Activists versus the governing class..a couple of thoughts.

[madfloridian]

I posted some of this in the comments in another thread yesterday. The theme of the activists in the party being pitted against the leaders was tossed out by Simon Rosenberg after the 2004 election.

A couple of quotes from Rosenberg, one of the founders of the DLC, painted a pretty clear picture of the way activists were thought of at that time.

A founder of the DLC actually predicted that any future party divide would not be centrists vs liberals, but activists vs the governing class.

First, he gives the reason they founded the think tank called the Democratic Leadership Council:

"freed... from positions making it difficult for us to win. "...Simon Rosenberg.

"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

They did not want to "need" the traditional constituents of the party, like unions, minorities, common everyday people. They needed enough money to get things done their way.

And another quote just after we lost the 2004 presidential election.

The clash will be between the "governing class" and the "activist class."

From an article called "What Happens to the Losing Team".

If there's a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, predicts Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a moderate advocacy group, it won't be the usual skirmish between the liberals and moderates of the professional political class in Washington but one between the Washington insiders on one side and the rank-and-file activists spread out across the country on the other. "What's changed over the past two years is that activist Democrats believe that Republicans are venal people," says Rosenberg. These activists "are going to be very intolerant of Democrats in Washington who cooperate with the Republicans. There's going to be tremendous pressure to stand up and fight and not roll over and play dead."

Most activists don't believe that about Republicans at all, but again it was the starting of keeping "netroots" in their place. There were other attempts toward the netroots...even Democratic bloggers calling us nutroots.

More from that link:

From the NYT Matt Bai in 2005.

What Dean's candidacy brought into the open, however, was another kind of
growing and powerful tension in Democratic politics that had little to do
with ideology. Activists often describe this divide as being between
"insiders" and "outsiders," but the best description I've heard came from
Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic operative who runs the advocacy group N.D.N.
(formerly New Democrat Network), which sprang from Clintonian centrism of
the early 1990's. As Rosenberg explained it, the party is currently riven
between its "governing class" and its "activist class." The former includes
the establishment types who populate Washington - politicians, interest
groups, consultants and policy makers. The second comprises "Net roots"
Democrats on the local level; that is, grass-roots Democrats, many of whom
were inspired by Dean and who connect to politics primarily online, through
blogs or Web-based activist groups like MoveOn.org. The argument between the
camps isn't about policy so much as about tactics, and a lot of Democrats in
Washington don't even seem to know it's happening.

I believe that is true. Dean during his campaign did fire up a lot of us as to how things could perhaps be. I think that was the first time I felt we could make a difference through activism. I signed petitions, made phone calls, wrote letters to the editors.

I haven't done that for a while, not sure anyone pays attention.

And though the terms activists and governing class were not used in this American Prospect article from 2001, it is clear there has been success in moving away from the traditional constituents of the party.

How the DLC does it.

Privately funded and operating as an extraparty organization without official Democratic sanction, and calling themselves "New Democrats," the DLC sought nothing less than the miraculous: the transubstantiation of America's oldest political party. Though the DLC painted itself using the palette of the liberal left--as "an effort to revive the Democratic Party's progressive tradition," with New Democrats being the "trustees of the real tradition of the Democratic Party"--its mission was far more confrontational. With few resources, and taking heavy flak from the big guns of the Democratic left, the DLC proclaimed its intention, Mighty Mouse?style, to rescue the Democratic Party from the influence of 1960s-era activists and the AFL-CIO, to ease its identification with hot-button social issues, and, perhaps most centrally, to reinvent the party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a probusiness, pro?free market outlook.

..."We're a party that's going through a transition from one ideology to another," says NDN's Rosenberg. "It was 40 years between the creation of the National Review and Newt Gingrich's takeover of Congress in 1994. We're only 16 years into this. Are we challenging old ways and leaders who've been around for a while? Are we being contentious? Yes."

Indeed it has been contentious.

The DLC closed its doors, the Third Way has taken their place. It is led by a man who through the years has pushed for the privatization of Social Security, has pitted the younger generations against seniors. He has made the elderly sound greedy and selfish.

He has now formed a new group to divide the two generations even more.

Jon Cowan once again ginning up faux youth outrage.

