When Move-On.org first started out, it was an email list. I joined. I can't recall all of my feelings and thoughts around the drama of Bill Clinton. I was pretty much expected very little but high minded principles in politics back in those days - not quite realizing how useless Washington would become in that regard. That Clinton was a womanizer, a queer sort of grinning, guilty one, only confirmed what I already new about him. He was put on this earth to seduce, and of course Clinton's seduction of Joe Klein initiated an era. It all seems so long ago when the Hollywood types jumped on that bandwagon of post GHWBush youthful enthusiasm about politics. We got The West Wing, a smart TV show in primetime about the operations of the White House. One of the cable networks made a fictional show about a candidate named Turner or some such name. Carville & Matalin were all the rage, and there was this feeling that there was energy and dynamism about, and smart good looking people were making tough and sometimes brilliant decisions. We had in America, what we thought to be rational exuberance. Then Clinton lied.
Not an ordinary political lie, but a butt ugly bare naked lie. He was brought down to a sentence. A word. Is. The curtain fell, and all the little sharp little fictions people had been swallowing twisted perpendicular like a fishbone in the throat. But not for me. There were higher more important principles at stake besides 'character' which can always be assassinated. Those who knew said Clinton's character was dead on arrival, and the Starr chamber said it was poisoned going back decades in Arkansas. I said, yeah whatever. So I was ready for Move-On's message. Get over it. He's a prick, yeah we know. That's not so important as...
Being part of Move-On was interesting because it aligned me with people who also claimed that more important matters faced the country and that a non-stop campaign against the President ending in impeachment would be a waste of the nation's time and energy. It turned out that no matter who I thought belonged to Move-On, it was just another minority, and impeachment happened anyway. And the nation didn't fall off a cliff. It just missed the sort of opportunities that slimy officials can't deliver on. It took me falling hook, line and sinker for a perfect Clinton speech that materialized nothing but good feelings in my head for me to realize how I'd been played. I could point to the speech and say - see? This is the kind of statement that shows a good policy direction and... I was correct, but I wasn't right. I had been seduced.
I still belonged to the group many years after all of those facts. Move-On didn't itself move on. It launched other new media Progressives who all seemed to transmogrify into what is now the Huffington Post and the defunct Journo-List. The echoes of the sentiment found their place and now these days, you can be sure that there's a networked minority interest group everywhere.
I also understood what launched the Tea Party. And many years before, after I heard an interview with Rahm Emmanuel while I was driving in San Francisco, I heard put into words the truth about the seedy shambles of the Clinton White House. The question of character was finally explained to me in a way I could accept - because before that time I could never distinguish between principled opposition and a vast right wing conspiracy. I liked Emmanuel. He seemed to be the genuine thing that Joe Klein projected onto Bill Clinton, with regard to smarts. So when the Tea Party started talking about character and honor in the White House, I now knew how to process that. Plus I had the GWBush example. Nobody Progressive liked W's background, but also nobody could fault his bearing. And still, we all recall how Kinsley at Slate skewered the Bush diction. It was all such a downer after having the romance of a master seducer to now be faced with a straight talking cowboy, who's not really a cowboy. All those romantic Christmas tree lights that adorned Clinton couldn't be hung on GWB's tree, and journalists were left with the tangle.
The Tea Party started with the idea of what materialized in Sarah Palin. An ordinary non-teflon politician. Non-marketable. Easily parodied. Bohunky. Honest. Plain but attractive. A heroine in house shoes. If Progressives want to know what Sarah Palin feels like to the Right, the answer is Erin Brockovich. And the single cause is simple. Stop spending our money, Washington. We don't trust you with it. Taxed Enough Already. Plain but attractive. The Tea Party wasn't like Move-On. It wasn't in pursuit of a set of high minded 'more important' goals, it said what the goal was straight in its name. Give me back my money. Stop asking me "help me help you". I don't want your help. I want my frickin money back.
The Tea Party's online presence presented a challenge to the Right which didn't have much history in the online world, but dominated the airwaves. But that network worked its way around. But what the Tea Party did have that Move-On did not have, was the kind of energy that got people out in the streets. There were torches and pitchforks in this crew, there was throw the bums out. It was redolent of the movement for term limits that swept through the nation.
It's interesting how these things start. They all have their reasons and they all have their sentiments. Sometimes you can't put it all together immediately, but better in retrospect. And of course nobody can predict what the dynamism of such popular movements will bring besides confusion to the traditions. Carville and Matalin didn't need Move-On and they weren't part of the Journo-List. But I can tell you this. It's going to be a long time before the Tea Party ends.
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