Moveon's Path Forward

by: Matt Stoller

Sun Dec 28, 2008 at 06:50


I'm on a flight so there will be little blogging today, but I did read this piece on Moveon member priorities.

What they chose: universal health care; economic recovery and job creation; building a green economy; stopping climate change; and end the war in Iraq.

What they didn't: holding the Bush administration accountable; fighting for gay rights and LGBT equality; and reforming campaigns and elections.

MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser says that this happy alignment with Barack Obama's agenda - and fortuitous absence of conflict with same - comes in part because "the people he's listening to and the people we're listening to are the same people."

This is a very interesting problem.  Moveon has never been a particularly left-wing organization, it's mostly a collection of base Democrats with moderately liberal sympathies.  It collected people angry about Clinton's impeachment, 9/11, the war in Iraq, PBS, Bush, and now Obama supporters.  This is a mainstream group, and it's going to continue to act like a mainstream group.
Matt Stoller :: Moveon's Path Forward

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Moveon's Path Forward | 21 comments
That's What Freaks Versailles Out So Much (4.00 / 2)
Versailles has to portray MoveOn as fringe.  MoveOn was formed to oppose the Clinton impeachment when 60% of the American people opposed it, and Versailles was calling for blood.  They were not Clinton apologists, they supported censure, instead, which was, as you say, a totally mainstream position--in America. But not in Versailles.

Versailles hates MoveOn because Versailles hates America.  It's really just that simple.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Aren't these your goals also? (4.00 / 4)

What they chose: universal health care; economic recovery and job creation; building a green economy; stopping climate change; and end the war in Iraq.

This is a very interesting problem

Why is this a problem? I don't understand why you can't work on your priorities and let MoveOn work on theirs. If MoveOn is a problem then many of us who frequent the blogs are also a problem.  I hope that you don't try to split us into different camps - that way leads to nothing getting accomplished.

Judean People's Front v. People's Front of Judea (2.67 / 3)
I hope that you don't try to split us into different camps - that way leads to nothing getting accomplished.

Then what would OpenLeft do with all those "More Progressive Than Thou" t-shirts they've ordered?

[ Parent ]
Not to speak for the group, but (4.00 / 1)
What they didn't: holding the Bush administration accountable; fighting for gay rights and LGBT equality; and reforming campaigns and elections.

Progressives tend to care a lot about these things also.

[ Parent ]
it's not that those things are bad (4.00 / 4)
it's that none of those things actually build a lot of power for progressives, unless they're done the right way, or inherently have any ideological component any more.  You can have pro-market economic recovery or pro-working class economic recovery; you can have pro-market universal health care (the existing system + added (probably bad) insurance for momst of the uninsured) or pro-people universal health care (single payer health care for everyone and getting rid of or radically redefining the HMOs) you can take a pro-market position on climate change (soft standards, volunteerism) or a hard one (consumption reduction, fuel emission standards, hard targets).

So in itself, the list of priorities doesn't tell you much at this point other than that they're going along with Obama and are being non confrontational-as opposed to the other steps that Matt suggested.  I think it's important to note, which I think is what the post was doing.

[ Parent ]
That's a progressive populist agenda (0.00 / 0)
And underscores that progressive populism -- the idea that government should protect the interests of working people and small businesses against corporate predators -- is a mainstream value supported by supermajorities of the American populace.  
[ Parent ]
they never polled their members (4.00 / 1)
it is a top down organization. MoveOn Members might have supported HR 676, Medicare for All, rather than Obama's Rube-Goldberg subsidies for health insurance companies.

We will never know.

[ Parent ]
I'm not sure what you mean (4.00 / 2)
by "They never polled their members".


Last week, the group's members chose their top four priorities for the organization, winnowed down from a top-10 list culled from 50,000 suggestions.

I got several emails asking me to participate.

[ Parent ]
Absolutely not true (4.00 / 1)
I was polled twice.
You don't know what the heck you're talking about.  

