By: E&P Staff In an article in the upcoming Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine, frequent contributor Matt Bai looks at the aftermath of the recent midterm elections. Yet he suggests that things may not be all that rosy for Democrats as voters seem suspicious of anyone who gains power in Washington, D.C.
In Bai's view, the Dems have another possible problem: the very same liberal bloggers that helped make them the new majority in Congress.
The party's leaders have vowed to put together an agenda and work with the president and other Republicans to implement it. But Bai declares that there will be "significant obstacles to doing that" and only partly because the new Democratic caucus, as we've already seen, is fairly disparate.
His explanation: The party used to be controlled by narrow interest groups, such as "big labor." They still hold influence but they are in decline, only to have given way "to a new array of powerful actors: MoveOn.org, liberal philathropists, crusading bloggers. These new forces don't care so much about litmus-test policies, but they are adamant about confronting the president. The influence of the netroots, as the growing Web-based Democrats have come to be called, is likely to stifle an inclination toward compromise or creativity, making it difficult for Democrats to transition from an opposition party to a governing one. Thoughtful and dynamic leadership, after all, requires a willingness to negotiate and a tolerance for dissent."
The Times Magazine has had a mixed track record this year in its political focus, featuring on its cover Sen. Rick Santorum (who handily lost re-election), former Gov. Mark Warner (who quickly dropped out of the race for president) and Ken Mehlman (who steered his party to a humiliating election disaster). Its cover on Howard Dean looks a little better.
Bai's article mainly focuses on the likely change from ideological to "generational" politics in the future and the need for the aging leaders of both parties to find "the wisdom to step out of the way."
And speaking of "netroots": William Safire in his "On Language" column in the same issue traces the invention of that word to a 1993 mention in an e-mail list, first used by certain "rmcdon" at the University of California. But he says the popularizer of the word was Jerome Armstrong of the liberal blog MyDD, who may have first used it on Dec. 18, 2002, in promoting (very early) Howard Dean's campaign for president.
Safire says the word "will soon be in most new dictionnaries."
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