Purple America.

After reading Laura Flanders’ book Blue Grit, I was so impressed with her various recommendations for the Democratic party on how to revitalize themselves by tapping the progressive movement, that I contacted her for an interview. Which she was gracious enough to give. I was particularly impressed by her analysis of how “moving to the right” on social issues is just a failing strategy. So, without further ado, here it is:

In your new book, Blue Grit, you make an argument that I’d characterize as a combination of the “50 states� strategy and the full-on progressive argument that our politics can win on their merits. Would you say that’s a good description of the book?

I would, but I went one step further than making the argument, I went out and did the reporting to back that up. It’s not just a left-wing dream.

I found the section on the “Montana Miracle� intriguing. In your book, you advance this idea by describing how the state of Montana has moved to the left by electing Brian Schweitzer state governor. You deny some of the popular wisdom that Schweitzer is just a charismatic guy and instead argue that this is evidence that Montana’s moving to the left. What happened in Montana to make you conclude that it’s more of a sea change?

I don’t say that the politics of the state simply dashed leftward. I say that local organizers managed to tap into a stream of progressive politics that existed historically in the state and they’ve been building strength. Schweitzer was more than a dashing cowboy; his campaign benefited from the work of environmental groups, Native American organizers, women’s groups, anti hate groups and others. The so-called “Montana Miracle� wasn’t a miracle, I say, it was the result of a decade of activists’ work.

A lot of people talk about talk about the trickle down effect in politics (that the candidate at the top of the ticket pulls along those lower down), but I think it’s more about trickle up.

Look at what happened with Native Americans. Native Americans tend to vote Democratic at the same levels that African-Americans do (80-90 percent,) but Montana’s Native Americans (the state’s largest minority) weren’t voting in large numbers in US races, because, for one thing they had their own reservation-based governments, and in addition, they’d long been discriminated against. There was little incentive to participate. Thanks to redistricting, and civil rights challenges to Montana’s election rules, new districts were created just before the ’04 election that were majority Native. There was an incentive for Native Americans to run for office. That in turn created an incentive to vote, and the Democrats in general benefited.

You also have the women’s groups running their own candidates at a local level. They turned out a vote that also went to Schweitzer. Voters who show up for the candidate they’ve met face to face on their doorstep pull the lever for Schweitzer (whom they’ve probably only seen on TV) while they’re in the booth.

I don’t believe in random swings of opinion; what you have are swings of organizing. You can change opinions, but it’s not just magic – it takes work. That’s one of the things we can learn from the Right: states like Montana didn’t just “swing to the right� in the 1980s – they were pushed by conservative groups. Corporate-backed anti-environmentalists calling themselves the “Wise Use� movement and Christian Right groups like the Christian Coalition literally poured in money and built leadership. They also serviced their base.

That’s another thing we can learn from the Right. Regular people don’t flock to extreme right-wing churches because the first thing on their minds is banning gay marriage or speeding up Armageddon. Those churches are offering childcare, free lunch, marriage counseling, even fun. Funders on the left side of the spectrum – and all too many of the Democrats’ national leaders — seem to believe that they can leave the base organizations to starve for four years, then ride in, demand their help to swell the vote, demand their votes, and then ride out of town in a cloud of dust –with the local’s donors and their mailing lists. That’s not how you build support.

For grassroots groups, it’s a very feast-or-famine experience. It’s not the same on the right. Philanthropists who want to learn from the Right need to treat grassroots groups not as an afterthought that can be taken for granted, but as the precious fuel that powers politics.

What do you think drives the focus to individual politicians and away from all the people creating the real change that allows these politicians to win elections?

I think it’s our major media that do it worst. They love to cover elections as if they were horse races, as if the only players that count are the horses running around the track. I think the bloggers have done a great job of redirecting attention to the people in the stands. But the blogosphere is diverse, and some of them are more focused on the individual players, the DC people and the politicians.

With some exceptions, grassroots organizers are not writing blogs, they are organizing people. This is why I had literally to travel the states to get their stories because they’re not written down anywhere. Grassroots activists know what they do, and they talk to each other, but it’s rarely written about. Bloggers may think of themselves as activists, but they’re not in the streets. Many major media forbid their journalists from even participating in political work in their time off. They can invest in the stock market but they may not march in the street (because it might hurt their “objectivity.â€?). So the whole arena is foreign to them. They have no instincts about it.

The blogosphere is not homogeneous. Some bloggers are rabble-rousers; others are clearly auditioning for the Washington Post. In Connecticut, I saw a lot of bloggers who were activists first. Their blogging was part of their activism, and they did a lot to help Ned Lamont with the Democratic nomination over Joe Lieberman.

You have some harsh words for the way the Democratic Party is allotting its resources. What are the major changes you’d like to see come into play right now, so they’re in a better position to take on the 2008 election?

I think Howard Dean’s on the right track with his 50 state project. The party’s in a shambles in most of the country. If Democrats want to be a national party at all, going forward, they need to build at the local level, bottom up. Surveyed after the ’04 election 66 percent of state Democratic parties had no full time communications director, no functioning website, certainly no computerized voter – or volunteer — lists. I found that some really had no current lists of any sort.

