Iqra’i

I’m really surprised that I haven’t heard more buzz in the blogosphere about this email sent by Howard Dean to the DNC mailing list yesterday afternoon headed “Major policy change” that included this passage:

As we move toward the general election, the Democratic Party has to be the Party of ordinary Americans, not Washington lobbyists and special interests. So, as of this morning, if you’re a federal lobbyist, or if you control political action committee donations, we won’t be accepting your contribution.

I don’t know much about the financial merits of such a decision (though I’d assume that Dean knows what he’s getting into), but it seems clear to me that Democrats are going to be relying heavily on the grassroots fundraising strategy, driven by a broad base of small donors, that’s been driving the Obama campaign for months. In fact, the Congressional candidate I’m working for here in Minnesota is taking this one step further by asking his supporters (again, via email) to become not just grassroots donors, but grassroots bundlers:

Try and set a goal of $250, $500, $1000, or whatever you feel comfortable with, and get pledges from all your friends, family and co-workers so that you can meet your goal. With many of us working together to achieve our campaign’s fundraising goals, we’ll be able to ensure that we have the resources to get our message across the district.

It’s this sort of thing that leads me to question the trope among conservatives I know and respect that Obama’s appeal generates a cloying triumphalism — “celebration for celebration’s sake,” as James puts it. (This is the respectable backbone, in my opinion, to all those fairly ad hominem posts implying that Obama’s an unworthy candidate because his rallies look like Beatles concerts. This is America, people — when we turn ideas into events, we get evangelical, overheated and generally frenzied. See also: camp meetings.) I don’t think a candidate who succeeded only in raising his supporters to warm, fuzzy euphoria would be able to count on small donors himself, let alone make it possible for his party to do the same or other candidates to ask those donors to take the initiative in raising money themselves. The knowledge that Obama’s primary victory has been fueled by the willingness of his supporters to put their money where their shrieking mouths are — and, furthermore, that as of this week their candidate and his party are relying on them to continue to do so — certainly has the potential to foster a sense of personal responsibility among casual supporters of the Democratic Party as well as its activists.

Of course, “potential” isn’t a terribly persuasive word in the world of political messaging — theoretically, the core of Obama’s movementarian rhetoric, which found its (somewhat ridiculous) apotheosis in the “you didn’t do this for me” rhetoric that closed his speech Tuesday — should have fostered this sort of responsibility many months ago and many times over. I do think that’s happened to a certain extent, only to be overshadowed both in media coverage and in practice by Obamania. But even mainstream Obamania, motivated by a desire to see the man elected rather than restore the civic virtue of which he speaks, has acquired a character that isn’t quite as celebratory as it’s made out to be; it’s acquired a relentless forward drive typical of movementarianism and incompatible with resting on laurels or even taking stock.

This is what surprised me standing on the floor of the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on Tuesday. Sure, there were plenty of jubilant eruptions, and I admit that many of us (including myself) were jumping up and down at the words “I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.” But even as pundits on TV were choking up at the historic nature of the moment that had just passed, the spectators in the arena were talking about the race toward November; the “Yes We Can” cheers never turned into “Yes We Did,” and by that I was quite pleasantly surprised.

It’s tempting to say that this relentlessly forward-looking nature is a symptom of a progressive outlook and therefore of course it wouldn’t be obvious to the conservative mind; personally, I think it’s much more characteristic of movementarianism, and that James et al. have underestimated Obama supporters in mistaking a movement for a moment. If it’s true that the Democrats have no momentum without their nominee, that’s bad news indeed: he looked exhausted on Tuesday, and I could have sworn that afterwards I saw him mouth to Michelle, “Now, let’s go home.” But I suspect that the high voltage of an Obama rally is due not to the celebratory camp-meeting euphoria of release, but to the euphoria of being hit with a jumper cable: literally, a charge to do something. If the antidote to “celebration for celebration’s sake” is accountability — and I suspect it is — Howard Dean’s gamble is a huge step in the right direction.