Privatizing the Democratic Party - I

 In a long article in the New York Times Magazine, Matt BAI takes on profound reform of the Democratic Party.

 

First, he notes that Rob STEIN has picked up where Hillary CLINTON, Sidney BLUMENTHAL, and John PODESTA took off with characterization of a "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy":

 

In ...

 

"About 40 [PowerPoint] slides titled 'The Conservative Message Machine's Money Matrix,' [STEIN] essentially makes the case that a handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence of their national agenda."

 

"This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system, [STEIN] said."

 

Second, BAI describes the response to STEIN's observations, in particular, from Andy RAPPAPORT, a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist:

 

"Man, that's all it took to buy the country?"

 

RAPPAPORT has assembled a small but very wealthy  ...

 

"Band of Progressives", including billionaires George SOROS and Peter LEWIS, "to create a kind of venture-capital pipeline that would funnel money into a new political movement, working independently of the existing Democratic establishment."

 

"The dollar figure for investment being tossed around in private conversations is $100 million."

 

"A hundred million dollars," [RAPPAPORT] said, "is nothing."

 

So far, this has been reflected (a) in funding for the DEAN campaign, which gained the early backing of MoveOn.org and Music for America, (b) in coordinating not-for-profit, fund-raising, organizations -- many called "527's" for the loophole they exploit -- including some old-line outfits like the Sierra Club, Emily's List, and the Service Employees International Union -- as well as some new outfits such as the New Democrat Network and America Coming Together, which have rallied behind Anybody but Bush, as well as (c) in some new policy thinking along the lines of the New America Foundation and the Center for American Progress but not, I would add, the Democratic Leadership Council.

 

Third, of course, the article details the hollowing out and just decline of the Democratic Party over about thirty years. It goes on to comment on the possibility that a Kerry victory in November would stall party reform as well as wonders out loud whether initiatives such as that of this "Phoenix Group", will reform or replace the Democratic Party.

 

These observations are summarized in two anecdotes:

 

"If you are a 32-year-old state legislator and you're a conservative, you get to go through all these philosophical trainings. You get all these organizations that are trying to put you through their leadership institutes. You get all these groups sending you their materials."

 

"If you are a 32-year-old Democratic state legislator, and what you do is learn how to check boxes: You learn how to become pro-choice. You learn how to become pro-labor. You learn how to become pro-trial lawyer. You learn how to become pro-environment. And, you end up, in that process, with no broad philosophical basis. You end up with no ideas about national security. You end up with no ideas about American history and political theory. You end up, frankly, with no ideas about macroeconomic and economic policy, other than that it's scary."

 

"The ... next-generation liberals … have come to view progressive politics as a market in need of entrepreneurship, served poorly by a giant monopoly -- the Democratic Party -- that is still doing business in an old, Rust Belt kind of way."

 

Terry McAULIFF, the most successful fund-raiser that monopoly has ever had, has invested his latest efforts in building a "high-tech" building with a giant "voter-file", a sort of 1970's vintage wet-dream of the direct-mail and phone-bank list-mongers that has turned into something of an Orwellian nightmare as well as something that siphons off party money and that probably will not actually work.

 

So, BAI concludes that ...

 

"The future of Democratic politics will more closely resemble MoveOn.org than it will resemble anything that happens on the convention floor in Boston."

 

He also observes that ...

 

"It is not unthinkable that the privatization of Democratic politics is a step toward institutional obsolescence. People like Andy RAPPAPORT and Jonathon SOROS might succeed in revitalizing progressive politics --- while at the same time destroying what we now call the Democratic Party."

 

My remark is that the alternative to the status quo may be rather worse than the traditional one of (a) following the old rules of a republican democracy, as suggested by my colleague John McCONNELL, but (b) using those rules to change the party, as I favor, to support political enterprise without turning the party over to progressive plutocrats seeking to replace it.

 

::JRBehrman