only prospect for the Texas Republican Party to remain competitive in ten years is to be winning 35 to 40 percent of Hispanic votes, along with 75 percent of whites and 10 percent of African-Americans."

But as the center of Texas political gravity veers inexorably leftward, GOP leaders like Governor Perry appear determined to go down, Alamo style, with ideological guns blazing. "The reason we lost our majority in Congress," Perry lectured the California Republican Convention last fall, "is not because our ideas lost their luster but our leaders lost their way.... It's a sad, sad state of affairs," he said, in a clear dig at fellow Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, "when...Republicans govern like liberals to be loved." No such coddling would be forthcoming from the governor of Texas. "We need to hold the line on what it means to be a Republican," Perry said, "which is, of course, being conservative."

John McCain with his economic advisor former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Republicans all, at Dell, Inc. in Austin earlier this year. Photo by Harry Cabluck / AP.
A converted Democrat who's jostled for supremacy in the GOP with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (a relative moderate) since they both won statewide office in 1990, Perry is an intractable ideologue on "Christian values" and economic matters. At his urging, the Republican Legislature has cut more than 200,000 children off health insurance--and now, with a budget surplus, Perry is pushing for tax rebates. In 2006, after Perry's hard-right re-election campaign netted him just 39 percent of the vote (enough to scrape by in a four-candidate field), he cheerfully declared of Texas voters, "They said, We like what you're doing--keep it up."

Such delusional thinking has many GOP leaders--the ones currently out of power, at least--profoundly worried. "The grassroots has withered up and died," former state chair Tom Pauken recently lamented in the Houston Chronicle. "The Republican Party has definitely peaked in Texas," says the party's longtime political director, Royal Masset. GOP pollster Mike Baselice fears big numbers of "grumpy Republicans"--more than 50 percent in Texas say the state and country are on the wrong track--will sit out 2008. Meanwhile, the party looks to be skidding toward a bloodbath in 2010, when insiders expect both Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, a hellfire-and-brimstone Christian conservative, and Senator Hutchison, who embodies the politer, Chamber of Commerce wing of the party (and says she's tired of Washington and wants to come home), to challenge Perry in the Republican primary. "And people say Democrats have circular firing squads!" says Glazer, clearly charmed by the prospect.

A Perry-Hutchison showdown could open a sizable tear in the coalition of Christian and business conservatives that has made the Texas Republican Party--like other state parties in the South and interior West--such a force in recent decades. "Hutchison is closer to a Republican in a more moderate state," says Jillson. "She's been booed sometimes at state conventions by the true believers. Perry might beat her in a primary, but she is more popular statewide." And if she were to lose to Perry (or Dewhurst), a whole new bloc of moderate Republicans could be giving the Democrats a fresh look. Even if the Republicans steer clear of such a destructive internal battle, Jillson says, "there's no denying that every trend is against them. You can't argue with demographics. And the issues are all lined up against them. The grassroots energy is on the other side. They can see it coming, but they haven't reacted."

Rank-and-file Republican disquiet was all too palpable at the party's state convention in Houston in June. Enthusiasm for the GOP's presidential nominee-to-be was so damp that a local reporter counted the applause that followed John McCain's campaign video at precisely eight seconds. Charisma-challenged Senator Cornyn, running for re-election in a state where a 2007 poll showed that 40 percent of voters had no opinion of him at all, unveiled an unintentionally uproarious video set to the old novelty hit "Big Bad John," depicting the go-along senator as a take-no-prisoners, Stetson-hatted reformer making corrupt Washington politicians quake in their boots. Some of the weekend's loudest cheers were spontaneous, off-the-agenda outbursts by supporters of rebellious Republican Congressman Ron Paul. For his part, Paul was one of an embarrassing fourteen no-shows--out of nineteen Congress members--who were being introduced at the convention.

