Chris Bowers took major exception to an article I recently wrote supporting US funding for the IMF. I was motivated to write the article by the neocon rants equating money for the IMF to money down the drain - despite the fact that the IMF was bailing out countries that the US would certainly not let fail, at a fraction of the cost of us trying to do it alone. As I wrote, that is an argument that I don't consider very serious.
But some progressives in Congress also wanted to tie the IMF funding to specific changes in how the IMF conducts its business, with an eye toward more sensitivity to poor countries and greater transparency. I am very sympathetic to these goals, and this argument IS serious.
I think we should give the new Administration a chance to engage, however. It is sometimes hard to remember, but we are coming off of eight years in which the US disparaged and belittled multilateral organizations and often ignored them. The Administration now, wisely, wants to reengage. From the IMF, the US wants not only to continue to save countries from bankruptcy, but also to become a forum for examining China's undervalued currency. In pursuing a broader agenda, the Administration can and has pushed for reforms, with some success, and we should give that approach some time to work. It shows more respect for a multilateral process that involves many countries than does categorical US demands. Moreover, if we attach hefty conditions, other countries might too, and that will complicate the whole process greatly.
Second, we are still in the throes of a once-in-a-century economic crisis. The IMF has already relaxed some of its conditions to ensure that it can act quickly and not cause additional social harm. But I fear that some of the new requirements that the members of congress want, like requiring Parliamentary approval for loan packages, could slow the process down too much at this juncture, and, in the end, cause more harm.
Finally, the US has been pushing hard for underdeveloped countries to get more of a say in IMF decisions. That pressure has had resulted in a marginal increase in voice for the underrepresented, with the promise of more to come. The answer to the problem of badly designed loan packages for poor countries is for poor countries themselves to have a greater hand in decision-making.
Earlier today, I echoed a claim by Stirling Newberry that New America Foundation fellow Michael Lind had lifted his work on the monetary order's relationship to the rise of constitutional orders, in particular the moment we are in right now which is being dubbed the fourth American republic. Lind wrote me a response, and asked me to publish it. I've retracted my blog post, apologized to Lind, and asked Stirling to respond as to the substance of his claims. It's really not my fight and I shouldn't have tried to adjudicate, I was just hoping to bring attention to Stirling's claim, which you can find here.
(The Right To Respond is one of Open Left's policies when we are critical of progressive groups - promoted by Chris Bowers)
Last week, Chris Bowers wrote a essay, Against Progressive Platforms, arguing that Platforms in general and the Netroots Platform in particular, were pointless.
This response was created by 16 members of The Netroots Community using the democratic, collaborative writing tools at MixedInk.com. For more about how it was created, see here. It can be republished only if accompanied by this note.
Chris, thanks for your post. There's a few things in it that we'd like to address - and we appreciate that your "right of response" policy allows us to do that directly at Open Left.
You object to platforms in general as an outmoded 20th century construct, with no legal standing, that no one pays attention to and that government will not follow. Those are valid points - for the old 20th century style of platform building. It has, indeed, traditionally been a top-down process, conducted in smoky rooms, behind closed doors, by a select group of anointed party leaders.
But the impetus for this platform was anything but totalitarian. The Netroots Platform is not a manifesto, not something we pledge allegiance to, and definitely not the last word. Just a democratically achieved document that provides those who read it some idea of what a few score participatory democrats who thought hard about the subject and debated it among themselves think the Democratic Party ought to stand for. It embodies the potential of so many of the netroots positives you cited. It was creative, innovative, pluralistic, elastic, decentralized, and completely organic. We're not carrying cattle prods to keep anyone in line. We are hardly armband-wearers portrayed in your post.
Each of the last two days on Open Left, we have had a fun and engaging conversation about a couple of possible progressive cultural shifts. The conversations, with excellent comments, were "The Rise Of The Non-Fictional Aesthetic" on Thursday, and "More On The Shifting Aesthetic," on Friday. The two main topics of discussion were a possible shift in the aesthetic qualities of progressive art this decade, and also the apparent shift in cultural focus of progressives away from institutions like academia and literature and toward institutions like direct activism and political media. Emptywheel provided a great article on the discussion, too.
All of this discussion was started by Jennifer Nix in a Huffington Post article entitled "Resurrecting Literature: Sustenance for the Progressive Soul." As part of an occasional tradition here at Open Left, Jennifer has penned another piece to continue the discussion, as part of our Right to Respond policy for progressive organizations and individuals.
In the extended entry, you can find Jennifer's latest musings on the subject. It is well worth a read.
