"It reads like a Soviet ballot," says John Stauber, the founder of the Center for Media & Democracy, whose harsh indictment of MoveOn's survey has been a hot item on lefty blogs this week. If Pariser had more thoroughly educated members about all of the positions in the debate, many would have voted against the Pelosi plan, Stauber says. More important, MoveOn could have helped the chances of an amendment by Reps. Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey, leaders of the Out of Iraq Caucus, that called for withdrawal of all troops by the end of 2007. "They could have put out an alert to 3.2 million people across the country and said, 'If you do anything tomorrow, get up and call your representatives and tell them to support the Lee Amendment,'" insists CodePink's Gail Murphy. "They've got millions of dollars. If they put their money toward stopping this war, we'd have a lot more leadership in the Democratic Congress toward stopping this war." But MoveOn didn't stump for the Lee plan, and it died in committee.
Pariser defends his e-mail. He says that the group already knew that its members would have supported Barbara Lee's plan, but whatever MoveOn did, it would never have passed. What MoveOn didn't know was what its members thought about the Pelosi plan. "The choice that we needed to make as an organization was, Do we support this thing or not?" Pariser says. "And so I think the e-mail was a very fair presentation of the choice that was actually in front of the organization."
Pariser also says that his critics have confused MoveOn's policies with its political strategy -- they've confused what MoveOn wants with MoveOn's efforts to get there. What the group wants, he says, is what everyone in the peace camp wants: withdrawal as fast as possible. But there is no clear political path to immediate withdrawal. "Unfortunately we're living in a world where in order for anything to happen on Iraq that forces the president's hand, were going to need two thirds of Congress." MoveOn's strategy arises out of this parliamentary consideration; its goal is now legislative, to build toward two-thirds support in Congress.
Pariser has previously drawn a sharp distinction between MoveOn and the Democratic Party. In 2005, he told Salon's Tim Grieve that "the job of a party is to get elected and the job of a movement is to promote ideas and an ideology," and that "we're definitely on the movement side of the equation. We don't want to be the party." People in the peace camp, though, say that MoveOn has lately found a special place in the Democratic leadership structure. It's the safe antiwar group. Members of Congress can meet with MoveOn because they're sure it won't call for something too far out. Other organizations have been shut out. Gail Murphy, of CodePink, is on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, which represents 1,400 peace groups. "We've asked for meetings with Pelosi," she says. "We were never approached to sit down and have a conversation."
Pariser is skeptical of the idea that MoveOn has much power with Democratic leaders. "I wouldn't be over-grandiose about our influence with Nancy Pelosi," he says. "We're still a group of outsiders trying to create change in Washington, D.C." He concedes that some members of Congress considered MoveOn's support important, and as a result, he says, the group held out to provide it in order to get a better bill. And they saw results. "This wasn't due only to us," he says, "but in those two weeks the timetable was added to the bill."
MoveOn's imprimatur has certainly given many Democrats cover to vote for the Pelosi bill. And this is really the main criticism people in the peace camp level at MoveOn. "The leadership wants to say, 'Hey look, everyone voted for an antiwar bill," Stauber says. "So I think the peace movement is being hijacked and rerouted to serve a Democratic leadership and the 2008 political agenda." But Stauber believes the effort won't work; most of MoveOn's members, he notes, didn't even vote in Pariser's poll. "They've grown so blas&eacaute; about MoveOn's appeals that they don't even bother to open their e-mail," he says. And when MoveOn can't reach people by e-mail, what can it do?
Pariser disagrees; he thinks MoveOn members really got the substance of the debate at hand, and that they do agree with the group's stance. "Our members aren't stupid," he says, "and they responded in a serious and thoughtful way to the political question of whether this incremental step to isolate the president and the people who oppose a timeline is worth supporting."
About the writer
Farhad Manjoo is a frequent contributor to Salon.
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