The existence of the infamous Powell memo (1971) is no secret to most lefty activists or to anyone who has listened to Thom Hartmann for more than 30 minutes. Movement conservatism sprouted in the 1970s in reaction to the social changes and liberalizing legislation of the 1960s. But the pushback was likely planted in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s landslide 1964 loss to Lyndon Johnson. Influential, deep-pocketed Republicans, back when they were also conservatives, knew their ideas were unpopular. They decided they needed a long-term marketing strategy to fulfill their antidemocratic visions for American oligarchy.
Democrats (naively) never answered with marketing of their own. See, our ideas are popular, as self-evident as the Declaration’s ideals. They need no marketing. And here we are, decades later, facing an oligarchy led by a criminal autocrat bent on tearing down the country to its foundations. And the foundations too.
Some of us who have been in this business since the Earth was young (O.G. Original Progressive Bloggers) reflect regularly on what might have been. Perhaps we’ll move from there to what to do now.
The New York Times considers the media ecosystem that once-conservatives, now-reactionaries built. The introduction paints a picture of Democrats’ persistent resistance to selling themselves over the long haul.
Atlanta-based influencer, Zackory Kirk (a.k.a. The Zactivist) boasts over 220,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok and elsewhere in social media, a following he’s built over four years. It’s not a lucrative gig, but in the last nine weeks of the Harris-Walz campaign money flowed (unlocked article):
And since Ms. Harris lost?
“Nothing.”
Pam Spaulding, once of Pam’s House Blend, started a thread on Bluesky on the subject:
Back in the early 2000s, you know, when OG bloggers / citizen journalists were trailblazing, that's when the left could have invested in alt media. Regardless of how popular, influential & necessary we were told our blogs were, there was no investment. So they fell 20 years behind the right. 🤷♀️
Most OG bloggers, briantylercohen.bsky.social, also had to self-fund when invited to go on panels (I was invited in the 1st group of bloggers to go to the WH; took off from my day job, paid my own flight). Same to cover 2008 DNC. Seeds were there for an ecosystem, just not planted or cultivated.
The Obama '08 team really headfaked in that direction I became a D precinct committee person, and member of my county D Party Executive Committee at their request, expecting it to be the start of a Party-building effortBut after they won the marching orders never came
It's such a shame. Like I said, they went back to courting the corporate media and staying on the info teat of well-paid consultant class that could have worked with OG alt media (like we were a threat!). It was just flawed thinking that information streams didn't need to change and broaden.
And then OG bloggers saw the right developing its network. Back during early Netroots Nations, the right held a companion conference (RightOnline?). I was invited to one by a conservative colleague (remember, pre-MAGA), many of them were supported — and later became part of the current ecosystem.
We terrified the Dem establishment, who saw us as a threat to their control. As soon as we got Obama elected, his people (Rahm, mostly) actively defunded the few orgs that did support us, and told donors to stay away or else. By 2010, we were dying. Made it easy for FB to kill us off.
And how did that work out for them now? SMH. 🥴 The whole point is we were _not_ actually a threat, we were a new stream of communication that they didn’t understand & could have partnered with, but spent $ elsewhere. That’s not a way to build infrastructure. The GOP knew how to play the long game.
They were old school chums with the MSM, and felt like they could control that channel. But we were just a bunch of upstart state-U randos with no allegiance to their networks, and who might say anything. Like union leaders, we were scary. Better to cut us out of the loop to protect elite power.
It’s just sad that they are acting like it’s a new revelation about a lack of decentralized ecosystem. The OGs were right there back then, some still active. Hope they have the time and money to catch up now — this time around we have an orange emperor that will try to shut down the MSM.
The Times treats this problem as if it’s never been mentioned:
Now Democrats are facing a reckoning, not just over Ms. Harris’s loss to President-elect Donald J. Trump but also over how the left got so badly outflanked online. The sponsorship spigot that many influencers say was turned on too late is now running dry. And the content creators who embraced Ms. Harris fear falling even farther behind their Republican rivals, one viral TikTok at a time.
Interviews with more than a dozen Democratic content creators reveal a pervasive belief that Republicans have helped incubate a highly organized and well-funded ecosystem of influencers, podcast hosts and other online personalities who successfully amplified and spread pro-Trump content. And the content creators are blaming scattershot and underfunded efforts by Democrats to make an impression in a sphere they said the party as a whole had overlooked for at least a decade.
The framing of this problem always misses a key point: There is no The Democratic Party. Neither does the Republican Party fund this RW media ecosystem. The funding comes from allied RW billionaire-royalists who never bought into “created equal.” They spend freely to advance their antidemocratic vision for restoring feudalism. You know, the natural order.