The Democratic convention, held the previous weekend in Austin, was a jubilant throwdown by contrast. A broadly diverse, revved-up crowd of more than 12,000 cheered new party heroes like State Senator Mario Gallegos Jr. of Houston, who last year returned to the Senate floor with a hospital bed, against doctor's orders after a liver transplant, to block a Republican-backed voter-ID bill that would have disenfranchised thousands of Texans. And notwithstanding a cranky fellow who circled the Austin Convention Center bearing a sign reading Small-town, gun-owning religious Democrat bitter about Obama, lingering wounds between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps were salved by such characteristically Texan means as Thursday night's "unity pub crawl," with downtown Austin's bars jammed to overflowing with commingling drinkers of Obamarama 'Ritas and Hillary Harps. On Saturday the delegates paused to watch as Clinton quit the race and endorsed Obama--at which point, par for the course at a Democratic gathering, the video feed sputtered. But around the convention hall, chants of "Hillary! Hillary!" soon gave way to a rousing, full-throated chorus of "United We Stand."

"Given the news coverage beforehand, I'd almost expected a Jets versus Sharks rumble to break out," says Berthume, the Texas Blue editor. Instead, "it was a Frank Capra moment for me as a Democrat. It was ridiculous. You'd see people with Clinton and Obama shirts holding hands, hugging. People cried."

A few nights later Renee Hartley, vice president of the Dallas County Young Democrats, was still hoarse from her long weekend serving on the platform committee--but still making volunteer assignments to the forty folks who came out for the DCYD's monthly meeting at Zúbar, a warm, woodsy drinking hole in East Dallas. Hartley originally backed John Edwards, then ended up as a Clinton delegate to the state convention--which brought her a certain amount of grief, since "I was under 35, an African-American female and people just assumed I'd be for Obama. How could I not be?" Hartley's working-class roots inclined her toward Clinton's populist pitch--but she said that, along with the vast majority of her fellow Clintonites, she was having no great difficulty making the switch. That's partly because, she said, being a Democrat in Texas is no longer just about "which horse you ride."

"There's this overwhelming sense that we're moving forward now as a party--it's not about any one candidate, whether it's for President or senator or governor." Which is no small development in a state where Democratic politics long orbited around such outsized personalities as Lyndon Johnson, longtime House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Governors John Connally and Ann Richards. Now Texas Democrats are competing on Republican turf--at the grassroots, that is--and developing a message that resonates with old-style and new-school Texas populists. "Democrats have started learning this everywhere," says Matt Angle, "but nowhere more than in Texas: you can't be afraid to say that you want government to work, that some things are a higher priority than cutting taxes."

The Democratic resurrection in Texas could hardly be happier news for the national party's long-term future. But in the short-term calculus of a presidential election year, it does create a dilemma--albeit a rather pleasant one--for Barack Obama's campaign.

On the one hand, Texas Democrats stand to gain more ground in local and legislative elections in November, and they could surely make good use of the rocket-boost of grassroots energy and big money that is Obama's to spread around. Those investments, in turn, would build momentum for a quicker statewide turnaround--meaning, among other things, more members of Congress to bulk up the majority behind Obama's policies. Down the road, of course, it would also bring the Democrats closer to a potential mother lode of electoral votes--thirty-four at present, with more than forty projected by 2030--that could make national contests vexingly difficult for Republicans to win.

Hispanic Afghan war vet Rick Noriega, a progressive Democratic, at the 2008 Texas Democratic Convention, is taking aim at conservative US Sen. John Cornyn. Photo by montanaisaleg.
On the other hand, there is no realistic prospect that, barring a national landslide, Obama can carry Texas--until 2012, perhaps. And while Texas Democrats have a progressive, attractive Senate challenger in Rick Noriega, he's struggling to rustle up the big bucks he needs against the well-heeled Cornyn. Besides, no matter how financially fat the Obama organization might be, running a full-scale campaign on Texas' vast landscape of media markets is dauntingly expensive, with candidates needing to fork over some $1.4 million per week from Labor Day forward to get sufficient advertising on the air statewide. That adds up to a minimum of more than $11 million--money that might pay more immediate dividends in North Carolina, Nevada, Virginia, Colorado or New Mexico, toss-up states where Democratic turnarounds are further advanced.

