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Start Making Sense

Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics

by Lakshmi Chaudhry, Don Hazen

Introduction

Start Making Sense sums up the challenge that progressives, populists, and independents face today. First we have to start making sense of who we are and where we want to go. Then we have to start making sense to the American public so we can get there.

It’s time to step up and take charge. Until now, too many of us left politics to the so-called experts. At the expense of our future, we turned a blind eye to how much political consultants, lobbyists, and party insiders represent a permanent “Democratic establishment” that controls the political agenda, which is not our own.

At AlterNet (www.alternet.org), we have been reporting on the events, activities, and debates that have occurred among progressives in recent years—from the response to 9/11 to the Iraq war to the 2004 presidential election. And in a way, we have been both activists and journalists, both involved in and documenting the progressive movement and its actions all along. That is one reason we have become one of the most popular Web magazines for political and cultural news.

Now, we have brought together some of our writers, editors, and experts to write a new story about our political future, while confronting what went wrong in the past election. And, perhaps most important, we want to offer you practical advice about what is necessary to build a progressive majority in America today.

How you look at what happened on November 2, 2004, depends on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. On the positive side, we accomplished much that can help us as we move forward. On the other hand, it was a botched opportunity. Overall, the Democrats weren’t tough enough or smart enough, and all of us need to be far better organized if the conservative stranglehold on government is going to be challenged.

So the election offered material for both hope and despair. This book, however, won’t be debating whether the glass is half empty or half full. We’ve opted instead for realism. The bottom line is that there is too much at stake. With lessons learned, we must go forward.

Start Making Sense is not designed to provide answers; it’s too soon for that. We want to help you start thinking, talking, and acting to build a movement to take back America.

With that in mind, this book is organized into three basic sections. The first, “Looking Back,” is an attempt to make sense of the stunning loss on November 2, 2004. Among the lessons of the presidential election of 2004 is that Democratic and liberal politics have become far too “top down.” From John Kerry and the Democratic National Committee to America Coming Together to national interest organizations, we often end up with one-way communication from the leaders to the members.

Progressives gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Democratic campaigns, and what do we have to show for it? Not much. We still don’t have the progressive infrastructure we need for political success. Many strong local groups are still underfunded and understaffed. This top-down approach has to change. Far too much of our money went into the coffers of the media conglomerates for advertising, and lots more of our money bankrolled the salaries of consultants and pollsters. According to the Alliance for Better Campaigns, an astonishing $1.6 billion was spent on television advertising in the election. Overall, more than $2.2 billion was spent in the election.

Many of us share a deep frustration with voter suppression in the election process itself. We probably will never know for sure what the real vote count was. But thanks to the perseverance of many in Ohio and in other states, layers of the electoral onion have been peeled away, exposing a rotten core. Reforming the system has to be a big priority.

Also in the first section, we take a close, hard look at what we are up against. The success of conservatives is based on a powerful grassroots network that includes churches, American Legion Halls, gun clubs, small businesses, and so on. To help us make sense of the recent past, we have picked the brains of some trailblazers who are challenging the conventional progressive wisdom: people like Howard Dean, Arianna Huffington, Adam Werbach, George Lakoff, and Robert Greenwald.

“Looking Forward,” the second section, details the big issues we need to address and grapple with: the Iraq war, the culture war, and the economy. In this, we have looked for some fresh ideas and perspectives from the likes of Naomi Klein, Andy Stern, Thomas Frank, and Tom Hayden.

The last section, “Getting Active,” offers a big-picture perspective— from people like Wes Boyd and Colin Greer—as well as concrete suggestions for what we can all do in our local communities.

It is important to remember that building a democratic movement is a long-term project. As you’ll read in this book, conservatives have been organizing systematically for thirty-plus years, with steadily increasing power and effectiveness. Many of us jumped into electoral politics for the first time during the 2004 campaign, and November 2 was an eye-opener: the system sure needs a whole lot of fixing. But we can’t sit back and wait for 2008. Politics isn’t something we can do every four years, or we’ll keep losing—and we’ll have lousy candidates to boot.

Now is the time to assert some people power. We need to get involved in our towns, cities, regions, and states and move away from focusing only on the national stage. If nothing else, the 2004 election proved once again that all politics is local.

Oh, and one more thing: this book is a living document. Limitations of time and space kept us from including a lot more content. We’ll post more articles and general food for thought at www.StartMakingSense.org. We hope that what you read—in this book and on our site—inspires you to get involved and help move progressive politics toward a better future.

Remember: you are the movement.

Don Hazen, AlterNet Executive Editor
Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet Senior Editor
San Francisco February 2005