-Yeah, except for: -MoveOn.org -- a few million members -DailyKos -- a million readers a day
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-Kos, feh. (Disclosure: I'm waging guerrilla war against him.) -Main selling point of UFPJ: "We're not A.N.S.W.E.R.!" -I think we're talking apples and kumquats here. -Kos and MoveOn are new, interesting, and important, but ultimately not as -interesting as what UFPJ could help to spark and/or turn into. The former -are interested in nothing more than rejuvenating the Dems. If they thought -the pimples on Limbaugh's ass were a good issue to use against the Rs, they -would start RushBump.Com tomorrow.
I don't buy it-- yes, Kos and MoveOn think (even more than me) that pumping the Dems are a key to getting progressive change, but right now Kos and MoveOn just finished a campaign of pumping money into a democratic primary to try to knock off a rightwing Dem in Texas and Kos has been hitting Lieberman hard and promoting a primary challenge to him over Liberman's stance on the war, Alito and the bankruptcy bill.
So they don't care about Dems because of a party label but because they want that label to stand for the issues they care about, such as the war.
I'll note that Cindy Sheehan got attention from the blogs earlier than from most of the traditional antiwar groups -- and Sheehan has been a regular poster at Kos hyping her antiwar work.
-It's the unbounded rumblings of the masses that are source of the truly new -(sometimes new and bad). I would include Nathan's state-based arena as -well, since it is more creative and more reflects a marriage of substance -and get-out-of-the-house activism. The Dem's satellites are intellectual -wastelands, sort of a liberal-TVLand. My hope is based on what's unseen, -and I feel fine.
I appreciate being included in Max's list of useful progressivism versus "Democratic satellites" but in most day-to-day politics, especially in the states where many legislators are part-time and moonlight as leaders of progressive non-profits or other roles, the line between "the movement" and "the party" is far more blurred than a lot of people here want to admit. Elections take people and organizations, so it's those "rumbling" organizations that play a pretty significant role when push comes to shove in a lot of democratic primaries.
As to the war, just note some of the headline stories at Kos today:
Surprise! Exxon Mobil Chief Is Against U.S. Energy Independence Another Day Of "Exaggeration" (about failure of Iraq war) Republicans Rally Around Their King (condemning Bush wiretapping)
The reality is that more people are talking to each other in comments about the war every day at Kos than go to any of the anti-war rallies. I hardly think Kos is the be-all of activism, but it's a hell of a lot more inspiring than any of the antiwar rallies I've gone to in the last four years.
Nathan Newman