Democrats: More Good Stuff From Bai

Matt Bai's promised book on the Democratic Party has been under way for a long time now. But at least he's still getting those long essay-chapter's printed in the NYT Magazine once in a while. This article, "The Inside Agitator", is about Howard Dean and his "50 State" strategy, and raises some interesting points about the Democrat's ideas for winning back the lost ground, and why they got to where they are now:

Dean has been credited with inciting an Internet-driven rebellion against his own party, but, in fact, he was more the accidental vehicle of a movement that was already emerging. The rise of Moveon.org, blogs and “meet-ups” was powered to some extent by the young, tech-savvy activists on both coasts who were so closely associated in the public mind with Dean’s campaign. But the fast-growing Internet community was also a phenomenon of liberal enclaves in more conservative states, where disenchanted Democrats, mostly baby boomers, had long felt outnumbered and abandoned. Meet-ups for Dean drew overflow crowds in Austin, Tex., and Birmingham, Ala.; what the Web did was to connect disparate groups of Democratic voters who didn’t live in targeted states and who had watched helplessly as Republicans overran their communities. These Democrats opposed the war in Iraq, but they were also against a party that seemed to care more about big donors and swing states than it did about them. Attracted to Dean’s fiery defiance of the Washington establishment, these voters adopted him as their cause before he had ever heard of a blog.

Once Bai's book is out I'll be sure to read it: the inside stuff on US political parties' different practical strategies and tactics is fascinating. This not only for its immediate domestic ramifications, but also because this is the forefront of politics as a practical business -- and as such relevant for all political analysts, anywhere.