Peter Beinart: Ned Scare?
Is Ned Lamont today's Carl Maxey? Maxey, an obscure Spokane attorney and anti-Vietnam activist, seized his 15 minutes of fame in 1970 when he challenged Washington state's famously hawkish Henry "Scoop" Jackson in the Democratic Senate primary. Maxey, unlike Lamont, got crushed. But his antiwar allies took over state parties in Washington and across the country. And, two years later, in a stunning upset, they powered George McGovern to the Democratic presidential nomination.
Does Lamont's victory over Jackson's ideological heir--Joe Lieberman--mean McGovernism has returned? Yes, but not in the way you think. The big similarity between today's antiwar Democrats and yesterday's is structural: Both movements shifted power from politicians to grassroots activists. Before 1972, Democratic presidential nominees were chosen largely by Democratic politicians--bosses like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley who controlled whole blocs of convention delegates. In 1968, they handed Hubert Humphrey the nomination even though he had not competed in a single primary. The McGovernites changed that. After 1968, they pushed through reforms that barred backroom deals and ensured ethnic and gender diversity. The bosses were emasculated. When the party convened to nominate McGovern in 1972, only 30 of 255 Democratic congressmen were among the delegates. Daley's Illinois slate was rejected for running afoul of the new rules and replaced by one led by the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
In the 1980s, the pendulum swung back. The party created "superdelegates" to give politicians a larger role in choosing presidential nominees. The newly formed Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) attacked liberal activists for pulling party nominees too far to the left. And, when the DLC's candidate, Bill Clinton, won the nomination in 1992, he dispensed with the laundry-list platforms of the past, which had promised goodies to each interest group. To this day, the DLC remains an organization of politicians that believes the less beholden politicians are to grassroots activists, the better they will represent voters as a whole.
The "netroots" that fueled Lamont's candidacy could not disagree more. They believe that, as the party's grassroots base has atrophied, Democratic politicians have grown complacent, unresponsive, and downright corrupt. And they are using the Internet to reassert control--to keep closer tabs on how Democratic members of Congress act and to punish those, like Lieberman, who defy their wishes. By allowing activists to communicate, organize, and raise money far more effectively than ever before, the Internet is doing what the McGovernite reforms did a generation ago: transferring power from politicians to activists.
But, while McGovernism and Lamontism are structurally similar, ideologically they are worlds apart. McGovernism constituted, above all, a rejection of cold war liberalism. It was anti-communist liberals like Lyndon Johnson and Humphrey-- not marginal right-wingers like Barry Goldwater--who had taken the United States into Vietnam. And for McGovern--who had been opposing cold war liberalism since 1948, when he backed Henry Wallace over Harry Truman--Vietnam was merely a symptom of the larger disease: anti-communism itself. "The war against communism is over," he told the journalist Theodore White. "Somehow, we have to settle down and live with them."
Today's netroots activists, by contrast, have grown up in the shadow of conservative power. While they, too, constitute the left end of America's political spectrum, today that entire spectrum tilts much further to the right. McGovern wanted to cut America's defense budget by 37 percent; Lamont seems perfectly content with Bush's massive post-September 11 buildup. McGovern compared the military's actions in Vietnam to Nazi Germany; Lamont repeatedly calls American troops heroes. McGovern didn't merely urge the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam; he wanted to withdraw them from South Korea, too. Lamont, by contrast, is so desperate to prove that his opposition to Iraq does not imply some larger dovish orientation that he recently told The Hartford Courant that he considered North Korea an "imminent danger" to the United States--a statement that, if taken seriously, would imply preemptive military action.
To be sure, one of Lamont's major backers, MoveOn, opposed even the Afghan war. But, rather than boasting of that opposition, MoveOn now denies it. And, in general, Lamont's supporters don't attack Iraq as the logical outgrowth of the war on terrorism (as McGovern did with Vietnam and the cold war); they attack Iraq as a distraction from the war on terrorism. McGovernism constituted a rebellion against the ideology that had governed U.S. foreign policy for a quarter-century. Lamontism, by contrast, constitutes a rebellion against one war and one president, anchored by no larger ideological critique whatsoever. ...
