Excerpt from "Crashing the Gate" (MarKos')

[earthboundmisfit]

This one is next on my reading list! A friend of mine just finished the book, and he says it is to the point: how to build the structure needed to elect Democrats.

For Oklahomans, it goes into detail about what happened with Brad Carson's campaign for the Senate seat that Tom Coburn won.

Plus - I found even MORE to like about Russ Feingold in it - check it out:
www.alternet.org/story/34113/

From excerpt from "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (Chelsea Green, 2006).

It's hard for Democratic candidates to sound like real people when Washington's consultant class holds the purse strings and the power.

"I don't get it. When a consultant on the Republican side loses, we take them out and shoot them. You guys -- keep hiring them." --Nationally prominent Republican official...

(Edited to fix link)

[sandnsea]

1. rotflmao

How many candidates that Markos and Jerome worked for or advocated for have lost so far??

And they had the audacity to write that shit!?!

:rofl:

[madfloridian]

3. How many won last time coached by consultants?

That is a very true sentence. I am reading the book. It is quite good, and though I differ with parts of it....they are so right about losing the consulting class.

Our Democrats do not sound real when they have coached so much. It was a true statement.

[Emit]

2. Can you check your link? Thanks. n/t

[earthboundmisfit]

4. Thank you. I had it bass-ackwards.

Fixed now. :)

[TomClash]

5. Was that Republican official talking about . . .

Bob Shrum?

Long ago, I worked in a campaign that basically had 12 kids and a dog in a Republican CD. "Consulting" was what the candidate did with his wife. The Republican was favored but hardly loved. We won by 6 points. Too much emphasis on consulting and fundraising today and not enough on field work/GOTV.

[madfloridian]

6. One of the illuminating parts...about Chuck Todd.

From your link:

"At one point, using a standard D.C. ploy, party operatives tattled to Chuck Todd, a political reporter at the beltway insider publication The Hotline, that Carson wasn't being a good trooper. "Insiders are extremely worried that Brad Carson is taking too active a role in his own campaign, refusing to hire talented outsiders," Todd reported. While the DSCC wanted Carson to hire inside-the-beltway consultants, Carson was keen on using Eichenbaum, a corporate advertising executive who first created waves by helping Feingold win his dramatic 1992 upset victory using innovative, funny and clever ads, and again helping Feingold win reelection in 1998."

I can think of other people who got tattled on to Chuck et al.

[earthboundmisfit]

7. Yep.

And I'm anxious to read the whole thing to get some more insight on this - we cannot afford to lose in 2006, especially due to this kind of self-destructive thing happening.

[madfloridian]

8. The NYT has the whole first chapter online.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/books/chapters/0326-1st-armstr.html

"We have a Republican Party that can't govern, a Democratic Party that can't get elected, and little doubt that a great nation is suffering as a result.

A prescient headline in the satirical publication The Onion proclaimed three days before George W. Bush's inauguration as the nation's forty-third president on January 20, 2001: "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over.'" While some took solace in the fact that Bush actually lost the popular vote and stole the election in 2000, the results were much harder to explain away in 2004. Bush's first term was a disaster, both on the domestic and foreign policy fronts. Nevertheless, the American people hit the polls on November 2, 2004, and delivered a legitimate victory to the very architect of the nation's greatest woes. It was a stunning rejection of the Democratic Party and an undeserved validation of a Republican Party that has been hijacked by ideologues who place their dogma above the national interest."

[earthboundmisfit]

9. Thanks. Liked this bit, especially:

"Whether the stagnant establishment wants it or not, the new progressive populist movement will reclaim the Democratic Party as the party of the people. Our message is simple: You can get out of the way or work with us. Trying to stop us is a losing proposition."

Damn right!