The post in which I respond to DM and further establish my identity as a boring sell-out

Hmmm...I'm not sure how I feel about DM's argument. It sounds a little too close to saying that striking some kind of radical pose and feeling good about yourself for doing so is more important than actually accomplishing anything; image over substance and all that. Maybe it's just the example that you're using. I mean, what have the black-clad anarchists really accomplished, even at the local level (and outside of Berkeley)? And how powerful and desirable an identity is that? The anarchists are a subculture, and I like having lots of subcultural folks around, it makes for a more interesting cultural environment, but I don't see how they do anything to slow the creeping authoritarianism and inequality of our society.

I do agree that local political action is important (though I think we need a clearer definition of "local"--Greenmedallion jumps between local=town councils and local=the state of California in his post below, for example), but don't see this needing to take the form of some radical avant-garde outside of the larger political culture of the country. Why not be involved in the Democratic party at the local level? In this position one could potentially influence who ends up running for city or state office, helping more progressive candidates to get elected or pushing the party platform to the left; state and city offices function like the minor leagues, helping groom people for national office; more real leftists at the local level will eventually translate into more real leftists at the national level.

This is something that the right, especially the evangelical right, has done to great effect, while the Democratic party totally neglected their local level party organization throughout the '90s, which arguably played a big part in their losses in '00, '02 and '04. Howard Dean got elected head of the DNC in large part because he promised to strengthen the local party infrastructure and run candidates in every congressional election, not just the ones that looked like safe bets. As a result, we've got a Democratic congress that's raised the minimum wage, passed a (decent, not perfect) resolution to end the Iraq war, passed card-check union elections and started investigating the incredible abuses of power that defined the last six years of Republican one-party rule. What's wrong with all that? Bush will veto everything they pass, but that just says to me that it's that much more important to elect enough dems to overturn a veto and a dem president next year, not that we need more local avant-gardes.


The other area I wanted to bring up in response to DM, is that while the local is important, I think that the rise of political blogging, on-line communities and on-line activism means that there's the potential to reach people, influence national debates and advance progressive goals beyond just the local level in a really direct way. For example, you can go on Dailykos, register and post a diary, and possibly have it be seen by the over-100,000 people a day that check out the site. Lots of dem politicians now post there regularly, and if you want to comment on what they've got to say, you can (Admittedly, I'd assume that a lot of the posts by politicians are really being posted by their aides, but the parties and candidates definitely track what's being said about them on the political blogs). Another example is the on-going US Attorney firing scandal, which looks likely to at the very least lead to the resignation of Alberto Gonzalez. The blog Talking Points Memo was writing about this and doing actual investigative journalism on it a full month before any of the mainstream media picked up on it. Those are just two examples of some of the new possiblities that I think are opening up; you could also get into the ability of campaigns to raise money online through large numbers of small donations, thus being less beholden to the big money donors representing narrow corporate interests; the ability of groups like Moveon to influence debate...lots going on; lots of possiblities.

I don't know. For myself I don't see anything wrong with being involved in Democratic party politics; I don't see the need to claim some radical or hip, above-it-all identity, and I don't think we necessarily need to choose between local and national involvment.