Matt Bai's The Argument

Last Sunday night, I found myself wandering around a toney art gallery in San Francisco, surrounded by a Who's Who of NetRoots types, young-ish, earnest-looking bloggers and people who hang with bloggers.  Despite being a co-founder of MOMocrats, I am not that plugged in to the whole Netroots thing, so I didn't know who most of them were.  The only one I recognized was Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, "Kos" of The Daily Kos.  The only reason I recognized him was that I saw him on The Colbert Report a while ago.

Somehow, I received an invitation to attend a book signing for Matt Bai's new book, The Argument:  Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. I thought it was going to be a panel discussion or some kind of reading from the invitation, but it turned out to be a cocktail party with the author and some of the people he mentions in his book.  Instead of a panel discussion, it was more of a "salon" style event, with people milling around, and eventually focusing on Bai when he got up to speak and answer questions.  Not exactly my normal scene, since I had to quickly change out of the shirt I was wearing before I left the house, which was covered in pumpkin guts from the neighborhood Jack-o-Lantern carving party.

Bai was introduced by Gina Cooper, who organized Yearly Kos Convention, which recently changed its name to Netroots Nation. Bai started out by thanking the organizers of the event and pointed out that some of the people mentioned in the book were in the room, including Markos.  Markos make a point of shouting back, "I don't read books!"  as if that were some kind of blogger badge of honor.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Bai's fascinating book.  Bai seems to have genunine affection for Markos and the other netroots, and they come across much more favorably than the billionaires referenced in the subtitle, who just come across as self-important, unfocused jerks.

The premise of The Argument is that many people are disenchanted with the way the Democratic party has evolved in the past twenty years, and a few groups and individuals are emerging to take charge of the party and the message it portrays.  "The Argument" should really be called "The Agenda" since apparently, the argument is really about what agenda or ideas the Democrats should be putting forward.  This resonated with me, since I have gotten sick of the tone of the ranting on both sides of the aisle, which seem to be moving closer and closer together policy-wise, but shouting different rhetoric.  Democratic politics of late seems to be mostly reacting to whatever the Republicans are up to, without giving much of an alternative other than, "not that."

Bai is a reporter for The New York Times, and is an excellent storyteller.  He makes the story compelling through both historical perspective and first-person narrative of his interactions with the cabal of billionaires who set out to fund new efforts to shape a progressive movements.  On the other end of the spectrum are the bloggers, regular people with laptops and an axe to grind, but little funding.   In the mix are the party officials who seem steeped in old-school politics and an agenda dating back to FDR, and union officials who traditionally form the backbone of Democratic politics. 

I don't think Bai's book provides anything in terms of what the next great idea will be, nor does it attempt to, but it at least raises the question of where the party is headed.  At the cocktail party, he noted that he didn't think that the Baby Boomers in Congress had it in them to make a radical transition.  He also didn't think that any of the present field of Presidential candidates would make that transition or come up with the next phase of Democratic policies and politics.  My sense was that he believes that the boomers are devoid of originality of thought that is required to take the party to the next level and are too steeped in the tradions of the past.  I can't say I disagree with him on that, even though my generation is on the cusp of the baby boom, but before Generation X hit the scene.

Someone in the group asked Bai whether he thought the progressives and unions would ever coalesce.  Bai has covered union activities as a reporter, and noted that he was in Chicago when Andy Stern led the walk out of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) from the AFL-CIO in 2005.  He said that he has seen some movement towards the two groups (bloggers and union members) converging, but that tradional unions are of the opinion that if they work toward Democrats, the Democrats will take care of them, but that has not always worked.

When someone in the crowd referred to the "inevitablity" of Hillary Clinton as the next president, the crowd murmured its disapproval, and Bai said that he would not jump to that conclusion so quickly.  He said that one of the reasons he enjoyed covering politics was that it was always full of surprises, and not to count out the Edwards or Obama campaigns just yet.  Amen to that.

In the book, he mentions that the frontrunners have gone out of their way to court bloggers  and noted that it's likely that the next Democratic administration will have the first White House blogger on the payroll. It seems to me that the Edwards campaign is the only one that has specifically tried to appeal to bloggers, through meetings and outreach from the campaign to existing blogging communities.  Obama has a section on his site for people to set up their own support blogs (as does Edwards).  Even Romney and McCain have their family members blogging about life on the campaign trail and Ann Romney is offering family recipes on her site. 

Overall, it was an enjoyable evening, and I'm glad I attended the event. Next time, I'll have to read up on who's-who at The Daily Kos and MyDD. I think everyone interested in the current state of Democratic politics should read this book for some perspective.  Who knows?  Maybe one of us will come up with the next great idea that can propel the party--and the American people--forward.  What the Netroots movement does is make that seem not only possible, but probable.  Perhaps it's time we stopped reacting and started planning and acting. 

Cross-posted at The Silent I.

Comments

[LawyerMama]

I'll definitely put it on my "to read" list. I sincerely hope that he's wrong about the boomer generation being devoid of original thought. I'm firmly in Generation X and frankly, aside from the greater numbers of techno geeks, I don't see all that much difference between the 2. Those with money and power at 35, tend to be much the same as those with money and power at 45. Plus, we still have a few years before X'ers show up in large numbers in politics.

I do agree that the winner will probably be someone who courts bloggers and embraces the changes we've seen in media. I can't say that Hillary is one of those. Edwards, however, most certainly is!