On the left, deep-pocketed influential donors fund candidates and races, not long-term projects. Most Democrat-allied liberal millionaires/billionaires think like short-term investors while Republican-allied investors know the value of buy-and-hold. The right has backed a gaggle of conservative think tanks since the 1970s and now righty social media influencers. Lefties are on their own. And trying to build progressive infrastructure on their own:
“Conservative influencers have year-round support, and those of us on the left have been left to fend for ourselves and it’s not working,” said Leigh McGowan, who goes by iampoliticsgirl and has more than two million followers across various platforms.
Ms. McGowan is a charter member of a new venture called Chorus that was formed this month by a group of influencers who believe the Democratic apparatus has come up far short with social media. It’s the brainchild ofaprivate company, Good Influence, and its goal is to provide resources and guidance to creators and to also identify and amplify new voices.
“We have an obligation to do it because the Democratic Party has been so slow in adapting to the media environment that we’re in right now,” said Brian Tyler Cohen, another inaugural Chorus member and the host of a popular YouTube channel where he once interviewed President Biden.
Best of luck to them. Really. A few of us oldsters are still out here plugging away as we have for decades: Atrios, Crooks & Liars, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Hullabaloo, etc. A few OG Bloggers have paying supplemental gigs. Or a few full-time ones (David Dayen, Bill Scher, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall). But we’ve never enjoyed the warm embrace either of the Democratic Party elite or lefty billionaires for pushing back against the spread of conspiracy theories, xenophobia and nascent fascism.
We’re thankful to you for sticking with us red-headed stepchildren.
It may feel as if half the U.S. has been hit with a Cordyceps brain infection that mindlessly seeks to spread submission to autocracy. But take heart. Pockets of resistance remain.
In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, for instance (BBC):
Riot police in Georgia used pepper spray and water cannon against protesters who turned out on the streets of Tbilisi after the government suspended moves to join the European Union.
Forty-three people were arrested at the demonstrations in the capital on Thursday night, the government said.
Crowds turned out after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said his government would drop its pursuit of EU membership “until the end of 2028” – a move criticised by more than 100 diplomats on Friday as “unconstitutional”.
Kobakhidze had accused the bloc of “blackmail” after EU legislators called for last month’s parliamentary elections in Georgia to be re-run. They cited “significant irregularities”.
Protests against the rise of pro-Russian politician Calin Georgescu spread beyond Bucharest to other Romanian cities on November 26 after his surprise victory in the first round of a presidential election over the weekend.
Protests opposing Georgescu took place on the evening of November 26 in Bucharest, Timisoara, Iasi, Brasov, and Sibiu.
Georgescu faces a runoff against pro-Western center-right candidate Elena Lasconi on December 8 after winning 22.94 percent of the vote in the first round of balloting on November 24 in the EU and NATO member state.
About 1,000 people turned out in Bucharest for the second night of protests against Georgescu in the Romanian capital’s University Square.
Most of those who took to the streets were young people who expressed their concern about Georgescu’s radical attitudes and the future of their country.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty describes its mission:
RFE/RL’s mission is to promote democratic values by providing accurate, uncensored news and open debate in countries where a free press is threatened and disinformation is pervasive. RFE/RL reports the facts, undaunted by pressure.
What a great idea! Know of any other countries that could use one of those?
Meanwhile, all’s quiet on the American front. Have you seen some of those Black Friday deals?
An animal shelter in North Carolina served a Thanksgiving dinner for all of their dogs and cats. (sheltermommy : tiktok/Kristi Plyant FB) pic.twitter.com/dhEWyZsXgj
I don’t know why he does this gross thing on every holiday but I do know that it’s now considered normal for the leader of the United States to act like an absolute ass in public all the time. I guess that’s what half the voters wanted.
And then there’s this:
This is a real tweet from vice president-elect JD Vance depicting himself as Trump’s wife.
Many of you have probably already heard this story. It’s apparently a huge viral social media sensation that’s been out there for 8 years. I had never heard it. (Where have I been?)
Wanda Dench, aka “Thanksgiving Grandma,” and her unlikely friend, Jamal Hinton, have simple words of advice for Americans this year — Spend the holiday with family.
The Arizona residents have shared Thanksgiving together every year since a Nov. 2016 text meant for Dench’s grandson was instead received by a then 17-year-old Hinton.
Their friendship has become as much a staple of the holiday as cranberry sauce and football, and their life journeys have in some ways become emblematic of the country’s course. The 67-year-old Dench lost her husband early in the pandemic and is now in between cancer treatments.
“You really never know when (will be) the last time you have a dinner with someone, or be able to talk to someone,” Hinton said in an interview with The Arizona Republic while recalling a recent conversation with Dench. “I’d always suggest seeing your loved ones.”
Their serendipitous encounter, enshrined in a viral post Hinton dropped on Twitter, now X, has since become part of national lore. Hinton told Dench the number she reached was no longer her grandson’s but his. She dutifully obliged his cheeky request for a dinner plate and invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner with her family.
Talking with The Republic, Dench found herself counting what Thanksgiving they were on, her voice lifting in surprise as she said, “Oh, ninth year.”
