Al Franken receives Blue Majority endorsement - democracy in Minnesota fails to collapse
Democracy kept on rolling last week when Minnesota Senate Candidate, Al Franken, received the endorsement of netroots group Blue Majority. Several bloggers and several commentators became incensed upon learning of the early endorsement given that equally progressive* Democrat Mike Ciresi is still in the race. The two most common arguments were that this constituted interference in Minnesota’s political process and that the endorsement itself wasn’t transparent.
First the facts:
Blue Majority is a catchy phrase given to the ActBlue fundraising page collectively run by the websites MyDD, DailyKos, Swing State Project and Open Left. Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, Jonathan Singer and Markos Moulitsas seem to be the most frequent pushers of their AcBlue page. Right now, Blue Majority has endorsed four candidates and BlogPAC.
None of the sites above are “establishment” sites. They receive no funding or Organizational support from the auspices of the Democratic Party. Neither do the above sites have any control over the endorsement process nor do they maintain general operating funds that are released to candidates. Their opinions only carry weight insofar as the wider netroots deem them to be useful. They are not the machine.
ActBlue (in the words of staff member Karl-Thomas Musselman) is “a partisan pro-Democratic organization which provides any individual with the power to create their own fundraising page of candidates or committees and promote it to whichever audience of donors they wish.” They don’t take a cut. They don’t match funds. They don’t organize phone banks. They don’t send ActBlue trained volunteers to battleground precincts. They - are also - not the machine.
Given this reality what do bloggers really want when they ask for “transparency” in the Blue Majority endorsement process? Chris Bowers decides that he’s supporting Al Franken and so he puts Franken on the community ActBlue page - what do you want Bowers’ internal monologue?
Hm, the Minnesota Senate Race. Who do I support? Let’s see:
- Both candidates are equally progressive.
- Both candidates are taking the fight to Coleman early.
- Franken already has an ActBlue page. Ciresi doesn’t. (At the time. Ciresi created one after the endorsement).
- Franken has robust You Tube, Facebook and Flickr pages.
- Franken is investing in innovative online organizing tools
- Franken has around 8,000 Minnesota Donors. Ciresi has some number less than 8,000.
Sold. I’ll punch out a post for Franken, update the ActBlue and endorsement completed. Well done, self.
In a nutshell, here’s how it works:
- Bowers thinks Franken is good enough, smart enough and doggone it people just like him. Bowers likes him too! He decides to tell other people about it.
- Bowers tells other people about Franken and posts some links. If they want to give money to Franken they can do so through ActBlue or Franken’s campaign website.
- Some donate - some don’t. Free will is preserved.
Here’s how the national-level machine has worked in the past (from personal experience):
- Party demands funds - paints apocalyptic scenario if dollar goal is not obtained.
- Party does not take “requests” on whom the funds and resources should be distributed to - except from other party organs.
- Two options here:
-Party chooses preferential candidate and subsequently funds its own choice
-In absence of party chosen candidate, other candidates grovel for diamond encrusted collar.
To hammer the point home - even several days after the Blue Majority endorsement Franken owes 38% of the $8,722 raised on ActBlue to pages not run by Blue Majority. Ciresi is currently running at a steady zero donors for zero dollars.
This doesn’t mean that Franken deserves the DFL endorsement right now and Ciresi should tearfully concede - all it means is that the portion of the netroots that contribute money online have made a clear and decisive choice.
Here’s a video clip of Al Franken thanking Blue Majority for the endorsement.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Noah, I posted a poll on my Kos diary about whether or not the Netroots should endorse under circumstances like the Franken-Ciresi race. Nearly 200 Kossacks voted, and 2/3ds of them agreed that there should not be early endorsements in races between progressives.
That diary entry, btw, got over 225 comments so I’m guessing it was widely read. To date only you and the UDFL blog have picked up on that endorsement, and not one A-list blog has mentioned this since Bowers announced the endorsement.
$8k ain’t a lot for the Netroots. Darcy Burner just raised $100k because of very active blog support for her campaign.
I won’t argue who’s more progressive with you as I have withdrawn my endorsement of Ciresi and have gone back to fencesitting. If you read my blog today, you can see that I critiqued Ciresi’s website more critically than I did Franken’s.
But I disagree vehemently with you that the Netroots have a stake in this race. The Netroots do not have a stake in these things like Emily’s List or MoveOn because almost no Democratic candidates are trying to shut down the “intertubes.” That’s a Republican thing.
The Netroots is about fielding progressive candidates in as many races as possible. In Minnesota, we can’t lose — ALL of our candidates are progressive.
And that’s a good thing.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
[…] I think it’s important to have all of the arguments that have been presente, the Wege continues here, and at his website, www.norwegianity.com (the greatest source of fun Friday MP3 downloads on the internets), and Noah Kunin wrote about this on his blog here (and it should be noted that it was seeing Noah’s post that reminded me to pull this post out of the hell that is my half-written posts queue). […]