We won the Battle. Now the Real Fight for Change Begins. Join MoveOn.org and fight for progressive change.  
[ Parent ]
was single payer an option (0.00 / 0)
was HR 676 one of the choices?
[ Parent ]
Universal health care (4.00 / 1)
I don't see how universal health care is incompatible with single payer. The policy details where not the point of the vote. It was about deciding the priorities for the group.

I you want health care, work hard. If you want universal health care, vote for liberals.
[ Parent ]
You Are Right: SPECIFICS MATTER (4.00 / 2)
There is a big difference between universal cost reduction, car insurance care, and Medicare for all. Politicians often use the phrase "universal healthcare" to to paint a broad brush on the policy they will actually deliver. If HR 676 was one of the options, it would have won, hands down.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what's the problem with the public health option?
LANDRIEU: Well, many of us believe, George, that it will undermine the private insurance system.


[ Parent ]
No surprises here (4.00 / 2)
I took the MoveOn test too and deliberately marked the priorities you had asked about BECAUSE they were the ones that were not on the Obama list. And yes, MoveOn has become mainstream. I don't think they were back when the war was begun. The gatherings I hosted and went to at that time were collections of regular folks who were very much against the war at a time when most of America was still cheering it on.

I think the early pick of Obama in the race is what made them turn really conventional. It's when I lost interest in the group. The priorities I picked were the ones that needed an outside group to take them up-especially those of holding Obama accountable and GBLT rights. So those are now left to the DFH's to focus on. I guess we probably knew that all along anyway. At least there's now a much larger and more vocal online blog community. Without that  I would despair.

Lots of work to be done.

It seems we think alike (0.00 / 0)
See my comment just below this.
[ Parent ]
MoveOn (4.00 / 3)
I dropped out of active participation in MoveOn when they endorsed in the primary.  I thought they should have steered clear of endorsing and used their power to push Obama and Clinton into more openly progressive policy stances.  Once they endorsed, they became irrelevant as an organization separate from the Obama campaign.
Very interesting OPPORTUNITY? (0.00 / 0)
Looks to me like there's an opening for a progressive institution that focuses on holding the Bush administration accountable, fighting for gay rights and LGBT equality, and reforming campaigns and elections.

FightOn.

Did you mean (0.00 / 0)
holding the Obama administration accountable?
[ Parent ]
Seems to me that if (4.00 / 1)
we do the former, we do the latter, to a great extent.
[ Parent ]
Why is it a problem? (4.00 / 5)
Would you not be ecstatic if these supposedly "mainstream" positions on "universal health care; economic recovery and job creation; building a green economy; stopping climate change; and end the war in Iraq" could actually see substantial achievements?  

Do you really mean to sneeze at them?  Do you think that these are low hanging fruit that will be achieved without a fight?  That substantial progress on them will be rendered meaningless without also making substantial achievements on LGBT equality and campaign finance reform?

Move On is what it is.  I get their emails, I never read them.  But I don't see the problem here.


sTiVo's rule: Just because YOU "wouldn't put it past 'em" doesn't prove that THEY did it.

MIA (4.00 / 2)
EFCA/card check, unions. It was never an option, see the full list here.
Does anyone really imagine (4.00 / 1)
that it is a coincidence that the priorities that MoveOn members chose just happened to line up exactly with Obama's priorities?

MoveOn is now essentially defined by die-hard Obama supporters/apologists. If you wanted to locate a group that embodied Dear Leaderism, you could not do better than MoveOn as it's currently constituted.

I predict that every time Obama makes any change in his own priorities, or chooses to redefine what any of his stated priorities "really means", MoveOn members will suddenly find themselves fully in agreement on those alterations.

MoveOn has no point in a progressive movement; they are not about principles. They are the Obama movement, and that is a movement defined purely by the unique characteristics of Obama's personality, as it always has been.

Moveon's Path Forward | 21 comments
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