Burnt Orange Report

Watering the Grass

By Jim Dallas

Chris Bowers of MyDD wins the Dallas Award For Best Use of The Word "Ontological" with this post.

I adhere to the theory that each individual voter is cross-pressured, and has many different components of his/her identity that are politically relevant. Engaging different voters involves hitting them in the right identity "sweet spot." Taking a one-size fits all mentality runs the risk of swinging... and missing, like the Iowa Perfect Storm did. These "network" theories of organizing are interesting to me.

Fact: for most Americans, politics is intrusive and disruptive. That's why it used to be good manners not to talk about politics in mixed company. Now that it's all too easy for voters to simply turn the channel (mentally speaking), expanding our campaigns is going to be necessary.

One concern, though, is how far you want to take this. If it's done ham-handedly, it'll come off as oafish. If it's done too effectively, people will worry that the traditional seperation of the public and private sphere that we value in a liberal society such as ours has been breached. Chris titles his post "How Democrats Can Seize The New Civic Space." The problem is that "civic space" is a very blurry concept to begin with, and any attempt to replace the traditional institutions which have defined "political space" with ones that extend politics into "civic space" (one which, while still conceivably in the public sphere, is considerably more intimate) inevitably will step on some toes.

Anyway, this is probably the future of politics; the subversion of the Democratic Party as an institutional hierarchy and a new reality of the party as a community of communities. Get used to it.

On second thought, I'm wondering why I thought this was all so revolutionary: there's a far-left-wing wannabe-academic inside of me that's screaming that this is more confirmation of the effects of late capitalism or post-modernism or whatever.

On third thought, I am reminded that, even after stumbling across some nutshell summaries of Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere years ago, I have yet to get around to checking out a copy from the liberary and attempting to read it. I'm probably not smart enough to understand it, but it might help me pick up hot dates.