Flash Forward: September 2004
When Eli Pariser walked onstage in the conference room of downtown Milwaukee’s Midwest Airlines Convention Center, he was greeted like a rock star. More than 500 people—many of them within a year or so of age from this 23 year-old wunderkind—jumped up with wild applause. Pariser, campaign director for the upstart liberal behemoth MoveOn.org, was delivering the keynote address to kick off MoveOn PAC’s Leave No Voter Behind campaign.
Most of the audience, myself included, had been working to get John Kerry elected for months already—we had been managing fundraising offices in cities across the country, canvassing in the streets and door-to-door to raise money for the Democratic National Committee. In three days, we would fan out throughout the country’s electoral battleground to set up operations that would tap into MoveOn.org’s vast network of liberal support. Pariser did not hesistate to remind us that it all amounted to one of the largest independently coordinated democratic actions in history.
Pariser’s speech tore through the near-mythic narrative of MoveOn.org’s meteoric rise: an email listserv—the right idea at the right time, really—became powerful enough to influence the Democratic primaries and wage an expensive and smart television advertising campaign. For many, this web site represented a New Way, the Great White Hope of democratic possibility in the face of terrible opposition--a formidable David to the sprawling right-wing goliath.
MoveOn’s young spokesman was articulate, conversational and humble—many of the organizers in the room probably thought that they, too, could just as easily have given this speech. When he announced that MoveOn.org “now has close to a million members per paid staffer,” a slide was projected that charted this growth: it was a nearly perfect exponential curve, with the 1998 Clinton impeachment scandal marking its starting point of 50,000 people, and the launch of this Get Out the Vote campaign, in late September 2004, ticking off around 4 million on an impressively upright slope. These were the people who’ve made our campaign possible, he explained. The MoveOn members: upper-middle class, educated and media-savvy, brimming with excitement at the possibility that something could be done. Ready to be a part of doing it in a new way.
It all leads up to this moment, in which the size of MoveOn’s paid staff will increase by more than a hundred times. The 500 people in this room would operate on a model of political organization that had been proven to be the most effective method of voter mobilization. From here in Milwaukee, this organizer army will go forth into each battleground state and equip the huge MoveOn membership with the tools they would need to turn out half a million new votes on November 2nd.
The crowd bubbled over with excitement as Eli fielded some questions. Over the past couple of days, many discussions had mentioned an article in the New York Times Magazine last summer, entitled “The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.” In this article, Matt Bai described the upper echelons of liberal power structures as they underwent a gradual and breathtaking awakening to the formidable constitution of their enemy: a dense web of conservative institutions that had grown over the past 40 years into a well funded, carefully orchestrated and fiercely ideological right-wing machine.
Since the calamitous 2000 election, Bai noted, this awakening had quickly snowballed into action. The Democratic party had been atrophying for decades, but it took George Bush to snap people’s attention to the dire truths of the situation. In response, the power players on the left had quickly looked to other means by which to mount an opposition. “The era of the all-powerful party was coming to an end,” Bai wrote and we repeated in so many words to each other, “and political innovation, like technological innovation, would come from private-sector pioneers who were willing to take risks.”
MoveOn was the most high-profile of these players, and though its campaign would not be the largest in terms of money and staff (that distinction would be with the George Soros-funded America Coming Together and its umbrella organization America Votes) the heft of its dedicated and deep membership was unmatched.
When it came time for questions, Eli called on an organizer I had met the night before, also named Greg. Greg and I had talked over beers the night before about what was in store for us. “Think about it,” he had wondered aloud to me. “500 organizers thrown together into this effort…we’ll learn so much and go on to do even more. It’s exactly what needed to happen in this country. It’s like this army of progressive activists being forged right here.” I knew that Greg was thinking about precisely that when Pariser called on him.
“With all the effort going into this,” he asked, “and this massive gathering of such talent and skill, what are the plans for the future? How will we keep this going after the election, stay in touch with each other, spread out and, you know, take over the world?”
Suddenly the conference room’s lights fell and all went dark except for the podium, glowing vaguely sinister, and the projection of the MoveOn membership’s exponential growth curve. A thrilled current of surprise shot through the room, and it erupted into gasps and laughter that lasted several moments after the unseen joker flipped the lights back on. Eli’s face was broken into a wide grin; it didn’t seem like this bit of theatre was pre-arranged, but he was a good enough showman to play to it.
When the excitement died down a bit, Pariser cleared his throat and returned to form, answering that the most important aspect of this entire effort is that we remain flexible, open to change.
“Basically, we’ll move on!”
There would be a lot of work ahead of us--specifically, he said, congressional campaigns in 2006--but there would be many lessons to be learned in this battle right now.
