The Rise Of The Netroots

This Guest Opinion appeared this morning in the Bucks County Courier Times from Richard McGovern, a 2005 poli-sci graduate of Kutztown University.

As I read this excellent column, I somehow wondered what Barry Goldwater would say or do today if he were to witness the words and actions of the phonies and pretenders who profess to be the caretakers of his blessed conservative cause.

(I also went to the NRO site - way skeevy, I know - but I was unable to find Lopez's original column. One small step for man...)

As a student of American politics, I found it irresponsible of the Courier Times to publish Kathryn Jean Lopez’s column on the current and future role of the Netroots within the Democratic Party without publishing a counterpoint.

Ms. Lopez’s willful misrepresentation of the goals of the Netroots movement, coupled with the condescending tone she directs at every potential target from Sens. Clinton and Feingold, to the “screeching” Ned Lamont, to the Kossacks, whom she demeaningly terms “Kos’ Kids,” is perhaps symptomatic of the inability of traditional right-wing pundits to grasp the nature of the force shaping the ground upon which the 2008 presidential election will be fought.

The Democratic Party is today undergoing a transformation mirroring the one which affected the Republicans in the years between Richard Nixon’s defeat in 1960 and Barry Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964, when its conservative wing seized the reins of a party that had been drifting closer and closer to the positions of its opposition. Goldwater conservatives defined themselves not necessarily by their positions in favor of issues, but rather by their opposition to the policies of a Democratic Party that controlled all three branches of government.

In the same way, the Netroots-supported Lamont victory in the recent Connecticut primary over Joseph Lieberman, a three-term incumbent and former vice-presidential nominee, marks a shift away from the politics of consensus and accommodation Lieberman has long represented, and toward the kind of clear and outspoken partisanship usually associated with the Republicans.

It is this opposition to politics-as-usual that engendered support among the Netroots for candidates such as Howard Dean in 2004, Ned Lamont in 2006 and, potentially, Russell Feingold in 2008. What is remarkable, yet conspicuously absent from Ms. Lopez’s writing, is that while the Kossacks may be the most visible members of this moment, they seem to be in agreement with, rather than on the fringe of, the American body politic.

Ms. Lopez cites “demands” made on Daily Kos for ranking Democrats to support Lamont over Lieberman as examples of the exclusionary nature of the Netroots movement. These demands were, however, in response to Lieberman’s decision to ignore the will of the voters and run as an independent.

This decision by Lieberman and the response from the Netroots speaks to what is perhaps the crux of the entire movement; disgust with the indifference shown time and again by members of government to the clearly stated will of the people. Whether a president who loses the popular vote is re-elected by the slimmest margin in history, yet claims a mandate for extremist policies, signing statements that effectively overturn legislation, or the unwillingness of the Congress to deal with the corruption and actually do anything other than run for re-election, the American people are infuriated by it, and this fury has found its expression in the Netroots movement.

The Connecticut primary that Lamont won with a clear majority had one of the highest turnout rates in Connecticut history. In primaries across the country this summer, in Montana, in Tennessee, in federal, state and local elections, turnout is up and progressive candidates are winning nomination with platforms in opposition to the failed policies of the last six years.

The Netroots movement is not, as Ms. Lopez prefers, some lunatic fringe, but it is rather at the head of a political realignment such as this country has not seen in more than four decades. In the early 1960s a small group of conservative activists began a movement that saw a radicals senator named Barry Goldwater become the Republican nominee for president, and changed the ideology of the Republican Party to the present day.

Ms. Lopez gets one thing right when she writes that something similar may happen in 2008 for Senator Feingold and the Democratic Party. The key difference may prove to be that Goldwater lost.

To help make the Netroots dreams reality, click here.