Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong have issued a call to arms, and I for one am ready to join the revolution.
The Democratic Party as it exists is a deliberate failure. The great single focus activist movements of the twentieth century -- labor, civil rights, gay and gender rights, and the anti-Vietnam War movement --were never allowed, for all their successes, to spawn a citizen's political party capable of holding its own against corporate power. What Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga are calling for in Crashing the Gates: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics (2006) is nothing less than a commitment from young progressives to build such an entity for the first time ever in the United States. They propose a severing of the puppet strings attaching the Democratic Party to the ruling elite.
How truly historic this declaration is may not be entirely clear to all readers based only on material presented in the book. While the authors impressively describe, concretely and in detail, what is wrong with the Democratic Party and how to fix it, a little historical information may be required in order for us fully to understand why their approach to repairing the Party constitutes nothing short of revolution. For example, on page 175 they write, "Even though we have described the obstacles to modernizing the progressive movement -- the constituency groups, the consultants who manage the campaigns and the party establishment itself -- our criticisms aren't fueled by significant disagreements of vision." Armstrong and Zuniga must not be imagined to indicate this solidarity of vision to include the intransigent top leadership of the Democratic Party itself. I perceive that they merely mean to welcome all who become disillusioned with the status quo into the arms of a new progressive movement bent upon transforming the Party.
In fact, every paragraph of Crashing the Gates indicates a significant disagreement of vision between Armstrong and Zuniga and the DLC and the DCCC (Howard Dean is already wrenching the DNC out of the grasp of these high ranking policy makers, as a direct result of the efforts of young progressives). What Crashing the Gates presents is the blueprint for a people's party capable of standing on equal footing, fighting toe to toe with corporate power, and insisting that government take citizens' needs seriously. At present, this is not how the Democratic Party operates.
How the Democratic Party became a servant of corporate power and not a true organization of the citizenry is exquisitely described in James Weinstein's 1968 classic, The Corporate Ideal and the Liberal State. Early in Teddy Roosevelt's administration the first great corporate strategizing agency (or think tank) was born. Called the National Civic Federation (NCF), it took on two challenges: the need to undercut Laissez Faire Business opposition to the Progressive movement's corporate goals, and the need to ensure that the growing labor movement would not adopt socialism. At the time, socialism seemed a real threat to the entire U.S. business community. According to Weinstein, "Business leaders in the Federation were flexible. They did not often recognize unions unless compelled to do so, but they did not greatly fear dealing with conservative unions when the workers demonstrated that they had the strength and determination to carry through militant actions."
Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs perceived the threat of a labor-corporate accommodation clearly. As Weinstein notes, "in 1904, Debs warned that the NCF professed friendship for labor in order to 'take it by the hand and guide it into harmless channels.' .In effect, what the business leaders asked of the conservative trade unionists was that they become mediating agents between the workers and the corporations, rather than act simply as the representatives of the workers in confrontation with their employers. In return, NCF leaders sought to gain acceptance of organized labor as a permanent institution in American life and recognition for those labor leaders who would cooperate."
As the Democratic Party became the party of Labor, this relationship of mediation and reward fell to its leadership. In Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy, William Greider's 1992 masterpiece, we learn that these leaders have continued to play their roles faithfully down to the present day -- far past the moment when the honeymoon between labor and industry dissolved. As Eugene Debs predicted, the marriage ended in disaster. Now, when citizens need to be able to do far more than negotiate with corporate leadership, when the public needs the ability to restrain corporate policy, they cannot do so. As Armstrong and Zuniga un-compromisingly document, citizens find themselves blocked not only by these very corporate leaders, but by the political party supposedly committed to representing ordinary people in their struggles with power.
In short, since Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson - one a Republican, the other a Democrat - took control of the Progressive business movement of the early twentieth century, the corporate ruling class has effectively co-opted and neutralized liberal grassroots organizing. Democratic Party Leadership appears still bound by its commitment to resist, restrain and combat real citizen organization on behalf of the corporate establishment they have served for more than a century. Without impugning the honesty or decency or good intentions of Democratic Party Leadership, it is surely not unfair to state that it operates intransigently and even fearfully. Since it also seems unlikely to change, reason dictates that it must be removed and replaced -- gently and with respect if at all possible. As Armstrong and Zuniga put it, "We cannot wait any longer for the Democratic Party to reform itself and lead us into a new era of electoral success. Those of us who became energized ever since Bush and his circle of friends took over in 2000 -- the netroots, the grassroots, the progressive base of America, must act now to take back our party and our country."
Remarkably, Armstrong and Zuniga's strategic vision seems already to have born fruit in several States. In order for the new progressive movement to succeed, however, those engaged in it must fully understand that what they are about challenges the core structure of power relations in the United States. Creating a truly independent grassroots Party committed to Democracy in this country, may be only the first step in the struggle ahead.