Should Democrats Pitch the Big Tent, or Organize and Confront?

John Edwards has come out swinging in his campaign for President labeling as the "McCain Doctrine" the idea that more troops will solve the problem in Iraq, and challenging the current Administration with "'What planet is [Bush] living on?"
Meanwhile, Hillary sits in the wings, and Barak Obama takes crowds by inciting "hope".
Four years ago, Edwards was too young and inexperienced and was passed over as a presidential candidate. This time around it looks like its Obama who has the charisma, but not the experience.
I think we will see Edwards charge out of the pack and be the Democrats standard bearer. Edwards is not afraid to use the three letter work GOD and has a chance to bring home disenfranchised blue collar evangelicals to their Democratic roots. And he carries a more pragmatic populist message. There is a great article in AlterNet about a political organizer from a generation ago who has lessons for would be Democratic organizers, lessons that have not yet been learned, such as learning from the successful methods of your opponents.

...this split in outlook (which was just one between Alinsky and the New Left) is mirrored in progressive circles today, between what we might roughly call the Big Tenters and the Populists.


Crudely speaking, the Big Tenters are a mix of high-minded liberals who want everyone to hold hands and get along for the “common good”; Establishment types that use the mantra of “Big Tent” to deflect demands on them for accountability/results; and younger activists who were brought up being told by upper middle-class parents that “anyone can be rich, famous or president” and thus now believe that hierarchy is evil because “everyone can be the leader of a movement.” The Populists are a strange brew of newer activists who feel so burned by both parties they have lost the ability to care about hurting people’s feelings; more senior pre-Vietnam Era movement builders; industrial unions who are fighting the bipartisan Washington Consensus in order to save their jobs; and those students of political history who see a value in learning from opponents like Grover Norquist on the Right.


The struggle between these two factions is already at a boil. In just the last few weeks, it has come to the forefront of the early Democratic presidential jostling, with candidates like Barack Obama floating nebulous Big Tent themes of “hope” and John Edwards firing back with more confrontational populist themes and with subtle rejoinders that "Identifying the problem and talking about hope is waiting for tomorrow."