Charlie Cook of
The Cook Political Report wrote this just a couple of days ago about our new campaign manual, "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" by our own Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD.
While disagreeing with many aspects of this thoughtful book, Cook makes the following positive comment in the course of his review (see over the fold):
Why Democrats, and others seeking to understand Democrats, should read "Crashing the Gate" is simple. The world and American politics are changing, yet the Democratic Party is not. As the "in party," there is less of an immediate imperative for the GOP to change, so the revolution in that party is probably a few years off, but it is also overdue. For Democrats, though, the revolution is here and now.
**
While the book starts off with the prerequisite Bush-bashing, some of "Crashing the Gate" was truly unexpected and not at all the bleating of a pair of naive ideologues. Indeed, early on "Crashing" confronts head-on the entrenched interest groups in the party that keep it from being a whole party and instead make it a loose confederation of interest groups that too often are pretty much out for themselves.
And he concludes
"Crashing" represents a fresh view of the Democratic Party, its problems and challenges through new and uncynical eyes. It is clearly worth a read by us older fossils, if only to remind us that we sometimes overlook that which is in plain sight.
On my part, however, I must respond to the following comment that Cook says.
While Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's program of putting DNC-funded organizers in every state to ensure Democrats have a national party is a good one, the book's suggestion that Democrats field and fund candidates in every single Republican-held district is unrealistic. Armstrong and Moulitas blame the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for targeting just 30 or so GOP-held districts in recent years as small thinking that limits the party's possibility for success.
The authors are seemingly unaware that Democratic Party strategists such as Mark Gersh and the DCCC itself have sought for years to expand the playing field, hoping to target more Republican-held districts, but were restricted by an inability to entice and fund quality candidates. Democrats have had to settle for smaller playing fields, but it was certainly not by choice. Throwing money at a marginally qualified candidate with little chance of victory is hardly expanding the playing field.
It is not expanding to "every single Republican held" district that is suggested by proponents of leveling the field, it is supporting "quality candidates" of which, in fact, there are plenty - and they are running in seats that are more vulnerable than some Dem strategists have allowed. It means rather than focusing on 30 races, we might well double that number --or even treble it.
As I see it, it is not "quality" that has motivated the DCCC strategy, but rather it has focused on two criteria: fund-raising ability and electability - and sometimes the former to the detriment of the later. For example, Louise Slaughter pushed a wealthy executive in Eric Massa's district (NY-29) who promised to fund a great deal of his own campaign despite the fact that he was unelectable. He was not by any means a "quality candidate.". This, of course, represented a miscalculation of what was going on locally as well, where the Dems had coalesced around the campaign of Eric Massa.
These demands for grassroots in heavily "red: districts to squeeze money out of a population that is largely rural and poor, has been unrealistic. And throwing huge sums of money as a select few candidates when many highly qualified candidates are running in districts too poor for local Dems to support them, is self-defeating. That is, a reluctance to take on entrenched Republican incumbents who have scored high percentages of wins over candidates in the past. In fact, there are MANY grassroots candidates out in the cold who are "quality candidates" but are not getting help.
This latter aspect points to the electability criterion. In this year of opportunity many GOP icons will fall and we really do have to loosen the focus on a few races and level the playing field. The wins that would result may surprise the strategists and even in loosing they are not mere sacrificial lambs but are building the new Dem Party "from the ground up." This means developing a solid base from which to launch new campaigns in the next election and the next until we win. Dean's stragegy is much more flexible, realistic and potentially fruitful than that of the DCCC and DSCC.
And so we come to the Fighting Dems. We all know why the name was chosen. It was because the were military men who had fought on the front lines and now were ready to fight on the home front. But the name itself has created a rift and we need to redefine the term to be inclusive of all Democrats will to fight for their principles, values, beliefs, policies and their promise to America.
Within this all-inclusive term, we need to recognize several subsets. First there is a basic dichotomy: Fighting Dem Incumbents and Fighting Dem Challengers. And each of these broad terms have any number of subgroups, including Fighting Dem Vets, Fighting Dem Teachers, Fighting Dem First Responders, etc. It looks to me something like this:
Fighting Dems
Fighting Dem Incumbents
Fighting Dem Challengers
FDVets, FDTeachers, FD1stResponders, FDWhistleblowers, and the like.
In this way we can see the grassroots and the netroots the way it should be without imposing artificial barriers and creating strategically inappropriate divides.
And this redefinition also points in the direction that our winning strategy should take. For the national Dem institutions, committees, PACs to sift through these groups to find the candidates they wish to support and the reasons for doing so. This widens the playing field, levels the fund giving, and helps the whole process make a great deal more sense.
We cannot stop the raucous partisan rivalry of the primaries, but we can stop using misguided generalizations to label groups and set them against each other. A given candidate may be a member of two or three of the FDs. A vet may also be a teacher or a policeman - and, in fact, this is the case. And despite the divisive rhetoric of the Cegelis/Tammy primary battle, the rancor of the Hackett debacle (including my own rant), there are no other races of that sort in play at the present time.
The McNerney/Filson race is a horse of a different color. Both candidates have been active politically in the area and it is not a case of an outsider being imposed by the DCCC or anyone else. Filson was a campaign worker (captain of two wards) for Ellen Tauscher and helped her get elected. It was natural for her to endorse him and recommend him to the DCCC, even though Tauscher had endorsed McNerney in 2004 when Filson was not a candidate. Steve Filson has contributed as well to Shaw for Congress, and to Shaw for Assembly. He has hit the pavement in precinct walks and put up lawn signs where it counts. This year, he worked the phones at each of the labor councils for the Special Election. This is clearly a case of two local activists in a primary race and should not be escalated into a Fighting Dem Vet versus Fighting Dem grassroots. This is what primaries are all about (Boy, how I wish they were over!).
It is hard to rise above our personal commitments and loyalties once a primary is over. But I believe that the Democratic Party is well-known for hotly contested primaries only to come together for the GE. I really hope that this year, of all years, this can be the case. There is so much at stake.
We have to reach out to each other, grab hold of our goals, and take over Congress.
UPDATE: I did not mean to imply that ALL dems are Fighting Dems. Fighting dems, of whatever stripe, are over and against "Spineless Dems" -- dems who fold over because they have no backbone, dems who have no starch, dems who ain't got grit! More mild forms of this are Republican Light and Demopublicans -- those who cuddle up to and feel cozy with neocons. After we clear out the Neocon Repugnuts, we can work on the Neocon Demonuts. Just a thought.
So he basic dichotomy (the2nd needin' a lobotomy) is:
Dems
Fighting Dems
Spineless Dems
