Markos has just informed us that today is Daily Kos' six birthday. Markos began this blog so that he and other like minded Democrats can lament freely at the direction of our country under President Bush, and also lament at the timidity of both the press and our Democratic Party in opposing the deceit and lies that were at the time leading us to war.
Indeed, reclaiming the Democratic Party and infusing it with a spine was perhaps the most important goal of Daily Kos, for only a strong and courageous Democratic Party can truly oppose the Bush Republicans, correct a conservative press, and protect all of the progressive principles we have fought for for so many years.
The Democratic Party we found ourselves with in 2002 was a party governed by an elite establishment consulting class that had lost all contact with real America and lost all skill at doing their jobs. Indeed, our party chairman, if you can believe it, was Terry McAuliffe. As such, it was no surprise that our party in 2002 was derailed by competing special interests, each of whom had no sense of the bigger picture and only loyalty to the special interest and not the party. Our party was equally fearful of Republican attack and characterizations, so much so that it did not fight back and instead tried to become more and more like the Republican Party so as to defuse the attacks.
And because of that, our Party collectively offered no opposition or dissent as we were quite obviously deceived into war.
This was done no doubt under the failed notion that we must appear as strong as the Republicans. Our Party in 2002 had many failed notions that they were operating under. One was the notion that we could offer no contrast with the Republicans. We caved on any number of issues, such as allowing irresponsible tax cuts. Further, our Party continued to apply the same campaign and electoral strategy year after year without any success. This strategy abandoned whole swaths of the country to Republicans, and only concentrated on a very few "swing states."
It was truly remarkable, the Party we were confronted with in 2002. A Party establishment that refused to compete, dissent or oppose, yet a Party whose elite acted superior to the liberal activist base it was supposed to serve. And so we played the game on the right's field, and we lost time and again. And yet we were told that we knew nothing. That we had to play the game on their field in order to win, and not ours. That we had to be Republicans in order to beat Republicans.
The Party elites in 2002 thought they knew better, but instead it was we, the rank and file, the activist base, the netroots, that knew better.
We knew that if you offered contrast and a choice, you stand a much better chance of winning than when you offer none. We knew that when the public was presented with a choice between a Republican and someone pretending to be a Republican, they will chose the real thing every time. We knew that if a campaign strategy is not producing results, you get another strategy. We knew that if a campaign consultant continues to employ a losing strategy year after year, yet bills exorbitantly, you fire that loser consultant, and hire new and fresh strategists from outside the beltway, more in touch with the bread and butter issues and less expensive. We knew that the competing special interests and issue groups, like NOW, NARAL, Sierra Club and the various Unions, would have to work together to win rather than fighting each other and the Party.
Markos and Jerome Armstrong wrote in their book, "Crashing the Gates," about the seminal moment when the gates of power the Party established had erected were finally crashed:
As much as bloggers and the netroots mobilized leading up to the 2004 elections, the night of November 2 was a downer for them, as it was for half the country. But in the weeks following the election, something phenomenal and new happened. While a lot of loyal Democrats went into depression and slunk away to lick their wounds, the netroots became more energized.
It's hard to believe now, but this was a time that know-nothing pundits predicted the demise of the netroots and Democratic consultants dreamed of business-as-usual. But the netroots remained motivated, engaged, and ready to clean house of the losers who gave us the 2004 debacle. This sentiment -- of fixing the problems that led us to lose the election -- was expressed in a variety of ways online, but none did it as bluntly as Eli Pariser of MoveOn PAC, who sent his now-legendary and highly controversial e-mail about the Democratic Party to the group's supporters on December 9, 2004[:]
"For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base[.] But we can't afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers ... In the last year, grass-roots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive. Not it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."
And we did take it back. We backed the effort to draft Howard Dean as the DNC's next chairman, succeeding the consulting class maven and corporate Terry McAuliffe. And eventually, Dean announced his candidacy, and with our backing, and his campaign promise of the 50-state strategy to rebuild the Democratic Party in states long forgotten by the failed former leadership; Dean won. As Markos notes, he was the first to go inside the gates after they were crashed.
Dean's chairmanship has been a resounding success in my view. The 50-state strategy brought the party back to voters thirsting for it, and it laid the groundwork so that the party could take advantage of the favorable midterm political environment in 2006. Our Party also began finding its voice again, starting with our Party's opposition in 2005 to Bush's attempt to privatize and thus destroy Social Security, one of our most cherished principles. Our Party, now under the leadership of Dean, finally discovered that opposing Bush and the Republicans, and offering a contrast of vision, actually benefited the party rather than hurt it. And after that, we found the courage to not only oppose Bush, but offer our own vision for the country.
And because of that, we won in 2006.
And we stand to win big again in 2008. If only we continue down this road, instead of going back to 2002.
And that is really the choice offered this primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. A choice between fighting in every state and on our terms and fighting in a few isolated swing states and on Republican terms.
A choice between the failed recent past of the Democratic Party and a promising future. Hillary Clinton wants to do away with the 50 state strategy. She believes in offering no contrast, and in using Republican frames. Indeed, she and her husband have been praising the experience of John McCain often during this campaign, no doubt in an attempt to muddy the waters of contrast.
Don't believe me, then listen to what Hillary Clinton has to say.
[T]he activist base of the Democratic Party... [T]hey are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."
What they do not understand, and we do, is that the issue is not experience, it is judgment. Experience means nothing if you make the wrong decisions time and again. The Republicans want this election to be based on experience, and the Clintons agree. No doubt the Democratic Party of 2002 would agree as well.
But the Democratic Party of 2008, the Party we have reinvigorated, know that the election is about judgment.
There has been some comment about why some of Obama's supporters are so adamant in our opposition to Hillary Clinton's nomination. It is because we know that our Party stands at a fork in the road. One of the Democratic Party's candidates for President, Senator Barack Obama, has used Dean's 50-state strategy and the gate-crashing netroots to not only fuel his winning campaign, but also to reach out to new voters and old voters never before warm to the Democratic Party. And another one of the Party's candidates is running to rebuild the gates, by using the same losing consultant class of yesteryear, by advocating a return to the notion that the party must embrace lobbyists (because they are real people too!), special interests and corporatism, by being more Republican and neocon than the Republicans and the neocons, and by using the old campaign strategy that views certain states and unimportant and insignificant. That candidate of the failed past, railed against by Markos and Jerome in their book, is Hillary Clinton.
We don't want to go back. We do not want the last six years here at Daily Kos to be in vain. We do not want the gates to be rebuilt.