In the consultant-driven, micro-targeting days of the not-so-distant Democratic past, the Texas dilemma would have been solved easily enough: look at the polls--screw it!--shovel everything into Florida and Ohio! As former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe reportedly declared in a strategy session during the Gore campaign, "All we care about is getting to 270"--electoral votes, that is. Winning the White House, in turn, was supposed to be a magic bullet for building the party nationally--though Democrats in states like Texas reaped no benefits from President Clinton's two wins.

But it's not only a new day for Democrats in Texas--it also looks like a new day for the national party. In May the Obama campaign dispatched hundreds of trained voter-registration volunteers to seventeen states, including Texas, where they will focus their efforts on the "blue boom" areas of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin, where hundreds of thousands of Hispanic voters are eligible but unregistered. In June, after the nomination was clinched, Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand announced in an e-mail that the presidential campaign would extend Dean's fifty-state strategy by running something close to a genuine national campaign. "Our presidential campaign will be the first in a generation to deploy and maintain staff in every single state," he wrote, vowing to "provide help where we need it and impact races up and down the ballot this November."

Just how much help Texas will be getting--"As in every presidential election, some states will be more competitive than others, and we will scale our resources accordingly," Hildebrand carefully added--is anything but certain at this point. But Obama's campaign guru, David Axelrod, promised in a series of Texas fundraisers in early June that fifteen staffers would be dispatched to Texas for the general election. "He was cagey about their level of investment," says Molly Hanchey, the ObamaDallas chair. "But he was clear that we won't be just an ATM this time." And that's more important, she says, than making Texas a full-scale presidential battleground in November.

"We're going to do what we're doing regardless," she says. "They didn't get us started--we did, even before Obama declared his candidacy." And Texas' newly focused Democrats have plenty to shoot for down the ballot. "The Dean strategy, and now the Obama strategy," says Matt Angle, "recognizes that there is something to win in every state. And that, as we've learned in Texas, you don't build a party from the top down."

Here's to that.

Source. / The Nation

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Netroots Nation Comes to Austin

Clinton and Obama at 2007 YearlyKos Convention (now called Netroots Nation).

Netroots Nation 2008
Thursday-Sunday, July 17-20
Austin Convention Center

Netroots Nation, the third annual gathering of liberals and progressives from the blogosphere and beyond, meets July 17-20 at the Austin Convention Center. In addition to panels and discussion groups, the convention includes a progressive film series, a career fair, organizing sessions, and more. To register, or for panel and speaker lists, plus lodging and travel information, visit netrootsnation.org.

Convention brings Obamomentum and Web rebellion to Austin
By Wells Dunbar / July 11, 2008

As I write, the video "McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare" has 2,654,664 views on the eponymous video-sharing website.

"There's no question John McCain is getting a free ride from the mainstream press," reads the description accompanying the clip, a three-minute reel of McCain flip-flops and flubs. "But with the power of YouTube and the blogosphere, we can provide an accurate portrayal of the so-called Maverick. We can put the brakes on his free ride!"

And there's as succinct an encapsulation of Internet-driven, people-powered politics – the "netroots" – as you're likely to find. Whereas four years ago it took a well-financed pack of political assassins to Swift boat John Kerry, increasingly cheaper technology, user-friendly tools like Blogger and WordPress, and an explosion in online fundraising are steadily wresting media power away from professionals to an impassioned grassroots base, irrevocably altering the political landscape.

