Remember how your mom used to tell you to go outside and play so you could get some fresh air and sunshine? That's kind of how I feel today. This old insider, who has had one foot outside for a while now, is going to play with the kids outside for a while.
When Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers and I decided to start OpenLeft a little over 3 years ago, we thought it would be worthwhile to have a site where there was some dialogue and interplay between an old DC insider like me and some of the really smart and strategic voices from the blogosphere. We've had more than our share of fascinating discussions, entertaining debates, and innovative activist projects, and I am very proud of the role OpenLeft has played in the blogosphere.
When Markos approached Chris and I to work with DailyKos and help turn it into, in Markos' words, "an activist powerhouse", we were excited to sign up. The potential for working with the DailyKos community to build a platform for citizen activism is enormous, and we are both looking forward to being a part of helping it blossom and grow. In addition to that, I am excited to help Markos continue to build a truly dynamic media platform. The opportunity to work with him, Chris, and the entire DailyKos community is extraordinary.
As for OpenLeft, we are exploring what will happen next. Chris needs to dive full-time into working at DailyKos, and he was our editor and heart and soul, so him being gone causes us to re-evaluate everything. I will continue to write some for OpenLeft, as will Adam Bink and some of our other talented writers, but I have never been even close to a full-time presence, and since I will be increasingly working with DailyKos, I will have less time at OpenLeft than before.
One final note about my work going forward: I have also begun work this summer with MoveOn.org on their exciting project to clean up the corporate corruption in DC. While this project is currently focused on shaping the 2010 electoral dialogue, it will be a campaign we will need to keep on for years to come. To be working with both DailyKos and MoveOn.org, two of the leading institutions in the world of the progressive netroots, is an honor and a privilege.
No matter what happens, I will however remain an insider. Once they inject you with the insider virus, it does change your DNA a bit. I know some folks think that makes me intrinsically evil (one of my all time favorite comments on a blog post came the other day when someone said that because I knew Rahm Emanuel, that automatically made me a bad guy). But I hope I can work with the DailyKos community, as well as with OpenLeft and MoveOn, to use my insider knowledge to help the entire movement get better at shaking up what happens inside, and to be a bridge between the other progressive insiders that are involved in national politics and the progressive netroots community. For all my insider-y status, my roots are in the deep and wonderful tradition of progressive movement politics- Alinsky-style community organizing, the labor movement, the movements of the 1960s. Building on that history and tradition, I look forward to working with all of you to create a stronger progressive movement in the future.
Stand For Marriage Maine, the right-wingers trying to repeal same-sex marriage equality in Maine, just sent out this awesome mailer:
For many of us, this week marks the start of the new school year. So in honor of back-to-school season, let's try a little pop quiz. Which of the following does not belong in the same group as the others:
(A)History
(B)Mathematics
(C)English
(D)Homosexual Marriage
If you guessed ''D'' - you're right! Mainers firmly believe homosexual instruction has no place in the classroom. Maine's public schools should focus on reading and writing, not mandatory gay sex education.
There's only one problem: an irresponsible piece of legislation known as LD1020. If allowed to take effect this law would throw to the trash heap our decades-old interest in promoting traditional marriage. It would legalize homosexual, genderless marriage. And if marriage is redefined to be genderless, then same-sex marriage must be taught as being the same as traditional marriage. This has profound consequences for your child's classroom education.
Gay sex education?! They teach that now?! Where can I sign up?
Jokes aside, the haters will lie and smear their way into victory during this campaign. Conflating marriage equality into "mandatory gay sex education" is insulting and a horrific exaggeration, but that's what they do. These are real families with real children being raised just like other kids. Nowhere in the legislation are there any kind of required classes. The right-wing has always used fear as a weapon, and it's fear of instilling values here.
Our side needs to counter it with the truth. This new ad launching after Labor Day is the way to do it. Sam Putnam, the teenager with two moms in this new ad from the No On 1 campaign, does not look like he has gay sex horns growing out of his head.
Maine residents will start to vote in mid-October. That's just six weeks away. The race to define this thing is on, and as I've heard from all my Maine contacts, it needs to be "live and let live." That message is up for grabs. With mail like this, the right-wingers are pushing their own version of that. We have to push ours.
Last night, No On 1 was added as the very first race on the Orange to Blue page from DailyKos. Jesse Connolly, the campaign manager of the No On 1 campaign, posted at DailyKos today about the campaign, thanking the netroots, including us, for helping raise the money to put ads like this on the air. Please rec and comment. Let's tip our hat back to him from OpenLeft and define this fight for Maine residents first, before the other side does.
For those of y'all who missed it, it was a good weekend around the blogosphere for The Progressive Revolution. On Saturday evening Jan Schakowsky and I went over to Firedoglake Book Salon for a chat about the book, and a bunch of other interesting meta questions (some teased by Adam here). Jan also had several interestings comments.
On Sunday, SusanG over at DailyKos gave the book a fantastic review, and really summarized the book's theme, argument and important very well. You can check it out here.