Earlier, Matt called out Democracy For America on why we endorsed Christine Jennings. Here's why - Democracy for America is a bottom-up organization. We have a unique endorsement process which starts with progressive activists on the ground. DFA members in Christine Jennings' district have been clamoring for an endorsement and we respect our members and believe they know what's best.
This piece is written by Laura A. Dickinson, Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law It it titled 'Regulating Private Military and Security Contractors'.
I want to thank Matt for allowing me to respond to his recent post concerning private military contractors (and in particular Sen. Obama's position on regulating such contractors).
I am a law professor who has studied these issues for some time. An article I have published on the subject can be found here, my recent Senate testimony on contracting is here, and my forthcoming book, Outsourcing War and Peace (Yale Univ. Press) also addresses these questions.
Matt took Sen. Obama to task for focusing on regulating private security contractors rather than banning them outright. Indeed, Matt went so far as to write, sarcastically: "Yes, let's regulate mercenaries. Awesome." His comments raise important questions about how progressives should approach the issue of military outsourcing and what the truly "progressive" position is.
I wrote two pieces on foreign policy and politics (here and here) about John Edwards senior foreign policy advisor and Truman National Security Project principal Michael Signer. The gist of the piece was about how foreign policy wonks need to get more respectful towards politics, and vice vera. Signer responded on Democracy Arsenal, and has kindly allowed me to cross-post his piece here as part of a 'Right to respond'.
I will get to them in a moment, but first wanted to say that there was an extremely heartening sequence in the MSNBC debate in Cleveland last night. Tim Russert asked both candidates tough questions about Dmitri Medvedev, Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor as president.
As I'm still involved in the race in some ways, I won't comment on the particular merits of each answer, but the exercise proved my original point-when the media engage in a serious way in probing candidates on foreign policy, they can push the candidates to reveal ways they think and qualities they would manifest as commander-in-chief. I've included an excerpt at the end of this post.
Now, for the debate about coverage. Ezra, Matt, and A.J. all had approving, thoughtful posts both appraising the depth of this disaster and trying to explain its causes a little better. Ezra observed a lack of thoughtful, in-depth journalistic coverage of policy in general. Matt said we lack Krugman-esque journalists working on foreign policy.
This is exactly the constructive path we ought to take, and I just hope that some members of the MSM get in the game.
But then there were a couple of posts that took a different path-toward a blame-the-victim pattern that attempted to blame campaigns for the media's failure to cover their foreign policy proposals. I'd like to talk about this because I think it's actually a really instructive pressure point in this debate, especially for the blogs who are supposed to be keeping the MSM honest.
It seems to have begun with Matt Stoller, who has written two posts now-one intemperate and a little bizarre, the second a little more thoughtful and constructive. In the first, here's what he writes:
After reading your rant about what you describe as Common Cause's "remarkable legacy of failure," my first reaction is to suggest that you might want to talk to your doctor about upping your meds.
Most of your post seems to reflect a basic disagreement over whether Common Cause should be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, or of the progressive movement, or of the lefty blogosphere. We were founded by John Gardner, a Republican who served in the Johnson administration, and we have always been proud of our bipartisanship and independence. We do not believe that either major political party is free from corruption or has a monopoly on good government as a political issue. We believe Americans want a change away from partisan gridlock.
We are proud to have Jim Leach as our new board chairman. This is a man who, while in Congress, stayed away from partisan confrontations and concentrated on working in a bipartisan manner on the process issues that define Common Cause. He is an environmentalist who lost his 2006 race in part because he refused to allow anti-gay literature the National Republican Congressional Committee wanted to distribute.
At a minimum, you cannot possibly expect to be taken seriously when you accuse us of helping John McCain "evade responsibility for the Keating 5 scandal" when Common Cause filed the original ethics compliant against the Keating 5. Common Cause has limited resources, and the fact that we have not unleashed a legal and public relations attack on every politician you happen to find offensive (Joe Lieberman, Al Wynn, John McCain, etc.) does not make us prisoners of a blind faith in non-partisanship. In fact, we often -- but not always -- find ourselves as coalition partners with some of the very groups who meet with your approval, such as MoveOn. We spent a great deal of time, energy, and money working to draw public attention to the DeLay scandal, among others, and if you are going to call us "losers" it would be nice if you showed some familiarity with the range of projects we have taken on in recent years.