One of the biggest breaks you make with conventional wisdom is your advice for liberals to embrace the culture wars instead of just changing the subject and hope they’ll go away. You disagree strongly with the Thomas Frank theory that cultural issues are a distraction from “real� issues like labor and the economy. What are your objections to the changing-the-subject strategy?

I say that the Democrats are never going to be anti-gay or anti-abortion or anti-racial justice enough to please their critics. On the other hand, they could learn from their friends. These fundamental issues of fairness are not losing issues; it’s how the Democratic candidates tend to deal with those issues that trips them up. In just a decade of talking about gay marriage, now 66% of Americans support some legal recognition for gay and lesbian relationships. My book BLUE GRIT is full of examples of candidates who have won office – even in conservative areas — by standing up on these issues and gaining respect. Candidates who duck and dodge look shady. They certainly don’t look like leaders.

For instance, Hillary Clinton was asked point blank: “Do you believe homosexuality is immoral?� She answered, “I’ll leave that for others to decide.� That’s not leadership. Moreover, it’s insulting to her very own base.

In my book, I say that when John Kerry was being swift-boated, he could have learned something from the AIDS-activist group Act Up, who say that “Silence equals death.� Had he sought the advice of people who fight for gay rights, he would have learned that bullies don’t back down just because you’re nice to them.

Thomas Frank explained that social issues were a distraction by saying that people vote for a ban on abortion, get a tax cut for the rich—

When Thomas Frank wrote that, women’s rights were already shrinking around the country, some “distraction.� Now the Supreme Court just ruled that a fetus’s life is more important than a woman’s health.

I don’t agree that discrimination’s a distracting “social� issue. When you’re discriminated against for a job or a promotion, you don’t feel it in your sewing circle. You feel it in your pocket. What is discrimination if not economic? .

Don’t the working classes have a right to personal happiness as well? Surely, working class women occasionally find themselves in need for an abortion. In my view, the whole “social� vs “economic/populist� divide is false.

In the book, you mention that the idea that the working class votes Republican is wrong, anyway.

People who make under $50,000 a year vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Frank got his definition of working class by looking at education and things like church attendance. Defined by income, the working class votes for the Democrats.

The section in your book on how ordinary people are becoming the media was both inspiring and frustrating. It’s clear that progressive activists who are creating alternative media mostly through the internet and radio are helping the Democrats out, often without much cooperation from the Democrats themselves. The problem I see isn’t that the Democrats are necessarily old fogeys, though, but that they’re acutely aware that if they do reach out to alternative media, they are courting the danger that the mainstream media will lash out in an effort to protect their turf. Look at the way the mainstream media was willing to create a storm over nothing to separate the John Edwards campaign from their blogger outreach strategy. (For obvious reasons, this is the first thing to come to mind for me.) How do we get past this catch-22?

I think we do it the good old-fashioned way of showing that our listeners and readers care, and that we have a following with an impact that will give the well-endowed, well-ensconced media a run for their money. It’s been so long since they’ve done any real reporting. Bill Moyers’ show on the media coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war showed just how few of the pundits (who were holding forth on the topic) had ever been to Iraq.
I think that’s what sets the DIY journalists — the best bloggers – apart: they’re not in it to get approval from the Washington Post. They cover stuff the others increasingly don’t.

The candidates have to think about who they’re speaking to, who they’re trying to reach. All this money and focus is on buying time for television advertising. What’s more important, the TV advertisement or the person you speak to down the block?

The right wing invested serious money in talk radio and small media, even though they didn’t have the large audience numbers at the start. The right wing understood the power of the well-targeted microphone, even if the market is small. The minister preaches to the choir or the choir doesn’t show up. It’s important to talk to people who disagree with us, but it’s also important to talk to the people who are your base. Any marketer will tell you that if you start ignoring your regular customers, you’re setting yourself up bankruptcy. It’s the choir that sings.

There’s also the problem of the old guard fearing the new media will turn on them. Do you think that’s a legitimate fear? How do we handle it?

I think it’s called democracy, you know, that the public voice is allowed to make its own judgment. Is there a pack mentality to the blogosphere? Sure, I can see sometimes why politicians are panicked. I think there’s no question, though, that the mainstream media have enjoyed a one-way communication with their public and they are freaked out that now that public has a way to speak back. They don’t like what they’re hearing, they don’t like that we check their facts. I used to work for FAIR years ago, and we would write the mainstream outlets letters when they’d get something wrong, and they’d get back to us when they felt like it, if at all. They don’t have that power anymore. It’s hard for them to puff themselves up in their stuffed shirts as if they are something special, with us out here correcting them.

At the end of the chapter about media in my book, I write that it’s not all the media’s fault. And I say this as a media critic. It’s easy to criticize the media, but while they hold a lot of power, they don’t have it all. You saw that after Hurricane Katrina: there was plenty of coverage. Even the corporate media stayed there for weeks. We saw bodies floating down the street, and we still didn’t see a social movement rise up and demand the rebuilding of the levees, the rebuilding the social safety net, a re-ordering of our nation’s priorities as well as help for the Gulf Coast.

I’d have liked to have seen the whole Democratic caucus in Congress stand up and say, “Until we see full support for the Gulf Coast, until we grapple seriously with what happened, we won’t do any business.� You saw the NAACP stand up and the most creative thing that happened was they wanted minority contractors to get the work. What does it mean to be a society, if you can’t look after your own? What is government for, if not to protect and help the people?