Attempting to coalesce and promote that process is this weekend's Netroots Nation, a four-day event at the Austin Convention Center bringing together the brightest lights in liberal and progressive opinion and activism. For regular blog readers, the speakers and attendees list reads like an RSS feed: Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, Duncan "Atrios" Black, Hullaballo's "Digby" Parton, John Aravosis of AmericaBlog.com, and The American Prospect's Ezra Klein, to name a select few – plus scores of other bloggers, authors, activists, politicians, journalists, and filmmakers.

But aside from a collection of technological tools, a constellation of small donors, and a din of liberal opinion, who exactly are "the netroots"? How are they changing politics? And can they reinvigorate a Democratic Party drifting dully to the center (and beyond) for more than two decades?

Speed Community

While 2004's Swift boating represented the worst of top-down attack politics (amplified tenfold by an easily distractible media's ceaseless reporting on "the controversy"), that year also saw the fullest expression of the Internet's bottom-up potential to date: Howard Dean's campaign. Dean's example – via the adoption of his Web-driven, small-contributors model and his own leadership of the Democratic National Committee – still reverberates today. So it's no surprise Dean recognizes the power of the netroots. Calling Netroots Nation "an important opportunity for progressives to come together and discuss the values and vision we share," he says, "the progressive activists who fill Austin's halls are an important part of our party and our nation, pushing every day for the change our country so desperately needs."

Compared to the decades of hierarchical organization that modern movement conservatism required – financing right-wing think tanks, deregulating talk radio, and midwifing the Christian conservative movement (all arguably waning in importance) – the netroots' ascendancy looks like an overnight success story. Its origin is often traced to the Nineties impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, which liberal Web hub MoveOn.org formed expressly to oppose; a prototypical weblog, Bob Somerby's the Daily Howler (www.dailyhowler.com), also pushed back against the impeachment circus and its media facilitators. Then came a succession of flash points, each swelling the blogosphere's readership and relevance: Florida 2000. Iraq. Election 2004. Katrina. "Macaca." The 2006 Democratic reclamation of the House and Senate – and possibly, the 2008 reclamation of the White House.

"I think things move faster nowadays. ... It's just the nature of technology," says Netroots Nation panelist Matthew Yglesias, who blogged independently before joining the American Prospect; he's now a staffer at The Atlantic Monthly and writes for its website. "And also you're talking about a movement, a group of people defined in part by using certain kinds of tools, so more and more people and more and more activity is moving online very rapidly. So what the conception of what the quote-unquote 'netroots' is is changing and growing.

"It's a good way of assembling communities of interest," Yglesias continues. "It may be [that] only a tiny minority of people in every American city are interested in a question like FISA," the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the debate over vesting the president with new spying powers and granting retroactive immunity to snooping telecoms, "but thanks to the Internet, you can form a community of people who care about something like that." By way of contrast, he points to the recent past, when "only players with a direct financial stake could effectively get themselves organized and make themselves known."

It's building a community with similar ideals and goals that makes the blogosphere formidable, a community Netroots Nation hopes to reinforce. "The nature of the netroots, of Inter­net politics – it's all interacting with a huge number of people you don't actually see or meet," says Yglesias. "It's nice to have the opportunity to get together and see other participants in this world. ... It continues to build this sense of community, and there's certain kinds of exchanges you can only do face to face."

Who Controls the Message?

The Netroots Nation schedule covers every conceivable blogging topic under the sun – foreign policy, media accountability, campaign politics, plus meta concerns like increasing blog diversity and readership. Politicians also play a role: DNC Chair Dean and House Speak­er Nancy Pelosi are scheduled to attend. But the bottom-up, nonhierarchical instincts of the liberal blogosphere mean Demo­cratic politicians aren't immune from critical scrutiny.