Hinton and Dench have theorized their initial Thanksgiving meetup served as a balm on a country reeling from a divisive election. The subsequent distress from the 2016 election still troubles Dench.
“Boy, did I see and hear so many stories of families so divided over it, which is so sad to me,” Dench said.
It’s a nice story. I hope all of you are having a nice Thanksgiving as well.
I needed to see this;—maybe you do too. 💙
Everyone needs a friend like this in their lives. An update on the grandma who accidentally invited a teen to Thanksgiving dinner celebrates eight years of a beautiful friendship.
Chenoa Peters, then 16, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, flanked by family in 2017.
Heather Cox Richardson provides a thumbnail sketch of how today became a national holiday. You can read that in full here. This Thanksgiving, Europeans can have the day off. I’d like to spend a little time with the Wampanoag, the People of the First Light.
Historian David Silverman introduced them inThe Atlantic thusly in 2019:
In the familiar American account of the first Thanksgiving, in 1621, the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth were pious English refugees, one of many boatloads of Europeans who fled the tyranny of the Old World to become a liberty-loving people in the New World. The Indians whom they encountered (rarely identified by tribe) overcame their caution and proved to be friendly (a term requiring no explanation). Their chief, Massasoit, was a magnanimous host who took pity on the bedraggled strangers, taught them how to plant corn and where to fish, and thereby helped them survive their first harsh winters in America. Like Pocahontas and Sacagawea, two of the other famous Indians in American lore, Massassoit’s people helped the colonizers and then moved offstage.
Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, though, friendliness does not account for the alliance the Wampanoag tribe made with the nascent Plymouth settlement. The Wampanoags had an internal politics all their own; its dynamics had been shaped by many years of tense interaction with Europeans, and by deadly plagues that ravaged the tribe’s home region as the pace of English exploration accelerated. Chief Massassoit—whom historians today generally refer to as the sachem Ousamequin—faced stiff opposition from his own people as he tried to manage the English newcomers and looked for ways to survive the forces of colonization already tearing at the Wampanoags.
The pesky English immigrants did not take the Wampanoags’ jobs but they did swiftly move them “offstage.” But not before a lot of bitter politics and plague.
Here, briefly, is how the remaining Wampanoags of Noepe introduce their own story:
The last great North American glacier began its retreat some 10,000 years ago, leaving behind the accumulation of boulders, sand, and clay that is now known as Martha’s Vineyard. There, it is said, a benevolent being named Moshup roamed the land. One day, Moshup was making his way across the mainland to the headlands of the Aquinnah Cliffs. Weary from his journey, Moshup dragged his foot heavily, leaving a deep track in the mud. At first, only a silver thread of water trickled in the track. But gradually, the ocean’s force of wind and tides broadened and deepened the opening, creating an island named Noepe. The Wampanoag were the first people of Noepe.
The ancestors of Wampanoag people have lived for at least 10,000 years at Aquinnah (Gay Head) and throughout the island of Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard), pursuing a traditional economy based on fishing and agriculture. The Aquinnah Wampanoag share the belief that the giant Moshup created Noepe and the neighboring islands, taught our people how to fish and to catch whales, and still presides over our destinies. Our beliefs and a hundred million years of history are imprinted in the colorful clay cliffs of Aquinnah.
For over ten thousand years the Wampanoag have inhabited the island of Noepe. When the first Europeans dropped anchor off our shores in the 1500s – just before the Pilgrims – we numbered three thousand or more. To this day we still occupy our aboriginal land of Aquinnah and count 901 members, about 300 of whom live on the Island.
The Wampanoag Nation once included all of Southeastern Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island, encompassing over 67 distinct tribal communities. The Wampanoag people have undergone a very difficult history after assisting pilgrims in the early 1600s. With the European settlers came much adversity for our tribe – disease that virtually wiped out whole villages, systems of government that bore little resemblance to our tribal practices and values, missionaries intent on converting us to Christianity, and private models of land use and ownership that conflicted with our tribe’s own communal practices and values. The vast majority of these tribal communities were killed in battles initiated by colonists to secure land. Today, only six visible tribal communities remain. Mashpee and Aquinnah have maintained physical and cultural presence on their ancestral homelands. Linking these tribal communities through preservation efforts is essential for survival of the many cultural arts and traditions at risk of being lost.
Nevertheless, they persisted.
Three years ago, the Mashpee Wampanoag secured “substantial control of roughly 320 acres around Cape Cod.” Donald Trump’s administration ordered the land first placed in trust by the Obama administration removed from that protection, the Washington Post reported. A federal judge blocked the move. Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior led by Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, withdrew the government’s appeal held over from the Trump administration.
Hundreds of years later, may we, the pilgrims’ ancestors, also persist. It’s looking to be a rough winter. Perhaps not as rough as those of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. Yet amidst a devastating civil war, he declared the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving.
Richardson concludes:
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
And in 1865, at least, they won.
May we as well and, like the Wampanoag, survive what’s coming.
