Reply #131: OKay, let's hash this out... [View All]

[DannyRed]

1) You are correct, Dean and his campaign did a great job of firing up and organizing some 600,000 people, getting 300,000 or so to donate money, time, and energy to the campaign, generating a lot of votes nationwide, and going from an asterisk unknown outside longshot to frontrunner to strong second to out.

He did better than Dick Gephardt, better than Joe Lieberman, better than Bob Graham, better than Carol Moseley Braun and so on. He still has more delegates than any of the former and current candidates with the exceptions of Edwards and Kerry.

He did so based entirely on internet and word of mouth.

2) The REASON he got so much press - press that was NOT tremendously positive, according to the studies and analyses of tone, content, wording, placement and etc, especially when compared to Edwards or Kerry....press that NEARLY ALWAYS tagged him as "Left, Antiwar, Angry, Firebrand, Populist" and so on....the REASON was because of the size, speed and vociferousness of his base of support.

3) You say: "I don't think Solomon was approaching this to knock the wind out of ANYONE'S sails but organizing a nationwide POLITICAL campaign is NOT the same as organizing a movement."

I do not think you have read enough of Norm Solomon's work to make that point.

Let me be clear....I have a lot of respect for Norm Solomon when it comes to issues, analyses of policy, analyses of the right, and his understanding of large-scale politics in the realm of Work, Unions, Environment, and Media...a LOT of respect. He is a very smart man, an excellent writer, a committed and devoted activist with his heart and his positions in the right place, almost all the time.

Where I do NOT respect Norm Solomon (and several others in the ZNet crowd like Ed Herman, Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, and others) nearly as much is when it comes to their political analysis of the Left and Liberal sides of the spectrum. I invite you to contrast their writings with Howard Zinn. The difference is in the tone and range of vision expressed in their writings and political analysis of various Left and Liberal movements and groups. Zinn is unendingly hopeful, positive, progressive, and inclusive; willing to argue, to hear criticism, to change positions, to bend and include. The others, are much more rigid, doctrinaire, and, frankly, defeatist, depressing, and quite nit-picky. This comes from reading their works, engaging in debates online and in person (I had a long long argument with Ed Herman about this very thing when my group invited him to speak to our forum....)

Now, to your basic points:

1) You can't compare interest groups with a political campaign.

In many ways, you can. Interest groups ARE political campaigns focused on one issue rather than a program of issues. The Democratic Party IS an interest group that also runs/controls a broad suite of political campaigns. MoveOn is an interest group that does not run political campaigns, but instead focuses on a much more limited series of issues and contributes time/money/people/space/voice to political campaigns that meet its criteria for support.

DFA was most certainly a political campaign, but it was, and is, also an interest group organized around a particular political principle, one that I am extremely disappointed (but not all that surprised) to see Norm Solomon criticizing (unfairly and inaccurately) as being "not grassroots"....

What is that political principle? That the power belongs to the people. That a Democratic party that leans too far right and accommodates the GOP on too many fronts is not desirable or useful, that Democratic Politicians who take their popular base for granted, pander to special interests and the right, and don't stand up when it counts is a Democratic Party that needs to be shaken up, shaken out of its complacency, and put on warning that they are slipping into a realm where they DO NOT represent us faithfully or as we want them to.

That message is EXACTLY the same message that Norm Solomon harps on in many of his columns, columns criticizing Gore for being too like Bush, criticizing Democrats over NAFTA, GATT, WTO, Colombia, Welfare, Workfare, Kosovo, and so on.

Dean took that message, and managed to get a LOT of people and a LOT of money, and gain a LOT of attention with it.

And now Norm Solomon is saying that growing a campaign based on that message from Zero to Huge in less than a year is "Not Grassroots"?????

The whole point that Dean, Dean supporters, and DFA is making is that political campaigns must be BOTH interest group AND faithful reflections of the desires of their constituency in order to remain viable in the political realm.

The fact that Dean went from former governor, nobody, and asterisk, to (apparently) a serious political player whose machine and support base is now being courted by many sides in the ongoing political rumble should be enough to tell Norm Solomon and the others that grassroots is PRECISELY what it was and is.


Finally, this:

"Solomon may have stated things in a manner less empowering the morning after...but a week from now or a month from now...perhaps..it might be better received."

I disagree. I think that Solomon's criticism is weak, misdirected, and not very useful. I think that is very unfortunate, because within that weak framework, there are extremely useful and important pieces of the puzzle that I wish he had articulated in better fashion and expressed in a more positive, productive, PROGRESSIVE way.

I think that this piece will be as flawed in a month as it is now, and that the tone and tenor will be as much, if not more, lacking in respect, weight and importance.