New book: Progressive bloggers are 'the first real political movement of the 21st century' David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Tuesday September 4, 2007





Print This Email This A New York Times Magazine political reporter who became fascinated in 2003 by the "overwhelming emotion" among Howard Dean's supporters has now written a book about what he calls "the creation of the first real political movement of the 21st century." Matt Bai's The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics describes the growth of the progressive movement beginning with "the anger, not just at conservative government, but at the direction of the Democratic Party" that Bai first sensed in 2003. Bai explained to NBC's Tim Russert that he sees the role of blogs as being less like conservative talk radio, to which they are often compared, than like the religious right during the rise of conservatism in the 1960's and 70's. He called bloggers "a group of folks who have a very passionate, 24 hour, 7 day a week following who bypass the traditional media, who sort of preach the gospel of liberal politics in a way that their like-minded followers take very seriously and very literally." When Russert asked him why Hillary Clinton, who polls as the frontrunning presidential candidate among Democrats in general, trails Edwards and Obama in the blogsophere, Bai replied that there is "a very strong backlash against the Democratic ethos of the 90's and against Clintonism as they see it -- triangulation, centrism. There is a sense that ... the Clinton years were ones of selling out the party." On the other hand, Bai says he does not expect bloggers to be "outraged" if a candidate they support wins the presidential nomination and then turns more towards the center. "This is a very tactical movement," he said. "This is not a movement based on any vision of government. ... These folks want to win, and whatever they need to do to help a nominee win, they're going to do." The following video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast on September 4.