As for our organization "remaining silent" during the "latest ridiculous episode," apparently referring to McCain and public financing, I would direct you to work we did in Iowa and New Hampshire, working with dozens of activists to get the candidates to sign a pledge committing to support full public financing for congressional campaigns-not only did we get several major candidates on the record, but we ran full page ads in the largest papers in Iowa and all of the daily newspapers in New Hampshire listing who had signed on and who had not. McCain and his photo were clearly in the "not signed on camp." (And we should note that, after the Iowa ad ran, both Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson promptly returned a signed pledge.)
Last week Common Cause, Public Campaign and Public Citizen released a document detailing the shortfall of all three major presidential candidates when it comes to money in politics and noting the lack of support McCain has shown thus far for either congressional or presidential public financing reform. We were the leaders to pass full, statewide "Clean Elections" in Connecticut and are currently working in 18 states to pass state-level public financing reforms.
I don't have the time to type out all of the work Common Cause has done in nearly 40 years of its proud history to hold people in power accountable, so I refer you here: http://www.commoncause.org/sit...
(This diary is from the US Chamber of Commerce. - promoted by Matt Stoller)
A few days ago Elliott Petty wrote a diary on Safeway CEO Steve Burd's efforts on health care reform. It was actually pretty responsible in highlighting the real innovations that Safeway has instituted in recognizing and rewarding personal responsibility in healthcare. Elliot dropped the ball in the last sentence, though, we he said "Clearly the corporate sector are reading the tea leaves and feel compelled to find solutions to America's broken health care system. Will we leave it in their hands, or push a universal plan that works in other parts of the industrialized world?"
Huh? The fact is that for about 60 years the U.S. business community has been at the absolute forefront of finding innovative solution to providing - and paying for - good healthcare. (One example, Kaiser Permanente, which traces its origins to prepaid health plans for Kaiser shipyard and smelter workers in the 1940's.) After all, businesses want and need healthy employees, and they also pay most of the healthcare bills in this country. Business has been talking about a "broken health care system" for decades.
Greenpeace is a fiercely independent and non-partisan campaigning organization. We stand to tackle the planet's most threatening environmental problems and achieve solutions. Partisan politics is not our game.
Global warming is the most critical problem facing our planet, requiring a massive shift in our nation's priorities. It's not just an issue for progressives - solutions will only be reached when liberals and conservatives move to achieve them. Greenpeace's global warming campaign, Project Hot Seat, is working to get Congress to reduce carbon emissions to a level prescribed by the scientific community in order to preserve life on this planet as we know it. Washington's 8th district, represented by Congressman Dave Reichert, has been a priority of Greenpeace since early 2006.
The progressive community has made Reichert a frequent punching bag, and sometimes rightly so. After all, it wasn't until Greenpeace began to mobilize his constituents last year that he finally expressed an opinion on global warming. At first, Reichert made claims that the science wasn't in, that it was unclear to him that global warming was indeed caused by humans. Through aggressive campaigning that put Reichert in the hot seat, his tune eventually shifted to more accurately reflect that of his constituents. Volunteers and Greenpeace members made hundreds of phone calls, delivered bundles of letters and petitions, met him at every public event to talk to him about the issue, and sat down with him in his office to lay down their demands.
Trends in Maine continue to strengthen for Democrats and weaken for Republicans in an environment that isn't rosy for GOP around the nation. Recent national research conducted by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner shows 70% of respondents saying our nation is on the wrong track. In Maine, we're seeing much the same in recent internal polling with dissatisfaction reaching 69%.
This bodes well for Maine Democrats and for Tom Allen in his challenge to Susan Collins in 2008.
Just last week Maine Democrats won three of five special elections in the State House, boosting the number of seats held by Democrats to 90 of 151, two of which are held by independents. Democrats haven't held 90 seats in more than a decade.
Recent polls reflect Tom Allen's steep climb over the next year, but they also illustrate Susan Collins' vulnerability. Not only are national and state wrong track numbers bad news, abut her job approval and favorability ratings - now in the mid to high 50s, -- have fallen by double digits over the past couple of years and are lower now than Lincoln Chafee's were the day he was defeated by Sheldon Whitehouse.
Tom Allen has the time and the fundraising strength to win. Third quarter fundraising results of almost $670,000 pushed Tom Allen's cash on hand to $2,112,801.40, compared to Susan Collins' $3.1 million. Fundraising is on track to meet budget and totals put Tom Allen ahead of most other challengers across the nation. One only need to look at Senators Whitehouse, Tester and Webb from the 2006 cycle to see three victors who many months from election day faced double digit deficits against entrenched incumbents. And much like the Whitehouse-Chafee race, this match will never be about likeability - both Allen and Collins have plenty of that. It's about the issues: Iraq, health care, a middle class squeezed by Bush-Cheney economic policies.