Shortly thereafter he excused himself, saying that he had to go email millions of people about this wonderful sight he’d just seen. He walked off to a standing ovation.
Most of the audience, myself included, had been working to get John Kerry elected for months already—we had been managing fundraising offices in cities across the country, canvassing in the streets and door-to-door to raise money for the Democratic National Committee. In three days, we would fan out throughout the country’s electoral battleground to set up operations that would tap into MoveOn.org’s vast network of liberal support. Pariser did not hesistate to remind us that it all amounted to one of the largest independently coordinated democratic actions in history.
Pariser’s speech tore through the near-mythic narrative of MoveOn.org’s meteoric rise: an email listserv—the right idea at the right time, really—became powerful enough to influence the Democratic primaries and wage an expensive and smart television advertising campaign. For many, this web site represented a New Way, the Great White Hope of democratic possibility in the face of terrible opposition--a formidable David to the sprawling right-wing goliath.
MoveOn’s young spokesman was articulate, conversational and humble—many of the organizers in the room probably thought that they, too, could just as easily have given this speech. When he announced that MoveOn.org “now has close to a million members per paid staffer,” a slide was projected that charted this growth: it was a nearly perfect exponential curve, with the 1998 Clinton impeachment scandal marking its starting point of 50,000 people, and the launch of this Get Out the Vote campaign, in late September 2004, ticking off around 4 million on an impressively upright slope. These were the people who’ve made our campaign possible, he explained. The MoveOn members: upper-middle class, educated and media-savvy, brimming with excitement at the possibility that something could be done. Ready to be a part of doing it in a new way.
It all leads up to this moment, in which the size of MoveOn’s paid staff will increase by more than a hundred times. The 500 people in this room would operate on a model of political organization that had been proven to be the most effective method of voter mobilization. From here in Milwaukee, this organizer army will go forth into each battleground state and equip the huge MoveOn membership with the tools they would need to turn out half a million new votes on November 2nd.
The crowd bubbled over with excitement as Eli fielded some questions. Over the past couple of days, many discussions had mentioned an article in the New York Times Magazine last summer, entitled “The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.” In this article, Matt Bai described the upper echelons of liberal power structures as they underwent a gradual and breathtaking awakening to the formidable constitution of their enemy: a dense web of conservative institutions that had grown over the past 40 years into a well funded, carefully orchestrated and fiercely ideological right-wing machine.
Since the calamitous 2000 election, Bai noted, this awakening had quickly snowballed into action. The Democratic party had been atrophying for decades, but it took George Bush to snap people’s attention to the dire truths of the situation. In response, the power players on the left had quickly looked to other means by which to mount an opposition. “The era of the all-powerful party was coming to an end,” Bai wrote and we repeated in so many words to each other, “and political innovation, like technological innovation, would come from private-sector pioneers who were willing to take risks.”
MoveOn was the most high-profile of these players, and though its campaign would not be the largest in terms of money and staff (that distinction would be with the George Soros-funded America Coming Together and its umbrella organization America Votes) the heft of its dedicated and deep membership was unmatched.
When it came time for questions, Eli called on an organizer I had met the night before, also named Greg. Greg and I had talked over beers the night before about what was in store for us. “Think about it,” he had wondered aloud to me. “500 organizers thrown together into this effort…we’ll learn so much and go on to do even more. It’s exactly what needed to happen in this country. It’s like this army of progressive activists being forged right here.” I knew that Greg was thinking about precisely that when Pariser called on him.
“With all the effort going into this,” he asked, “and this massive gathering of such talent and skill, what are the plans for the future? How will we keep this going after the election, stay in touch with each other, spread out and, you know, take over the world?”
Suddenly the conference room’s lights fell and all went dark except for the podium, glowing vaguely sinister, and the projection of the MoveOn membership’s exponential growth curve. A thrilled current of surprise shot through the room, and it erupted into gasps and laughter that lasted several moments after the unseen joker flipped the lights back on. Eli’s face was broken into a wide grin; it didn’t seem like this bit of theatre was pre-arranged, but he was a good enough showman to play to it.
When the excitement died down a bit, Pariser cleared his throat and returned to form, answering that the most important aspect of this entire effort is that we remain flexible, open to change.
“Basically, we’ll move on!”
There would be a lot of work ahead of us--specifically, he said, congressional campaigns in 2006--but there would be many lessons to be learned in this battle right now.
Shortly thereafter he excused himself, saying that he had to go email millions of people about this wonderful sight he’d just seen. He walked off to a standing ovation.
posted by Greg Bloom at 4/11/2005 12:29:00 AM
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