At last year's convention, a leadership panel featuring Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel was canceled – presumably because they most certainly would've gotten an unpleasant earful. Their appearance was scheduled at the same time the Democratic-controlled Congress looked like it was caving on Bush-directed changes to FISA, a move vehemently opposed by the netroots. FISA revisions are again up in the air this year, and tension persists between the netroots and Democratic politicians capitulating to a GOP-created "compromise" on FISA changes that will both expand warrantless presidential wiretapping authority and keep the program from judicial scrutiny, by granting civil immunity to telecom companies that have apparently already violated existing law. "Part of what you want to do as an activist is help the better candidate win in November," says Yglesias, "but another part of what you wanna do is hold the better candidate's feet to the fire." Or as Salon.com blogger Glenn Green­wald (Unclaimed Territory) recently posted: "From the beginning, blogs have been devoted to opposing Democratic complicity and capitulation – to protesting the lack of Democratic responsiveness to their supporters – every bit as much as opposing GOP corruption and media malfeasance. That role is at least as important as the others."

A new Web wrinkle has been the organizing success of the Obama campaign, using several of the netroots' tools: harnessing online donors, accumulating a massive e-mail list, and building a formidable social-networking presence on websites like Facebook. It's already having an impact on the netroots: Partially at Obama's request, donations to third party groups that may deviate from Obama's message have dried up. MoveOn.org recently announced it is shutting down its anti-McCain 527 group for lack of donations. So as the Obama campaign increasingly implements its message top-down, what will that mean for bloggers and activists?

"He's running a top-down campaign which they think will help them get elected," says Yglesias. "And I think they may be right." But, he concedes, "a lot of activists aren't gonna like that, because there's always a tension between people who are pushing a specific policy agenda and people who are trying to win the next election." Again, FISA has fanned the flames – Obama recently declared he supports the "compromise" legislation vesting the president with new spying powers – in direct contradiction to his earlier opposition and promise to filibuster the bill – and that put his campaign loudly at odds with the blogosphere. "Obama's gonna want the flexibility to sell out people and causes if he feels it's necessary," says Yglesias. "That's sort of the essential tension in all political movements; I don't think it's unique to the Internet. But the fact that people are thinking about it now shows that some success is being had on the part of the netroots." Yglesias calls it "the problem you have when you may be winning."

"It's understandable that a presidential campaign would want to, as much as possible, control their message, but it'd be a mistake of the campaign if they fail to find ways to work with bloggers to help get that message out," writes Duncan "Atrios" Black in an e-mail interview. But, he concedes, "there's no way to control what bloggers write, of course."

Making Media Liberal

A senior fellow at bias-watchdogs Media Matters for America, Black says: "Media accountability is certainly my issue. Much of what is wrong with politics in this country is due to how the media covers, or doesn't cover, politics at all levels of government." His blog, EschatonBlog.com, focuses as much on media failings and exploding Beltway narratives as anything else. To that end, he sees blogs having greater potential in setting the progressive agenda. "Strangely, I still think there's a missing piece due to the unwillingness of politicians to fully make use of the messaging potential of bloggers and the netroots more widely," writes Black. "For better or worse, we are the 'liberal media,' or at least a big chunk of it, and we could help set the political agenda for the country."

Aside from getting people more interested in politics and welcoming more people to the conversation, have we reached the limits of what the netroots and online organizing can do? "The hope is always that some people who read blogs are inclined to do things like give money to worthy candidates and that, of those people, some more will be inspired to move into more time-consuming activities such as volunteering or running for office," says Black. "By giving people a tiny way in so that they feel involved, you hope you can provide a path for people to do even more."

And as more people find a way in, the netroots will grow in size and prominence. They won't always come to agreement – among themselves or with outside political forces – but that's their viral, indefatigable nature. They'll continue to grow, often in unexpected ways. For instance, the social networking tools on My.BarackObama.com allow online supporters to join groups devoted to specific causes. One new group has ballooned into the largest on the entire site, numbering more than 16,250 members in little less than a week. Who are they? A collection of Obama supporters opposing his FISA stance: "Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right."

Once the politicians open the door – there's no telling where the roots will grow.

Source. / Austin Chronicle

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