OnTheMedia transcript on politics

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week kicked off the first YearlyKos Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, named after the hugely popular blog, "The DailyKos." Bloggers and politicians are congregating in the desert to attend workshops and panels ranging from the CIA leak investigation to, quote, "down-ballot online organizing." More than anything, it's a chance for the so-called "netroots," normally scattered throughout the country, to assemble and strategize in the flesh. The fact that bloggers are gathering is not unique. The fact that they are being visited by Democratic Party heavies, including Howard Dean, Barbara Boxer, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, Mark Warner and Harry Reid, is. It appears the "netroots" have arrived. Matt Stoller's among them in Las Vegas this weekend. He blogs for myDD.com and runs BlogPAC, a netroots political action committee. Altogether, he's an ideal candidate for articulating the meaning of netroots.

MATT STOLLER: Netroots is a term that combines the words Internet and grassroots. They're people that are new actors in the political system and use the Internet to make their voice heard.

MATT STOLLER: Well, I think it does. I mean, first of all, the progressive netroots were a market response to the failure to deliver good liberal information. There are already plenty of channels to find conservative information. You can watch television news, you can listen to radio. There are plenty of websites already. There's NewsMax, etc., etc. There are lots of newspapers, editorials, and there really weren't very places for liberals to get information. So in one sense, the blogs first became big on the left because of that. You also have a need for new institutions on the left, and we don't have that on the right, because the right controls the White House, the Senate, the House and the intellectual debate in this country. So it's not that the Internet is more prone to left-wing ideas. It's just that they don't need it as much. But you also have the fact that blue areas have higher Internet penetration and more broadband, and so the people that have that are more likely to be online.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This first YearlyKos managed to pull in some major Democratic leaders. What specifically can blogs and bloggers do for politicians? We know they raised a lot of money for Howard Dean during the last presidential election.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: We know that they were able to organize canvassers. Is that the principal goal here, to organize an army of political activists?

MATT STOLLER: Yeah. I mean, I think that if you look at the situation that's going on now in Connecticut, for instance, where you have a primary, the blogs have raised a lot of money for a primary challenger to Senator Lieberman, but not just money, but also support and messaging, and have done research and have really created a public forum for debate.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know, when Howard Dean was running strong, during the last presidential race, the mainstream media declared the blogosphere a secret weapon, an undiscovered country that could make or break candidates. After Dean pretty much fell abruptly from grace, the blogosphere was regarded as an overrated chimera that really didn't have much effect on campaigns at all. Do you think there was just too much rushing to judgment here?

MATT STOLLER: Of course. The people who were saying that are, you know, insiders protecting their turf. You know, the Washington press corps and the sort of traditional Democratic establishment, they're faddish, they act like high school children -

MATT STOLLER: - and, you know, they're not adults about these things. I mean, the blogs are new to the process. They represent millions of people coming into the process and participating. And we're not facile. We don't obsess about who's in and who's out. We don't think about things like the Clintons' marriage and whether it's important. We're not part of that whole culture of really vapid insiderism. I mean, there are millions of us, and, what is it -- the gang of 500 -- are the most important journalists in D.C. Like there's 500 of them. That's not democracy. That's not what this country is about. So I don't really care what they say. I don't care what they think about this movement, because it is a movement and it represents so many more people and so much more energy. And, you know, two years later, after the presidential election, you know, we're still here. We're still plugging away. We're participating. You know, we're changing the country every day, and we're getting stronger and we're learning more and we're getting more experienced.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Matt Stoller blogs for myDD.com. The politician most associated with the "netroots" is Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. He joins me now. Governor, welcome to the show.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, netroot candidates won some and lost some in this week's elections. In a Democratic Senate primary in Montana, the netroot favorite, Jon Tester, beat his Democratic opponent, John Morrison. But, in a closely watched special election in California, the House seat forcibly vacated by disgraced Republican Duke Cunningham was filled by another Republican, a lobbyist, no less. Now, that's a big loss for the netroot Democrat, isn't it?

HOWARD DEAN: Well, we actually considered that a win for the Democrat. We didn't pick up the seat, but we were only a few points short. They had to spend about six million dollars in a congressional race. If we can do that, we'll bankrupt the Republican Party. It was all the on-the-ground stuff that made the difference. And we didn't win, but we came very close because of the on-the-ground stuff. And the on-the-ground stuff and the online stuff are mixed closely and tightly together, because that's how you get people to knock on doors is organizing through the Internet.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And that's what you did in your presidential campaign, plus raising a lot of money on the Internet. But then again, Governor, you didn't win.

HOWARD DEAN: But that had nothing to do with the Internet folks or the Internet community. We didn't win because I didn't make the proper transition in September, when I became the frontrunner, from being an insurgent to being someone who could be seen as president by a large majority of Americans. It had nothing to do with the failings of the netroot community. The netroot community, the Internet community, made our campaign.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The DailyKos was one of the websites that helped make your campaign, I guess, and blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is the founder of the DailyKos. Now, he and Jerome Armstrong, who worked on your campaign and founded another political blog, myDD.com, wrote a book together called Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, and it's really critical of the Democratic Party. In fact, it's been described as a manifesto for taking back politics. Did you read it? Did you learn anything?

