Check this out:A group of liberal bloggers said it is teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party farther to the left.This is intriguing to me on several levels. First, as co-founder of the Draft James Webb movement, netroots coordinator on the Webb campaign, co-author of a book on the netroots, and an active netroots participant since 2003, I'm curious to see how the progressive blogosphere develops in general.
Soliciting donations from their readers, the bloggers said they are planning to recruit liberal candidates for challenges against more centrist Democrats currently in Congress.
The formation of the group marks another step in the evolution of the blogosphere, which has proven effective at motivating party activists to give money and time to political campaigns, especially in local races.
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The new organization is in many ways the liberal equivalent of the Club for Growth, a conservative group that has financed primary challenges against Republicans it deems insufficiently dedicated to tax cuts and small government.
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.... Organizers said they already had a bank account of $500,000, which they raised over a short period in September when several blogs solicited donations. Organizers said they expected to collect far more than that when they start fundraising in earnest this month.
Second, in 2007, I was working with several other Virginia netroots activists to put together something quite similar to this, except our goal wasn't, per se, to "push the Democratic Party farther to the left." Instead, what we were talking about was creating a big-tent, broadly progressive organization which would continue the momentum from the 10,000-strong "ragtag army" of Jim Webb's victory over George Allen to keep building the Virginia Democratic Party and the progressive netroots/grassroots movement in Virginia. Among other things, we planned for exactly what is described above, a progressive counterpart to the "Club for Growth" (we were going to call it the "Club for Progress"). We planned online tools to empower activists and to reward them for increased involvement (we called that the "mojo app"). And we planned to have organizers in every part of Virginia.
So, what stopped us? Basically, time and money. On the money front, we were hoping the DPVA would see the potential of this and jump on it in a big way. They seemed interested, but the process took too long and the netroots' leaders needed to make a living to support their families (I know, what a concept). Also, we never got to the point of lining up major donors before we pretty much had to move on with our lives. In the end, the Obama campaign pretty much did the mojo app and empowering activists part. To my knowledge, they never set up an equivalent of the Club for Progress. Also, their focus was - rightly - on electing Barack Obama, not necessarily on growing progressive netroots movements in each state over the long run. That was our objective, and I personally still believe it would be a smart thing to do. Meanwhile, I'll be watching this new grouping of "liberal bloggers," MoveOn and organized labor to see where it leads.
UPDATE: Sam Stein has a much better explanation then the New York Times of what this is all about...