Read entire article at New Republic
Does Lamont's victory over Jackson's ideological heir--Joe Lieberman--mean McGovernism has returned? Yes, but not in the way you think. The big similarity between today's antiwar Democrats and yesterday's is structural: Both movements shifted power from politicians to grassroots activists. Before 1972, Democratic presidential nominees were chosen largely by Democratic politicians--bosses like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley who controlled whole blocs of convention delegates. In 1968, they handed Hubert Humphrey the nomination even though he had not competed in a single primary. The McGovernites changed that. After 1968, they pushed through reforms that barred backroom deals and ensured ethnic and gender diversity. The bosses were emasculated. When the party convened to nominate McGovern in 1972, only 30 of 255 Democratic congressmen were among the delegates. Daley's Illinois slate was rejected for running afoul of the new rules and replaced by one led by the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
In the 1980s, the pendulum swung back. The party created "superdelegates" to give politicians a larger role in choosing presidential nominees. The newly formed Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) attacked liberal activists for pulling party nominees too far to the left. And, when the DLC's candidate, Bill Clinton, won the nomination in 1992, he dispensed with the laundry-list platforms of the past, which had promised goodies to each interest group. To this day, the DLC remains an organization of politicians that believes the less beholden politicians are to grassroots activists, the better they will represent voters as a whole.
The "netroots" that fueled Lamont's candidacy could not disagree more. They believe that, as the party's grassroots base has atrophied, Democratic politicians have grown complacent, unresponsive, and downright corrupt. And they are using the Internet to reassert control--to keep closer tabs on how Democratic members of Congress act and to punish those, like Lieberman, who defy their wishes. By allowing activists to communicate, organize, and raise money far more effectively than ever before, the Internet is doing what the McGovernite reforms did a generation ago: transferring power from politicians to activists.
But, while McGovernism and Lamontism are structurally similar, ideologically they are worlds apart. McGovernism constituted, above all, a rejection of cold war liberalism. It was anti-communist liberals like Lyndon Johnson and Humphrey-- not marginal right-wingers like Barry Goldwater--who had taken the United States into Vietnam. And for McGovern--who had been opposing cold war liberalism since 1948, when he backed Henry Wallace over Harry Truman--Vietnam was merely a symptom of the larger disease: anti-communism itself. "The war against communism is over," he told the journalist Theodore White. "Somehow, we have to settle down and live with them."
Today's netroots activists, by contrast, have grown up in the shadow of conservative power. While they, too, constitute the left end of America's political spectrum, today that entire spectrum tilts much further to the right. McGovern wanted to cut America's defense budget by 37 percent; Lamont seems perfectly content with Bush's massive post-September 11 buildup. McGovern compared the military's actions in Vietnam to Nazi Germany; Lamont repeatedly calls American troops heroes. McGovern didn't merely urge the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam; he wanted to withdraw them from South Korea, too. Lamont, by contrast, is so desperate to prove that his opposition to Iraq does not imply some larger dovish orientation that he recently told The Hartford Courant that he considered North Korea an "imminent danger" to the United States--a statement that, if taken seriously, would imply preemptive military action.
To be sure, one of Lamont's major backers, MoveOn, opposed even the Afghan war. But, rather than boasting of that opposition, MoveOn now denies it. And, in general, Lamont's supporters don't attack Iraq as the logical outgrowth of the war on terrorism (as McGovern did with Vietnam and the cold war); they attack Iraq as a distraction from the war on terrorism. McGovernism constituted a rebellion against the ideology that had governed U.S. foreign policy for a quarter-century. Lamontism, by contrast, constitutes a rebellion against one war and one president, anchored by no larger ideological critique whatsoever. ...