Unlike past elections in Maine, the wrong track is largely driven by Iraq. A recent Survey USA poll showed that 25% of respondents chose Iraq as the top issue facing Maine. Of those voters, Tom Allen leads Susan Collins by 9%. Remember, Tom Allen is one of 133 Members of Congress who voted against the war and the candidate with a consistent voice to get us out of Iraq. Susan Collins voted for the war and has consistently agreed with the Bush-Cheney policies down the line. Collins is on very thin ice, and there are powerful forces at play that are aligned against her.
Mike Nutter
Director of Internet Communications
Tom Allen for Senate
(This is a response to my post on the Teamster's divestiture of their pension funds from companies that do business with Iran.
Matt - promoted by Chris Bowers)
The Teamsters do not support attacking Iran. We are not the puppets of Fox News. And we are not a tool of some covert Neo-con conspiracy to take over the world.
What we do stand for is labor rights. We consistently speak out about labor rights violations in Iran, Latin America, Asia and anywhere people are punished, imprisoned and killed for their basic human right to freely associate and form unions.
We are National Guard and Reserve members, parents of active duty service people and veterans who served this country in times of peace and conflict.
To suggest that our effort to put economic pressure on Iran, a country that has repeatedly imprisoned labor organizers, is part of a "PR ploy for military action against Iran" is ludicrous, especially coming from our friends in the progressive community.
The Right to Respond in this case relates to a post I made on Saturday evening about the IL-14 primary, IL-14: Differentiating Between Blue Dogs and Bush Dogs. In that post, I openly wondered if Bill Foster was positioning himself to become a Bush Dog by announcing his planned affiliation with the Blue Dogs. This is the campaign's response. Judge for yourself if you feel it is adequate--Chris
First, thanks to Chris for the opportunity to tell folks here at OL a little more about myself and about this campaign and to answer some of the concerns raised.
On the campaign trail, I tell voters most often about my background as a scientist and businessman, but I realize that probably doesn't signal as much about my politics and values as some folks in the netroots would appreciate, so before I talk issues, let me talk about my family.
My mom and dad met on Capitol Hill while my mom was working for Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois and my dad was working for Senator Myers of Pennsylvania. Mom came from a family of inventors and dad was a chemist before taking up what would be one of his many achievements: his work on the civil rights movement.
All you did in your reponse to Matt Stoller's informative, specific criticisms of cap-and-trade carbon limits was repeat vague cliches about the "market" finding solutions. You addressed NONE of the specific problems identified with big pollutor-supported cap-and-trade system.
What is your response to the following points made in the Shapiro paper that Matt linked to?
1. Cap-and-trade programs also create a serious potential for private financial manipulation absent under a carbon tax approach. The national and international trading of billions of dollars of permits will attract large financial institutions eager to manage their trading on major security markets, create new derivatives, options, calls and other, financial instruments based on the permits, and collect commissions on both sides of every transaction. The large-scale trading of permit-based securities will create
opportunities for corrupt firms to try to manipulate the private market in these permits, as they have in other commodity markets such as natural gas spot contracts and futures.
2. "Once a cap-and-trade agreement determines that a country's emissions should be reduced by a certain percentage relative to its current emissions or to its emissions in some previous base year, the country may
be able to meet its target ***without taking any steps if its economy slows***
3. The third important difference is that cap-and-trade programs are more difficult to administer and more vulnerable to evasion, corruption and manipulation than carbon taxes. ... By creating tradable financial assets worth tens of billions of dollars for governments to distribute among their industries and plants and then monitor, a global cap-and-trade program also introduces powerful incentives to cheat by corrupt and radical governments.
Of course as a lobbyist for major pollutors that pretends to be an environmental activist, I doubt these are actual issues for you. I note that your "chief economist" and advocate of "cap and trade" is an "advisor" to such notable friends of the planet as British Petroleum and the People's Republic of China.
How much money did he get paid for this work "advising" BP and the Chinese Government?
Could your advocacy for investment bank-friendly cap and trade system have something to do with your funding from investment banks, hedge funds, and the corporate law firms that work for them?
