There was a lot of outrage yesterday based on a complete misquote in an article published by The Nation. And not only did The Nation botch the quote, they misrepresented the message and intent. It was twisted beyond recognition.
We’ve seen this level of distortion from the media before and we should damn well know better than to trust a four word quote, especially when video is available.
It was disturbing to watch the very same people who complain that the media attacks Bernie unfairly, taking his quotes out of context to stoke outrage, latch on to this hatchet job Nation article.
From The Nation article
Daily Kos founder and self-appointed “granddaddy of the resistance” Markos Moulitsas drove the point home when he huffed during a panel about “that grassroots Bernie thing” and how it was a detriment to the party.
And that’s the real split in the party right now: between the grassroots and the establishment represented at the Four Seasons on Tuesday. It’s less about Bernie versus the Clintonistas, but rather that the wide array of socialist activists, community organizers and radical labor groups that existed for quite a while in Democratic Party politics and lined up behind Sanders when he ran for president are now feeling energized and emboldened.
The problem is, Kos never said “that grassroots Bernie thing” and he certainly never said grassroots organizing was a detriment to the party. Quite the opposite.
Watch it yourself. Based on the outrage yesterday, it’s pretty clear almost nobody bothered to watch it yet.
Starting at 5:47
Question: What do you make of this new energy, and is your sense that it's moving in the right direction in terms of ensuring that it's a sustainable movement for years to come.
Kos: Yeah, there's a couple of factors that I think make this super exciting in a way that past movements. I came out of the Dean campaign, and the Dean campaign looked a lot like the Bernie Sanders one, very white, very male, and I realized very early on that a movement cannot sustain itself in progressive politics if that's who was represented. And for years and years afterwords, Dailykos sort of reflected that. And I'm Latino... my name doesn't give it away... and I sort of tamped that down... I'm going to be mainstream Kos.
And from the beginning we were sort of focused on elections, and focused on trying to generate grassroots excitment over things like State legislative races and nobody gave a shit. Because they wanted to argue about whether Obama was good enough or not, or whether health care law was good or not, or Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton... and it was all these stupid arguments while the grassroots was burning. That's exactly what happened.
Stupid arguments while the grassroots was burning. Hmmm… sounds familiar.
Following directly, Kos went on to describe how exciting the new grassroots efforts were and how they were doing something he could never do.
So, systematically Republicans, being Republicans and very organized and smart, did what they did and they took over elected office from the bottom up, to the point where we got to last year where an idiot buffoon with no campaign beat our candidate who probably would have been the smartest President in American history.
And so, this new movement that has sort of emerged is exciting for a couple of reasons. One, unlike most past movements it's almost entirely electorally focused. Which is critical. I mean, Sister District has hundreds of chapters and they’re focused on State Legislative races.
I mean, I could never get anybody excited about State Legislative races, but there they are... organizing.
Swing Left, on House races.
Indivisible doing all of the above and more.
Maybe Kos dissed Bernie and the grassroots efforts later. Maybe that’s where The Nation got the quote...
Starting at 14:55
Question:
Marcos, let me ask you right along those lines, as we move forward, as the resistance moves forward, what are some of the pitfalls, as Astrid describes for instance not voting, not translating that energy into the voting booth, but what else should we be aware of to ensure we don't fall into traps that don't keep this movement sustainable.
Kos:
Before I get to that I want to reinforce a theme that we had here. If you're a white male christian liberal, right now you're feeling pretty angsty, right... oh, shit, Donald Trump is President and it's horrible... that's how we've all felt... always. And this is something that I think needs to be acknowledged, because there's a changing of the guard in progressive leadership, to one where women and marginalized communities are centered, doesn't mean their part of the party anymore, they're leading it. And there's some resistance amongst some corners of that, and you see it in things like people saying we need to reach out to working class people, because none of us (pointing around) know any working class people in our communities. So, there's code, right... it's not just Republicans talking in that kind of code. So I think that's going to be one of the key issues that we need to resolve and get past, that there is going to be a changing of the guard in who leads the Party... and it's good. Because the Party is going to look like America and we're going to be better positioned for the future.
And the second one, Lee and I had dinner yesterday and I talked about this, there's a lot of excitement right now and people are signing up and they want to do stuff and this is great, and in 2018 and 2020 if all goes well we're going to have good electoral years because we have Donald Trump... but once upon a time we had George Bush. We won big in 2006 and 2008 because of George Bush, and then Obama won and the day after it was all about how pure Obama was, and infighting, and we had sort of that grassroots burning thing.
Infighting and that grassroots burning thing.
I’m sure The Nation will issue a retraction any moment now.
(EDIT: The Nation actually did issue a retraction! See the diary Update. )
Following directly…
Kos:
And our energy dissipated and withered away. And for me, I'm less worried about 2018 and 2020... I mean I'm worried in the sense that I'm working hard towards it, but I'm less worried about the future of the movement in the next four years than I am about what happens in 2022 when we're all arguing about how progressive our next President is and our next Congress is.
Looks like Kos was dead wrong on this one. Based on the crap we saw spewed around yesterday we won’t have to wait until 2022 to start worrying.
Friday, May 19, 2017 · 8:53:55 PM +00:00 · map
The Nation has corrected their story by removing all mention of Markos, with the exception of this correction at the end of the article.
*A prior version of this article quoted Markos Moulitsas referencing “that grassroots Bernie thing.” Other news outlets reported this quote as well, but it appears Moulitsas said “grassroots burning thing.” We have removed the reference and regret the error.
Friday, May 19, 2017 · 8:56:08 PM +00:00 · map
Thank you to everyone who emailed or tweeted the author, George Zornick.
And, while I still think the article gives an unfair characterization of the conference, thanks to George Zornick for correcting the error.
