Book: Crashing the Gate

Armstrong & Moulitsas: Crashing the Gate

An energizing book that puts the cultural and strategic shift of progressives and the Democratic party into nice perspective: as a group that is moving in the right directions to act like an out-of-power group hungry to recapture its voice and political power by renewing itself.

One key to this is the transition (well underway) from a political-majority party consisting of a coalition of single-issue groups to a more coherent multi-issue philosophy.  As they point out, almost all new progressive organizations in the last decade were multi-issue organizations, not special-interest -- Center for American Progress, Progressive Majority, Democracy for America, American’s Coming Together, MoveOn, etc.

The give good coverage to the changing landscape:

• things that have changed: new donors, new organizations, the building of a (multi-issue) progressive movement outside the Democratic Party
• things that need more change: accountability from the Washington-based consultancy culture, beltway demos, renewed thinking about reaching all America not just segments, of understanding and reaching people at their belief level not just their demographics

They also did a good job encapsulting some of the big transitions for the right, which one could summarize as:

• 1964 - Goldwater, fueling the right-wing anger at Republicans that were “Democrat-lite” and motivating action to build thinktanks, leadership institutes, etc.
• 1980 - Reagan, an appealing message vehicle for core principles, leading to a right-wing hunger for and hope to also capture the congress and courts
• 1994 - Gingrich, the first “affirmative vision” of what could be done, by selecting from a huge menu of actions from the right-wing thinktanks
• 2000 - Bush (this is my own), pathological extreme of the party leading to overreach

Technorati Tags: Abortion, Book review, Character_&_Leadership, Current_Affairs, Framing, GOTV, leadership_development, political strategy, political_strategy, progressive, Progressive_Viewpoints, Religion, Restoring_a_Progressive_America, Rural-Urban, think_tank, Values and principles, Values_and_principles