I'm excited that Tony Kreindler of Environmental Defense is taking advantage of the right to respond feature in response to my post yesterday titled the 'Biggest Corporate Giveaway in History to Come This Fall on Global Warming'. There's a furious fight right now that will erupt in the fall over global warming bills, with competing legislation in the form of the industry friendly Bingaman proposal, the DLC-ish Lieberman-Warner proposal, and the progressive Sanders-Boxer bills in the Senate (the companion to Henry Waxman's Safe Climate Act in the House). This is an urgent debate, and Environmental Defense tends to take the most corporate friendly line on environmental policy issues. For a complete list of the environmental non-profits, see HillHeat's excellent round-up.
Matt,
I want to start by saying thanks for giving climate change legislation the attention it deserves as we approach a critical time in Congress. Given the urgency of the global warming problem, the momentum for action, and the onrushing political calendar, our top priority is getting an effective climate bill passed and getting it done this year.
From our perspective, effective climate legislation means a comprehensive, mandatory cap on carbon that reduces U.S. emissions 80 percent below current levels by the middle of this century. Environmental Defense strongly supports cap and trade, but it all starts with the cap -- an enforceable limit on carbon that guarantees enough cuts to help avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
Much of your criticism is unwarranted: we worked FISA and hard (and have been since December 2005). We reached out to Democratic leaders -- we met with Pelosi and with Reid -- we spoke with the staff from every leadership office. They did not listen to us. It was dem leadership who scheduled the vote on these particular bills. Why be mad at us and not at them? We met with them. They rebuffed our arguments.
We weren't notified that the bill was moving until 6 days before when Rep. Harman let it slip on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. We gave it the full court press: with action alerts, meetings with Members of Congress and Senators and their staff.
Pelosi and friends spent the entire week negotiating with the DNI and cut out ALL the civil liberties groups - not just the ACLU. Senator Rockefeller led the effort on the Senate side (with McConnell). The bill only passed because a) 41 dems crossed the line in the house, after the "liberal leadership" could NOT muster up its own party to assert its 30 seat majority, and b) most importantly, Pelosi, our "liberal leader" scheduled the bill in the first place. She could have put any bill on the schedule and she chose the Administration's. We worked this hard, and somehow you blame the ACLU?
(The right to respond in question here has to do with a comment I made about Gore supporters. The extended discussion on political decision making is simply a bonus
- promoted by Chris Bowers)
Yesterday, Chris wrote a post that looked at a recently published paper on heuristics and politics, which he described as a "new approach toward how voters make decisions". The paper described a few psychological phenomena, and came to the conclusion that people do not make rational decisions in politics, but instead they rationalize their rather irrational political decisions. Chris then went on to discuss how he thought the study related to the behavior of supporters of various candidates, including Gore supporters:
At first blush, this strikes as something I once called Creeping Dear Leader Syndrome online, to describe a phenomenon where people back a candidate and then either change their issue positions to match the candidate, or use contorted, hermeneutical reading of candidate positions to turn those positions into something they are not. It something you see in the comments of blog posts on the 2008 Democratic nomination campaign all the time. Even though it is not an "issue position," exactly, one of the most gratuitous examples is how Gore supporters seems to be able to consistently read Gore's statements that he has no intention of running as actually meaning that he is, after all, certain to run. People invent narratives and facts surrounding the candidates they support, in order to convince themselves that their beliefs and their chosen candidate's beliefs are identical. Unless I am mistaken, in political science circles this is a phenomenon known as "projection."
Well, Chris was wrong on multiple points in this post, and so I thought I'd address a few of those mistakes, including his mischaracterization of why Gore supporters believe that the former Vice President will run.
New Progressive Coalition and Democracy Alliance have both sent very thoughtful and interesting responses to my recent post on bloggers and donors, and I encourage folks to read them and respond. I like both of the posts a lot, and I think their ideas about how to move forward are useful. I have also gotten a lot of other constructive feedback from individuals in the donor, and plan to do another post soon on this topic. -Mike
"I believe that bringing these donors into a mutually beneficial relationship with the progressive blogosphere will happen, but that it will take a different kind of strategy and some patience before things change."
We couldn't agree more that it will take a different kind of strategy and patience to see real political change. The New Progressive Coalition (NPC) exists to solve some of the challenges of this broken, political capital market by helping to cultivate a new generation of progressive donors that want to be more strategically engaged in politics.
"The movement needs to show its long-term, tangible value-added to donors. A pitch to donors needs to be more than `we're really good people, and we do lots of great things, and we don't have enough money.'"
So how does someone measure the impact of their donation to a think tank or a blog? The PROI™ methodology delivers a greater transparency so that donors feel more comfortable investing in innovative political organizations and are able to understand the impact of their political contributions. It also allows organizations to better articulate the value of their work and gain insight into the process of how investments decisions are made.
