An Open Letter to David Brooks:
Your column today epitomizes Old Media in a trite but illuminating way. Once again, you are attempting to reduce a movement you don't understand and can't control to personality clashes and "He said/She Said." While you evidently saw nothing untoward about Duke Cunningham, David Safavian or Jack Abramhoff (at least not worthy of mentioning in your column) your desire to have uncorrupted elections leads you to attack both Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and the group that evidently follows him blindly without thinking or analysis.
Have you ever read Daily Kos? It is a diverse group where you must back up assertions with outside evidence and be prepared to defend what you think. You will find diaries on Biblical exegesis, ABOR, social stratification, framing ideas, the war, the Episcopal Church, the history of the Cossacks, and, if you read today, I bet you'll be on a lot of diaries. And you will also find a whole lot of disagreement. I was one of the stage managers for the Yearly Kos convention, and I blog. I spent my summer vacation volunteering for this group because I agree with the promise of the netroots, which is that lots of small contributions and commitments are better than a few large contributions. Howard Dean raised
87% of his money in donations of under $200 and that, more than anything else, is why I supported him--money is rotting the system through and the netroots have a way to staunch the rot.
If you spend 2 minutes on Daily Kos, you will also find many disagreements. I, for one, was offended by the Warner party (even if it was fun), but I'd signed up to support Warner months ago, not because Kos said so, but because I thought he could win. I was <gasp> looking for a non-senator from the preferable South or the acceptable Midwest. I looked primarily at video clips, trying to analyze who was the best on TV. And then I decided to support Warner. And part of the reason I did this is that Dean taught me that my early support and donations of $25 a month made a difference! Is this part of a vast conspiracy? Or is this the answer to the Abrahmoff-lead, Bush propelled and Cunningham-Crowned culture of corruption that has lobbyists writing legislation in closed-door sessions and inserted by anonymous staffers into compromise bills without legislators even voting on them?
Markos has been a wonderful architect, but that's really all he is--an architect who has helped put together a people-powered machine that Dean inspired and that is still coming together in inspiring and frustrating and challenging ways. You can't reduce this movement to one person, much as you might like to try. You can attack Markos or anyone else in the people-powered movement, but what scares you (and you have to be scared or you wouldn't be wasting your platform to write about this when you have yet to write about the Republican-led wholesale auctioning of the government) is the hundreds of thousands of people that are finding a way to have their voices count as much as your corporate lobbyists' money.
Oh, and the reason that the netroots started supporting Brown was because PAUL HACKETT HAD DROPPED OUT! We want the Dems to win. The one rule we all seem to have is that we work our heart in the primaries and work for the party nominee in the elections. In better times, we will be able to assess whether that rule makes sense--I have deep frustrations with the Dems, but when cancer is destroying a body, you use the chemo. (And yes, the Bush administration is like cancer to the finances, crediblity and cohension of this beloved country.)