Coming soon: a new pressure group called “The Can Kicks Back,” which aims to turn younger Americans into an anti-deficit avenging army. It will surely attempt to play a role in the post-election talks surrounding the “fiscal cliff.” This offensive bears a slight odor of deja vu, however, because one of its organizers is Jonathan Cowan, who 20 years ago attempted to recruit Gen Xers in a similar campaign propelled by a brash, ultimately buffoonish group called Lead … Or Leave.

Today, Jon Cowan is the president of Third Way, which calls itself “the nation’s leading centrist policy institution” and is certainly one of the most prominent center-right pressure groups in Washington. Its board of trustees reads like a Who’s Who of Wall Street, hedge fund and real estate barons and it enjoys privileged access to the national media. (Cowan himself is a close personal friend and guru to Matt Bai, the New York Times Magazine’s chief political correspondent and a leading cheerleader for center-right deficit hawks.)

Cowan popped up in a slightly different guise this summer, as an advisor to “The Can Kicks Back,” (http://www.thecankicksback.org/) billed as a new campaign by “Millennials … pushing for a non-partisan ‘grand bargain’ to fix our fiscal future.” Other advisors to the new group include such usual suspects as Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (authors of the much-discussed Bowles-Simpson plan to balance the budget mostly through slashing Social Security, Medicare, and domestic social programs), former Sen. Evan Bayh, and former comptroller General David Walker.

Here is one of their videos featuring of all things, Alan Simpson dancing with a can.

[madfloridian]

1. "an anti-deficit avenging army" of young people led by Jon Cowan. Just what we need.

From The Irregular Times:

http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2012/10/31/hilarious-two-grassroots-pete-peterson-groups-fluffing-for-each-other-in-front-of-the-nyse/

Hilarious: Two “Grassroots” Pete Peterson Groups Fluffing for Each Other in Front of the NYSE

"The silly geese. How surprised can “The Can Kicks Back” be about the activities of “Fix the Debt” when the two organizations share the very same DC Beltway office suite? You can write to either “The Can Kicks Back” or “Fix the Debt” at 1899 L Street NW, Suite 400, Washington DC 20036.

What’s even sillier is the notion that either of these groups can call itself “grassroots” (and yes, both do call themselves “grassroots”) when they’re buying premium space at the New York Stock Exchange. What does it take to be able to hang a gigantic banner outside the New York Stock Exchange? Well, you have to rent the entire space first. And that’s just what the “grassroots” organization Fix the Debt did, paying for the privilege of having some “grassroots” people stand up there and ring the opening bell. Tell me, do they look like the “grassroots” to you?"

[madfloridian]

2. Slate has encouraging article on Can Kicks Back....not doing well.

It appears this video with Simpson was their sole hit and not so much because of the message.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/12/why_has_pete_peterson_s_expensive_campaign_against_the_deficit_failed_after.html

"Last week, at last, The Can Kicks Back found a hit. Former Sen. Alan Simpson, whose quotability has made him the star of the current austerity campaigns, gave a mock-patronizing (or maybe just patronizing) lecture to America’s youth, asking his viewer to “stop Instagramming your breakfast” and start signing up friends to this hip austerity campaign, to save their money from the entitlement-loving “coots.” Then he and the Can Man danced along to “Gangnam Style,” the most viral song of modern times. “I got a bum knee!” said Simpson, moving with some difficulty and narrating the moves. “The lasso again, and then the horseback. Horse, horse! Ride the cowboys, ride the cowboys.”

People couldn’t get enough of Dancing Simpson. The performance was “both merry and shrewd,” according to Peggy Noonan. Simpson, whose emeritus role chairing the president’s debt commission gets him plenty of free media, got even more. In the tangled and expensive world of professional austerity campaigns, this was the first media breakthrough in months.

It was a little bit sad, and a bit more revealing. For 20 years, a coalition of wealthy people—Pete Peterson chief among them—has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build public support for austerity. They have held annual summits, then semiannual summits. They’ve written books. They’ve started up coalitions. They’ve partnered with MTV. It’s been five weeks since Barack Obama was re-elected, and there’ve been two gatherings in downtown D.C., put on by Peterson-tied organizations, asking politicians to do something about that debt."


Makes one wonder why deficit reduction is such a high priority after all.