Democratic Vistas

NY Times ^ | September 2, 2007 | NICK GILLESPIE

[neverdem]

THE ARGUMENT

Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics.

By Matt Bai.

316 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95.

With the possible exception of the Republicans, is there a major political party more stupefyingly brain-dead than the Democrats? That’s the ultimate takeaway from “The Argument,” Matt Bai’s sharply written, exhaustively reported and thoroughly depressing account of “billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics” along unabashedly “progressive” (read: New Deal and Great Society) lines. Well-financed and influential groups ranging from the Democracy Alliance to the New Democrat Network to MoveOn.org may be taking over the Democratic Party, he says, but they are not doing the heavy thinking that will fundamentally transform politics — unlike the free-market, small-government groups formed in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s historic loss in the 1964 presidential race.

Bai has the grim job of covering national politics for The New York Times Magazine, which means his livelihood depends on following closely whether the Tennessee actor-turned-politician-turned-actor-again Fred Thompson will actually run for president (a decision reportedly put off until after Labor Day, allowing an anxious nation to savor the last days of summer) and taking seriously the White House fantasies of Senator

[neverdem]

Ron Barrett

More New Deal and Great Society mumbo jumbo, who wants to buy that?

[Libertarian444]

Bai never stints on such telling and unattractive details, whether describing a poorly attended and heavily scripted MoveOn.org house party or a celebrity-soaked soiree in which the host, the billionaire Lynda Resnick, declared from the top of her Sunset Boulevard mansion’s spiral staircase, “We are so tired of being disenfranchised!”

LOL

[Erasmus]

"[...]billionaire Lynda Resnick, declared from the top of her Sunset Boulevard mansion’s spiral staircase, [..]"

"I'm big. It's the Democrats that have gotten small."