by publius
There’s been an interesting back and forth on whether the so-called "netroots" is an honest-to-God political movement. The whole thing was triggered by Matt Stoller’s TPM Cafe post, which led to a number of heated responses (rounded up here). Ezra Klein sums them up:
The semi-complicated backstory is that Matt Stoller wrote a post on TPM
Cafe taking the 60s left to task, and a bunch of somewhat older, less
netrootsy bloggers struck back at it.
To be grossly general, the Stoller/Kos camp thinks that the netsroots (the New New Left) is successfully building new political institutions, while the 60s Left (the Old New Left) wasn’t very successful on that front. The Sawicky/Newman camp disagrees, arguing the the 60s-80s Left built an unprecedented amount of political institutions, while the netsroots has accomplished very little in this respect.
What’s striking about this debate though is how much these two sides actually agree about. Both sides — correctly I think — adopt a Marxist-type assumption that the key to political change is structural change. In other words, to bring about real political change, you have to do things like build institutions and, more generally, take the steps necessary to assume actual political power.
Along these lines, I’ve always thought the real achievement of the New Deal was the institutional framework it left in place to serve its constituency’s interests in the future (an achievement that carries on today). In this sense, the regulatory state is the political manifestation of the progressive movement and a concrete monument to its success.
The question then is whether we’re seeing something similar in the netsroots, or whether it’s just sound and fury, signifying nothing. As Josh Marshall said, "Institutions Talk, Enthusiasm Walks." Before I get to that question though, let me take a detour through Romeo & Juliet. Bear with me here.