Many thanks to the good people at FDL and DailyKos for taking the time to read the book and have me on to chat.
Markos has the remarkable stats. I happen to really like Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and if the environment is neutral, she can take McCain out. That McCain is on the verge of losing his home state is remarkable. Gore lost Tennessee, but that was a very Southern state voting against a Democrat. In this case, Arizona is a pretty solid Republican state and it's on the verge of leaving the McCain column.
Given the meltdown in the economy, and the looming presidential debates, treat this as a mental health break, my piece on the primary wars has just been published in Prospect Magazine .
I first joined MYDD in 2004, and was an avid geeky follower of Chris Bowers (in fact I thought he ran the site) but as most of you know the site got a very different reputation during the primary war.
Though it's subbed and simplified for a British publication where the Netroots has to be explained as Blogosphere 101, I you might be interested to read it: in short, through an adversity, it's a paeon to the blogosphere and the possibilities of online advocacy and political campaigning
One of Daily Kos' resident economists (and a person largely responsible for many of the netroots' finest "I told you sos" over oil pricing and the housing bust) pens a broader piece on why he discusses the economic problems so much (please read it all):
But more importantly, this is about identifying causes and allocating responsibility for what's happening today. The crises I have been describing are a direct - and in many cases, desired - result of political choices that have been imposed on us, and it is fundamentally important that the underlying ideology be (i) identified and (ii) blamed for what happened, rather than amorphous and uncontrollable things like "globalization" or "economic cycles." There is a crime, there is a culprit, and there is a motive.
Even more vital is the need for an alternative discourse to take root against what still is an apparently overwhelming consensus amongst economists, analysts, pundits, politicians and other "serious" people about what should be done. Given that this dominant discourse still claims a lot of legitimacy by trashing out (an imaginary version of) the alternative model, there must be a coherent effort to underline that today's problems come specifically from the policy recommendations of that consensus, and that their calls for more "reform" today is quakery, not statesmanship.
Adam Green of Moveon hit back at Obama on the Huffington Post with his blog post 'Obama Got Outfoxed' and Markos hit back with his blog post 'Obama and Fox News'.
All of us have endorsed Obama, and have criticized him over this, but the reality is that there was no communications with anyone about the decision-making or process that led to him being on Fox News. There is also no messaging around Wright or any other bubbling stories. There is basically no blogger communications going on as far as I can tell, the kind so critical to a good blog strategy like Tim Tagaris ran with the Lamont campaign. The Clinton campaign does a much better job, down to little details such as inviting bloggers on press calls. Even the McCain operation, with a much less significant blogosphere on the right, is having McCain out on blogger conference calls. I find it odd that John McCain is doing a better job than either Democrat in handling his allies, but that's the case.
Anyway, it's clear that Obama's campaign has not fixed its relationship with the blogs and the liberal internet space. That is most likely because their new media director, Joe Rospars, is a remarkably skilled logistics operator with limited bandwidth for communications. The Obama campaign could sure use a Peter Daou type.
As the general election approaches, it would helpful it this logistical problem was fixed.
That's a picture of David Sirota's column calling out Tom Tancredo as a con artist on immigration placed right next to an Op-Ed by Tancredo bashing immigrants on the paper Op-Ed page of the Denver Post.
Moral of the story = investing in local infrastructure and progressive media voices works.
Second moral of the story = Karl Rove vs. Markos, Tancredo vs. Sirota? I could get to like this.
I'm going to enjoy tomorrow's Meet the Press with Markos debating Ford, but in all honesty, it doesn't really matter who does a better job. There are millions of people behind Markos, and there are a few narrow special interests behind Ford.
Glenn Smith wrapped up what the DLC is really about, so if you want deep insight, read him. If you just want to mock Harold Ford, below is his concession speech from 2006, and here are some of his fear-mongering pandering church-y commercials throwing around the God word like candy to a suicidal diabetic. At the time these were considered teh awesome. They probably still are. Anyway, here's Ford conceding a race to a Republican in a year when basically no other Republicans won. I look forward to watching tomorrow's debate on the future of the Democratic Party.
Today SusanG and Markos of DailyKos crashed thru the MSM barrier. With their brutally honest dissection of the DLC the two of them made a real statement that has gone unsaid for too long. They make it perfectly clear why the Kossacks convention drew the Presidential Candidates and the DLC didn't. Americans are ready to move the Center back to where it should be on their way back to embracing the Left.
The DLC had two decades to make its case, to build an audience and community, to elect leaders the American people wanted. It failed.
Its members number in the hundreds, compared with the millions that the people-powered movement can claim, and they are reduced to attacking our movement from the studios of right-wing Fox News and pleading that in the next election they'll really prove that the mushy, indistinguishable "middle" is where the American people want to be.
Since Bill O'Reilly is the only journalist honest enough to go after the Nazi Kos, I decided to investigate the hate-site's convention for myself. Under the guise of a Laughing Liberally comic, I tried to bring these haters to the light side.
For more of my reflections on the Nazi convention, read here.
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