It is kind of funny to watch the Beltway insiders discuss the blogosphere. Cokie Roberts and George Will have never been sympathetic to the left. But they describe the Lamont challenge as a ‘disaster’ for the Democratic Party and as indication that liberal bloggers have taken over.
The full transcript is below the fold, but I just want to discuss their reasoning a little bit. First, what is the blogosphere’s role in all of this? I’d say it has been a huge role. Lieberman has received a simply astonishing amount of bad publicity from the blogosphere. And it hasn’t just been about the war, but also for the Gang of 14 and related cloture vote on Alito, the Plan B ‘short-ride’ comment, and much more. We’ve also given Ned Lamont a tremendous amount of free publicity. Without that publicity, Ned would never have gotten the name recognition and aura of plausibility that he has. This was an insurmountable challenge for those of us that tried to help Chuck Pennacchio. Without a united blogosphere, Chuck never got the free publicity he needed to be seen as viable.
Then there is the issue of money. Arguably, Lamont did not need any money, but we’ve raised quite a lot of it for him. That hasn’t hurt his cause and all those small donors blunt any charge that he is just a fat-cat millionaire out to buy a Senate seat. But, the money is not what swayed the race.
We are a long, long way from ‘taking over the party’. But that is how the insiders feel. And it’s interesting to see why they think it will be a disaster for the Democratic Party. Cokie mentions that it will force Dems to cater to the base and they will craft more leftist legislation. George Will compares us to the Democrats of 1969-1972, that went into total opposition and turned the country off, leading to a brutal loss to Nixon. Will doesn’t even discuss the merits of that opposition. He just sees us going down the same path.
So, first things first. We are not living in 1972. The only similarity is that the nation is at war, and the Democrats want to end that war. The nation has learned the lesson of Vietnam, which is that the dominoes didn’t fall, the world didn’t end, communism didn’t triumph. The same will be true of terrorism.
Far from alienating the voters, Lamont seems to have energized them. There has been a huge influx of voters in Connecticut switching from unaffiliated to Democratic in order to vote in this primary. The party rolls are swelling. Turnout may be better than at any time in the last thirty-years.
What the pundits don’t understand is that there is an actual power shift going on that changes what is possible. When we give free media, it doesn’t need to be paid for. When we give thousands in small contibutions, it makes politicians less reliant on corporate money. That automatically moves the debate to the left. And when the people see people that are willing to talk like them and represent their interests, they respond to it.
Perhaps the only area where the Democrats are potentially weakened by the netroots is in the area of religious beliefs and the culture wars. The blogosphere is definitely more secular than the country at large. But there are a few reasons that may not be a big problem. First, there is the work of people like Pastor Dan and Frederick Clarkson. Second, the blogosphere makes no demands on our politicians when it comes to religious faith. We are not engaged in a culture war, only playing defense. When Lieberman intervened in the Terri Schiavo case he got slapped around. But short of outright displays of wingnuttery, we don’t crititize politicians for being religious. Third, the culture wars don’t seem to be resonating with the voters as much. Katrina and Iraq have focused the minds of voters on more pressing matters.
What’s really worrying Cokie Roberts and George Will is this display of grassroots power. They hate the Democratic Party, but they feel comfortable having it around as a kind of younger stepchild. If someone like Bill Clinton wants to come along every once in awhile and slash the welfare rolls, that’s okay. But god forbid we get a candidate that is actually on the left. What’s remarkable is that they have so little to say about how far to the right Bush has governed. It’s not centrism they want, it’s pro-corporate legislation and huge tax cuts. Once they have that, they’ll put up with almost anything.
Transcript below.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Time now for the roundtable. I am joined, as always, by George Will. Welcome back to Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. And let’s – let’s start out talking about this Lamont-Lieberman race. Cokie, let me ask you, Joe Lieberman is not the only Democrat, far from it, to support the war. Let me ask you the question I asked him. How did this happen?
ROBERTS: I think Connecticut is a more liberal state. You saw it there. It’s — it’s very blue, and — and you’ve got the — the guy with a lot of money who is able to come in and take advantage of it. But it’s — it’s, I think, a disaster for the Democratic Party, and it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens as a result of it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Disaster for the Democratic Party? Why?
ROBERTS: Yes. I do, because, I think that first of all, that pushing the party to the left, which is what’s likely to happen, is pushing the party to the position from which it traditionally loses. And —
STEPHANOPOULOS: In presidential elections.
ROBERTS: In presidential elections, but also it will send a signal to everybody in the Senate: “Watch out. The only smart thing to do here is play to your base.” And then that — what that means is that your legislation becomes a mess, which it already is, but even more of a mess, and you get —
STEPHANOPOULOS: That much is —
ROBERTS: So you just get just a — total chaos out of this.
DONALDSON: Cokie, at this point it’s playing to the country. It’s not just your base, in opposing the war. And it happened because George Bush was able to say last year, “As Senator Lieberman said … ,” “Senator Lieberman believes … .” Because it’s not just that he supported going into Iraq and all of that, but he came back last year and said, “The strategy is working.” And, of course, it’s not working, and I think that’s what got him in trouble.
STEPHANOPOULOS: George, Cokie says it’s a disaster for the Democratic Party and clearly has divided the Democratic Party, but I wonder if Lamont wins big on Tuesday — we don’t know what’s going to happen — but if he wins big on Tuesday, if that will also shoot some fear through Republican ranks, basically Republicans to a person have supported the war, have supported the president on the war.
GEORGE WILL (syndicated columnist): It will terrify Republicans for 2006, but 2008, I think Cokie may be right. Between 1968 and 1972, the Democratic Party went into stark, hard, and nearly unanimous opposition to an unpopular war in Vietnam, but they did so in a way that made them unpopular —
STEPHANOPOULOS: Right.
WILL: — in the process. So if the blogosphere and MoveOn.org drag the party to the left, it will be a disaster. There is a reason why Bill Clinton went up to campaign for Lieberman, and that’s the same reason Bill Clinton went to Washington state to campaign for Senator [Maria] Cantwell, another senator who voted for the war and has not recanted on that. Lieberman’s model on Vietnam — I’m sorry, on Iraq, is to some extent Hillary Clinton’s model and —
ROBERTS: Well, and it certainly — and Bill Clinton, it’s also no accident that Bill Clinton is the only Democrat who has been elected president for two terms since Franklin Roosevelt, because he was a Democrat in the middle from the South with a very strong acquaintanceship with scripture —
[crosstalk]
STEPHANOPOULOS: I agree with all this —
ROBERTS: All of that, and I think you start, you know, talking about the liberal blogs and all that taking over the party, and —
STEPHANOPOULOS: I do agree —
[crosstalk]
ROBERTS: [inaudible] a disaster.
STEPHANOPOULOS: — with that but want to bring it to you, Sam, but I think you’re both underestimating the power of this war and how that overwhelms the traditional left-right, as Ned Lamont said, divisions.
DONALDSON: Well, you and I are in agreement on that. What would you have Democrats do today? Say, “Yeah, the strategy’s working, we’re for the president, we’re for Iraq?” That would be nonsense, it seems to me, not just for the base but for the country.