"Why Obama And Democrats Don’t Do Much of What Liberals Want "

[KoKo]

4. Reading the Comments on Ian's article is like "Trail of Tears"

for the Netroots Movement that so many of us "long time DU'ers" and "Daily Kos" Readers and Members have lived throught since "2000 Selection," and the BIRTH OF THE NETROOTS.

Jerome's somewhat badly written, but emotional History of his Personal Experience...is worth a read. Here's one Snip...and I'm just getting to Obama Campaign.

Serious Political Dem DU'ers who've been around since 2000 will find this interesting in whatever way they were involved. It gives some "inside" scoop as to the background.

SNIP from COMMENTS of "Jerome's" History as he Saw It:

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What Happens Next

So, when the insurgent becomes the frontrunner, Dean tries to become the establishment and win it all, starting in Iowa. And then we learned what really came next, and what Trippi didn’t even want to give voice too, perhaps fearing the jinx of materialization, or maybe just not having a clue either, but I think he knew what he feared happening. And here, we are talking about 1) the splitting of the movement; 2) the murder-suicide; 3) the dancer’s music being turned off (you have to see the above comment I made).
Jerome Armstrong permalink
November 4, 2013

Part of the first is the Clark campaign; part of the second was done by people that included the guys that wound up making up the inner core of Obama’s ’08 campaign; and part of the third was done by the corporate-DC media meme.

Clark

Sometimes I wonder if the division is just a feature of the whole thing. The Clark movement is complex. There was a point in time after it was all over, when a scandal formed, by something Zephyr Teachout said about Dean and Trippi having ‘bought out Markos and Jerome’ for their blogging. Zephyr was wrong about that part, but what she was really referring to (and something I fully explained when this came out) was that we’d been talking with Wes Clark about his running for President. The problem was that Markos and I wanted to work together as political consultants. I had ties with Dean, he with Clark, and so we agreed that whomever hired us first is where we’d go. That made the dilemma easy, or so it seemed at the time.

Back then, in 2002, I lived out in Seaside Oregon, in a wooden log-heated cabin on the banks of an estuary, from which I’d kayak out into the pacific ocean during days when I was free from online trading. I was standing outside on the phone one morning, amidst the chickens, listening to Trippi say, “Look, it’s the moment. I don’t want you to be thinking 10 years from now ‘I wish I would have taken the opportunity’ and not have taken it.” I was thinking to myself, ‘this sounds inspiring but it also sounds like something he might say to everyone he want’s to hire but’… I’m in, and tell Markos I’m heading out, moving the family to Vermont. But Markos doesn’t quite want to give up on the Clark dream, so while we go to work for Dean, he keeps maneuvering and eventually sets up a back room meeting for Clark and Dean.

In the meantime, Maslin revs up a focus group to run the possibility of a Dean-Clark ticket. One night, as the campaign is shutting shop, Trippi asks me to stay on in his office and watch the 3 hours of tapes. Alone in HQ’s late into the evening, the future seems to be laid out. The possibility of teaming up an anti-war Doctor that’s Governor, and a 4-star General that’s progressive, just wows the dozen or so democratic primary voters assembled for the group.

Once Dean gets the gist of the focus group results, he decides that he will break convention and, months prior to the voting, ask Clark to be his VP. Markos and I buy DeanClark.com and dream of 16 years. Clark agrees to meet with Dean but won’t decide on the VP role for sure. It goes back and forth but the meeting is on. Trippi told me later that the day of the meeting, Clarks’ guy called and asked that Dean not ask the question. But when Dean is set on something, I am pretty sure it went down with Dean asking, and Clark not committing. Only those two were in the meeting. Dean left the meeting saying it’s not on. Later, Clark would claim Dean asked him. I’m sure he did.

The second part of this involves Hilary and the Clinton’s. In the fall of 2003, Armstrong-Zuniga, as our nascent firm was called, got a call from Patti Solis Doyle, about interviewing for Clinton. I had known of the Clinton’s since going to school in Arkansas in the mid 80′s. And despite one of my close friends being the president of the College Republicans, and having a girlfriend that worked on Clinton’s Little Rock Gubernatorial campaigns, I couldn’t be bothered to even vote. But in 1986, I walked into the election-night hotel room full of campaign supporters the night of the election, as the couple was going on stage, and I didn’t even notice Bill up on the stage, just being taken aback at the radiance around Clinton. I will digress and mention that it’s also the night I stepped out onto a balcony to share a joint, and walked back into the hotel penthouse amidst a small circle of guys that were spittin’ tobacco juice onto the carpet floor, saying crazy-ass militant and reactionary shit: a Tommy Robinson suite and crew. WTF, I thought, if this lunatic is a Democratic rep, we are doomed.

I digressed to talk about the origin of the Tea Party, and now return to Hillary Clinton and the Fall of ’03, when AZ went to DC and met with Patti Solis Doyle. We were ‘chosen’ with two other firms for her new media operation, and it awaited finalization. Only much later did I learn that Clinton wasn’t just making a plan of setting up a team for her ‘standing committee’ or whatever, but instead was putting together a team for jumping into the ’04 presidential campaign. Damn, naivety strikes again. But anyway, when that didn’t happen is when Clark decided to make it a go. And Clark was supplied with plenty of former Clinton-Gore staffers and Arkansas funding to make it a go. Not all, mind you, as there were definitely grassroots operations leading the way. Without that, Clark was nothing. It was just as electric at times for Clark as for Dean. But without a doubt, coming about for whatever reasons, the division of the netroots here had succeeded. It wasn’t nearly as nasty as ‘08, but a feature, not a bug, perhaps.