HOWARD DEAN: Well, you know, there's not much in there I don't agree with. They're a little harsh on the Democratic Party. But the Democratic Party's an institution in the middle of change, and these so-called bloggers are the agents of change. It is true that they can't win elections, although they can put you in a position where you can win elections, with other factors. But it's also true that we're getting to the position where you can't win without them.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But do you think that the netroots pose the risk of dividing the party by pulling it further to the left, especially in such a conservative time?

HOWARD DEAN: I think it's a big mistake to talk about left, right and center any more. Those terms are relatively meaningless. And I think what you're seeing is a reform movement and a renewal movement in the Democratic Party. And the mainstream press is always going to focus on the conflict in that renewal movement, but underneath the hood, if you look at what's happening, there's actually a fair amount of cooperation. The so-called bloggers, or the netroots community, is interested in helping Democrats, even traditional Democrats who aren't necessarily reform, if they will stand up for the kind of vision of America that America used to stand for before the right wing began governing the country. So there's a lot more cooperation between the traditional Democrats and the bloggers as you might think, first of all. Secondly, the bloggers are the cutting edge, and we need people out there who are always pushing the envelope. But I think this term, again, of left, right and center is essentially irrelevant in today's politics.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So as the head of the DNC, you embrace the reform elements so strongly championed by the netroots. You find yourselves on the same page.

HOWARD DEAN: That's true. We do. Their politics is not the politics of personality. Harry Reid, I would say, is a fairly traditional Democratic politician. When he shut down the Senate because the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee lied about whether he was going to investigate Iraq, the response from the netroots community was extraordinary. These folks are interested in ideals. They're not interested in personalities, and I find that very, very refreshing at a time when the mainstream press mostly dwells on personalities and personal foibles instead of actual issues. These folks on the blog, by and large, at least on the Democratic side, are issues-oriented people who want to change America for the better.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Howard Dean is the chairman of the DNC. Paul Begala is a Democrat, a political analyst and CNN commentator. He stands outside the dance going on between bloggers and politicians, but he has a stake in whether everyone gets their steps right. He'd like to see his party gain control of the House in '06 and control of the White House in '08, and netroots is, as we've heard, part of the strategy. Paul Begala, welcome to OTM.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what do you make of the likes of Howard Dean and Harry Reid making the trip to Las Vegas to address the netroots bloggers this weekend?

PAUL BEGALA: I think it's great. Politicians are like Willie Sutton, the [LAUGHING] famous bank robber, right? They asked him why he robbed banks. [LAUGHS] He said, that's where the money's at. I'd rather them be spending their time with liberal bloggers, you know, than in back rooms with Washington lobbyists.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah, but how soon, in your opinion, until blogs, say, rise to the level of TV, newspapers and news magazines in terms of influencing politics? Or is this really about dollars and cents in the end?

PAUL BEGALA: No, I think it's a little of both. Governor Dean, when he was running for president, was the first breakthrough candidate in terms of Internet fundraising. Although he didn't do very well in the primaries, he showed a way to raise large amounts of money ethically.

PAUL BEGALA: Internet fundraising has the capacity to have very few strings attached, because if you're only giving 25 dollars or 200 dollars, or relatively small amounts of money from millions of people, it's mostly people who simply share your values and want to see you win.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So aside from money, what can blogs do for Democrats that the Democrats haven't been able to do for themselves?

PAUL BEGALA: Well, they can begin with a spinal transplant. You know, it's a difficult thing. But politicians generally – this is across the board – they generally begin, you know, the same way that entrepreneurial businesspeople begin, or anybody else who takes a risk in life. But you know, when you get here to Washington, they become more risk-averse. The more you have, the more you fear that you will lose. But a lot of the bloggers don't have anything to lose. They're sitting there with relatively low barriers to entry, low overhead costs. If they're good, they attract an audience. And so they have less to lose, and I think that's a very important thing that they can do is bring a little more backbone, a little more courage, a little more spine to my party. Second, what's revolutionary in terms of media is that the bloggers on the left have begun to do what the right has been doing for 30 years, which is to try to police the media itself. There are bloggers, there are websites who track the so-called mainstream media coverage and critique it, and I think it's enormously useful.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And now liberal bloggers have written a book, or maybe several, criticizing the Democratic Party for lack of a spine. The netroots really aren't in a position at this point to dictate to the Democratic Party, are they?

PAUL BEGALA: No, but it's useful to have them in the mix. You know, it's a marketplace of ideas, and if voters and the politicians believe that those observations are correct, they'll adjust to them and adapt to them. And I think they are. I mean, three years ago, most of the mainstream media was marching along and supporting the president's drive to war. I'm very proud that on my little, much-maligned show "Crossfire," Carville and I, and Bob Novak on the right, for that matter, were all critics of the war and opponents of it. But today, the netroots have grown so much bigger that I think it's a lot less likely that the majority of Democrats would go along with the war in Iraq if the vote were today.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So in your view, then, the netroots aren't just a temporary port in the storm for Democrats until they achieve majorities again. They're a permanent and important constituency of sorts.

PAUL BEGALA: They are, if they can prove that they can deliver. Again, Howard Dean proved that they can deliver money. I want to see that they can deliver votes. Right now, the contribution is sometimes money and very often ideas, some strategic, some tactical, some philosophical.

PAUL BEGALA: But that's what I want. I [LAUGHS] want to see votes, I want to see organizers, I want to see that kind of work. And I think that's where the next wave is. It's very hard, actually, to move people from online activism to offline activism, but that's the next step. That's what liberals and Democrats are going to have to do.

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