Here! Here!
I don't know who Dan Kervick is, but his comment in this post by Matthew Yglesias (which was a response to this ill-informed diatribe by Matt Stoller) is absolutely spot-on ...
Matt Stoller has been miffed at Obama from early on because the Obama campaign did not "reach out" sufficiently to bloggers. Matt represents the 2004 vision of the left political blogosphere leading a new progressive movement rooted in blogospheric activism and fund-raising promoted with an edgier, more sharply partisan political rhetoric.
Obama partly subverted that model by hitting on an entirely new approach: packaging progressive policy inside an optimistic unity-based national appeal, while intentionally standing off a bit from personal engagement blogospheric ranting and rancor, while still making use of its fund-raising and message-spreading abilities. Obama imbues progressive themes with an uplifting rhetoric which is helping to produce a renaissance of the progressive spirit by reminding people of the most ennobling, universal and traditionally American aspects of that spirit. The approach has been remarkably successful, as Obama's consistent out-polling of Edwards has shown. This success is, I suspect, an affront to Matt Stoller personally, because it tends to diminish somewhat the role he envisioned for himself and his own version of the progressive movement.
Perlstein doesn't really get it about Reagan. Of course it is true that Reagan's movement represented at its core a crew of of hard core, selfish, anti-government, anti-worker, pro-corporate conservatives. And it's right that that was the policy substance of the Reagan revolution. But the point is, how did Reagan sell this to the public? And in that case, there is no question that Reagan imbued this substance with a sunny and optimistic patriotic message. He created a whole class of (mainly white middle class) voters now called "Reagan Democrats" who were motivated by economic self-interest to reject the welfare state, but were also turned off by what they perceived as the cultural left's anti-Americanism, by what Agnew had called the "nattering nabobs of negativism". Probably the most memorable line from Reagan's 1980 campaign was his "there he goes again" jab at Carter which summed up the spirit of the campaign perfectly. Reagan was the original "Teflon president" because the hard-ass substance was dressed up in a sunny and bouyant optimism that made it hard for Reagan's critics to win the battle of personal charm.
If Obama can create a new coalition of "Obama Republicans", turned off by the Republican degeneration into a fractious and radicalized coalition of rabid anti-government nuts, religious fanatics preaching a gospel of ignorance and anti-American rejection of the Constitution, and out of control spendthrift war mongers, then I say great for Obama. Bring on the Obama Revolution.
Matt Stoller has been miffed at Obama from early on because the Obama campaign did not "reach out" sufficiently to bloggers. Matt represents the 2004 vision of the left political blogosphere leading a new progressive movement rooted in blogospheric activism and fund-raising promoted with an edgier, more sharply partisan political rhetoric.
Obama partly subverted that model by hitting on an entirely new approach: packaging progressive policy inside an optimistic unity-based national appeal, while intentionally standing off a bit from personal engagement blogospheric ranting and rancor, while still making use of its fund-raising and message-spreading abilities. Obama imbues progressive themes with an uplifting rhetoric which is helping to produce a renaissance of the progressive spirit by reminding people of the most ennobling, universal and traditionally American aspects of that spirit. The approach has been remarkably successful, as Obama's consistent out-polling of Edwards has shown. This success is, I suspect, an affront to Matt Stoller personally, because it tends to diminish somewhat the role he envisioned for himself and his own version of the progressive movement.
Perlstein doesn't really get it about Reagan. Of course it is true that Reagan's movement represented at its core a crew of of hard core, selfish, anti-government, anti-worker, pro-corporate conservatives. And it's right that that was the policy substance of the Reagan revolution. But the point is, how did Reagan sell this to the public? And in that case, there is no question that Reagan imbued this substance with a sunny and optimistic patriotic message. He created a whole class of (mainly white middle class) voters now called "Reagan Democrats" who were motivated by economic self-interest to reject the welfare state, but were also turned off by what they perceived as the cultural left's anti-Americanism, by what Agnew had called the "nattering nabobs of negativism". Probably the most memorable line from Reagan's 1980 campaign was his "there he goes again" jab at Carter which summed up the spirit of the campaign perfectly. Reagan was the original "Teflon president" because the hard-ass substance was dressed up in a sunny and bouyant optimism that made it hard for Reagan's critics to win the battle of personal charm.
If Obama can create a new coalition of "Obama Republicans", turned off by the Republican degeneration into a fractious and radicalized coalition of rabid anti-government nuts, religious fanatics preaching a gospel of ignorance and anti-American rejection of the Constitution, and out of control spendthrift war mongers, then I say great for Obama. Bring on the Obama Revolution.
posted by Jmac at 11:02 AM
1 Comments:
Good points, but a small correction:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhear.html
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