Organizing Matters More Than Blogging
Jul 15th, 2006 by Jon Stahl
Mark Schmitt offers a realistic asssesment of the significance of bloggers in Ned Lamont’s thriving primary challenge to Joe-menutm Lieberman in Connecticut.
Can we please put to rest the idea that Ned Lamont’s challenge to Senator Lieberman is a product of, or a wholly-owned subsidiary of, that thing called “the netroots.� (Without, in so doing, disparaging or minimizing the netroots themselves.)
Instead of crediting “Markos and his loyal minions,” Schimitt cites
Decades of statewide progressive organizing in the state. Lamont’s campaign manager is no blogger, but Tom Swan, who left his job as head of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) to run the campaign. According to one of the Connecticut blogs I mentioned above, much of the CCAG staff has also quit or taken a leave to help Lamont. CCAG got its start before even Al Gore had heard of the Internet, in the same year that Lieberman won his first primary - 1970 - and from the same impulses that created the reformist/anti-war Caucus of Connecticut Democrats in which Lieberman was active.CCAG has had its ups and downs over the decades, but it is one of a very few multi-issue progressive groups of that era to have survived. A related group, the Legislative Electoral Action Program (LEAP) was very successful at getting progressives elected to the state legislature, many of whom are still there. CCAG has had a very successful last couple of years, most notably in winning passage of the state’s public financing law for campaigns, the first such “clean money� law to be passed through a legislature rather than by voter initiative. It takes a lot of skill and political savvy to get a legislature to back a proposal with low political salience that most politicians view as a threat. (That is, they would like to bury it and expect they can get away with it.) The Lamont campaign is coming off the energy and lessons learned of that victory.
You could imagine a challenge like Lamont’s emerging without the “netroots,� although they certainly drive a lot of the enthusiasm. You couldn’t imagine it without politically savvy, experienced organizers like Swan, with a base in a long-term, multi-issue progressive coalition that has allies and experience and understands the state. And anyone thinking about how to build structures and parties that can win elections against Republicans needs to understand this as well.
Schmitt also points out that Lieberman has run one of the worst campaigns of the year, again nothing to do with bloggers, before concluding:
So let’s credit the netroots for what they do well - generate enthusiasm, force the big questions onto the agenda, generate a new definition of what it means to be a Democrat. But by themselves they can’t create a viable candidacy or bring down a popular three-term incumbent. Only organizing and the incumbent’s own mistakes can do that.