"This is the life of a big donor. They get hit up constantly by just about everybody they know, including big name politicians, other donors, celebrities and heads of well-known organizations on a very regular basis."
Yes, the traditional major donors of the world are clearly overloaded with requests for donations and many are tired of being treated like ATM machines. The Democracy Alliance is doing an excellent job at engaging this group. NPC operates with a network philosophy and believes that it will take a variety of solutions to solve our complex political challenges. Our focus is not on these traditional major donors, but instead on growing and engaging a new generation of political donors.
"Another key thing to understand about the donor community is the typical demographic profile. They tend to be older, they tend to be extremely busy and they tend to have staff people (either for their work or for their philanthropies) hand-feeding them things to review: not exactly the profile of your average blog reader."
While the majority of the current funding comes from this small group of donors, there is a new generation who wants to become involved (or has tried to be involved in the past) but isn't being spoken to or engaged in a way that resonates with them. They are overwhelmed by too much information and don't have a strategic way to make decisions beyond getting recommendations from their friends.
By helping this demographic target their political and charitable time and money more effectively, we can engage and grow this new generation who can fund political organizations based on their merits and not just whether or not they have the right rolodexes.
New Progressive Coalition and Democracy Alliance have both sent very thoughtful and interesting responses to my recent post on bloggers and donors, and I encourage folks to read them and respond. I like both of the posts a lot, and I think their ideas about how to move forward are useful. I have also gotten a lot of other constructive feedback from individuals in the donor, and plan to do another post soon on this topic. -Mike
First of all, I would like to thank OpenLeft for the opportunity to respond to your post about connecting donors to the blogosphere, and offer some insight from one donor's perspective as well as some insight into the Democracy Alliance organization.
As a longtime donor to progressive causes and campaigns, I have witnessed the evolution of the progressive movement. As a Board member for a number of progressive organizations, including Mother Jones and the Ms. Foundation for Women, I've had valuable insight into the challenges facing organizations as they seek out individual donors for the multi-year funding that is crucial for building capacity. Over the years that I have been involved in the progressive movement as a donor and activist, the environment has changed significantly. I believe there are powerful forces and constituencies that are replacing the old guard and bringing new voices and new ideas into the process. I have grown frustrated with the approach of "targeting" voters through expensive television ads that often miss the intended audience by a mile. I believe that blogs, and other new media tools, are a more efficient way to reach voters and we must find ways to support this work. As an individual donor I have supported and will continue to support bloggers, and the use of new technology and the online space to reach critical audiences who are often missed by more traditional media.
Political events in 2000, 2002, and 2004 galvanized the progressive movement at all levels. Progressives came together across the country, in a variety of ways, to unite around shared beliefs and a shared desire for change. As a Democracy Alliance Partner since its founding in 2005, and Board chair for the past year, I've seen firsthand exactly how much we've accomplished in the two years since our inception and I'm heartened to see the movement expanding on all fronts.
The netroots community and blogosphere have grown in the last several years into a powerful force that was almost unimaginable just a few years ago. In the last two years the Democracy Alliance has begun to form a first of its kind community of donors committed to strengthening democracy by partnering with, making human and financial investments in, and fostering collaboration among leaders and institutions committed to building a sustainable progressive infrastructure.
In his post Mike correctly enumerated some crucial barriers to funding the blogosphere, and the near impossibility of realizing a significant impact by giving to individuals. However, those barriers are neither permanent nor insurmountable. As an individual progressive funder I, and others like me, will continue to fund bloggers and those who are making progressive change happen. As a Partner in the Democracy Alliance the goal is to fund collaboratively, and as the Chairman of the Democracy Alliance, we look forward to finding opportunities to support the entire netroots community through organizations and institutions that are enabling the long-term health and sustainability of the community.
I hope this marks the beginning of an honest and productive conversation between donors and the netroots, about how to leverage the power of both groups to move forward in a strategic and effective partnership.
On behalf of the Board of Directors, and the Democracy Alliance staff, I want to thank you again for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
Since the end of the 2006 elections, I have experienced a decided increase in emails and telephone calls from distressed, or even angry, staff members of Democratic and progressive organizations / campaigns calling to complain to me about a blog post of mine. These contacts have come from a wide variety of campaigns and groups within the progressive ecosystem, and invariably the complaint is the same: you should have talked with us / me before publishing that article. Mind you, I have pretty much always received these complaints since I start full-time blogging more than three years ago, but over the past six months I have been surprised by their frequency.
