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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
O'Reilly, DeLay and the GOP have declared war on it. But the online citizen movement grows richer and stronger by the day.
Dec 1, 2003 | Bill O'Reilly wants its nonprofit status revoked. Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie sees it as part of the "Democrat plan to subvert campaign finance laws." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's office plays phone pranks on its staffers. A piece in David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine worries: "It could bypass the mainstream media, sneak around campaign spending limits, and become its own powerful channel for Leftist communication, indoctrination and mobilization."
Clearly, MoveOn.org has arrived.
Founded in 1998 by married Silicon Valley millionaires Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, MoveOn has become the most important political advocacy group in Democratic circles -- and arguably the most important in American politics. Working with Hollywood and political superstars, and with legions of frustrated people at the grassroots, it has raised more than $10 million from its 1.7 million members, many of whom can be quickly mobilized for demonstrations and other political projects. And in the last half of 2003, it seems to have hit critical mass. Lauded as the Christian Coalition of the left, it's lately been the object of a slew of admiring profiles in Time, Details and elsewhere. It has been a significant influence on the presidential campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Now, with pro-democracy billionaire George Soros pledging financial aid to the organization, MoveOn appears to be at the hub of a new political synergy that may give the Democrats their best hope for defeating incumbent Republican George W. Bush in 2004.
All this has the right worried. MoveOn, they know, is part of a massive campaign gearing up to try to beat Bush in 2004. Soros, along with philanthropist Peter Lewis, pledged earlier this month to match every $2 donation to the MoveOn voter fund with a dollar of their own, up to $5 million. MoveOn will use the potential $15 million pot to buy airtime for anti-Bush campaign commercials during the presidential campaign. Soros has also pledged $10 million to America Coming Together, a group that, as its Web site says, plans to "conduct a massive voter contact program, mobilizing voters to defeat George W. Bush and elect progressive candidates all across America." The Republican National Committee Web site features letters from Gillespie fretting that "third-party special interest groups will spend between 360- to- 420 million dollars [sic] for the expressed purpose of defeating the President in 2004."
Progressives say those numbers are exaggerated to scare up contributions from the conservative base, but there's no question that, between MoveOn, Soros and Howard Dean, a new breed of aggressive progressives are changing American politics. And while conservatives have complained, they haven't been able to hamper these groups' efforts. Indeed, MoveOn has mastered a kind of ideological jujitsu. Republican attacks just add to its strength.
On Nov. 21, the Republican National Committee unveiled the first ad of the Bush reelection campaign, rebuking Democrats for criticizing the president's handling of Iraq. It begins with a clip from Bush's last State of the Union address, in which Bush warns of the catastrophes that terrorists may sometime unleash. Then words flash across the screen: "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists." Conflating the war in Iraq with the war against al-Qaida, its message is clear: Bush's opponents are soft on terror.
Within hours, MoveOn e-mailed its members, seeking $500,000 to counter the Republican spin. "When Republicans equate the war on Iraq with the war on terrorism, we'll remind the public of the truth," said MoveOn's message. "When Republicans raise money from wealthy donors and corporate CEOs to attack the Democrats, we'll raise it with hundreds of thousands of small contributions from people across America ... Today, we can show the GOP what they're up against. They're paying $100,000 to run their ad. Together, we can raise $500,000 today to run ads that get out the truth in key battleground states."
In five hours, they raised half a million dollars for the MoveOn voter fund.
"They get things done," says Todd Gitlin, the veteran activist and Columbia University professor. "They raise money, they hold straw votes, they're constantly dreaming up practical activities that have a constituency."
Though Gitlin says MoveOn has taught progressives about the Internet's potential, it's gained respect and influence in the Democratic Party the old-fashioned way: by raising cash. "The big watershed for them was the proof that they could raise piles of money before the midterm elections," says Gitlin. "They raised millions within a few days in various selective Senate races. After Paul Wellstone [the U.S. Senator from Minnesota] died, they were raising piles of money for [former Vice President Walter] Mondale. They demonstrated they could raise six-figure sums in a day or two. A few months later, they demonstrated they can be instrumental in organizing demonstrations. They were the force that organized the candlelight vigils [against the Iraq war]. That was international. They've straddled the discourse of mainstream politics and the discourse of outsiders. They seem to be both insiders and outsiders. That appeals to those who are both moralists and hardheaded."
Predictably, as MoveOn has grown, the right has pounced, though conservatives have yet to figure out a way to cause the group more than mild annoyance. In October, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's office, angry at MoveOn members calling to protest DeLay's stance on FCC regulations, started forwarding the calls to MoveOn organizer Eli Pariser's cellphone. The same week, Bob McManus, the New York Post's opinion-page editor, published MoveOn staffer Noah Winer's phone number in the headline of his column and urged readers to "swarm" him. Neither stunt debilitated its target. Winer says he received a few angry phone calls, but not enough to make him change his number, while Pariser changed his voicemail message for a day, redirecting callers back to DeLay's office.
MoveOn's mere existence drives Fox News fulminator Bill O'Reilly into such fits of rage that he once devoted a segment of his program to attacking the group while refusing to allow its staff on air to answer his charges. On his Sept. 17 show, he said: "Now, the MoveOn.org people wanted to come on here, but I can't have them on because, you know, they're going to attack Bush. I got to defend Bush." He proceeded to rant against MoveOn's nonprofit status, saying, "I don't know why we're giving tax-exempt status to propaganda outfits ... When you say you're nonpartisan, as MoveOn.org says it is, and then you're not, that's a lie, is it not?" O'Reilly fails to register comparable outrage at the partisan activities of nonprofits such as the Christian Coalition and Concerned Women for America.
Pariser sounds almost disappointed that O'Reilly couldn't do better. "I kind of shrug and say, 'That's what they have?'" he says. "O'Reilly in particular, we were sort of imagining they were going to come up with something. What he came up with, after what one has to assume was much research, was that he didn't think our tax status was right, even though both his guests assured him that it was. So far so good."
