Book Review: Netroots Rising

Throughout history, great movements have only begun to gain the recognition they deserve when those intimately connected with them stand up and tell their story. From antislavery assemblies to feminist groups, from trades unions to civil rights organisations, important agents of political and social change have come into wider public consciousness because someone who knows them best stood up and recounted first hand what they were about and why they mattered. In Netroots Rising, Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox, two prominent Internet activists and bloggers attempt to stand up for the latest great movement in American politics, the 'citizen armies' of Internet activists agitating for genuinely grassroots politics in the US. How do they fare in seeking to achieve such a daunting task?

Pretty well, is the answer.
First off, the writers excel in their adept retelling of the often-fraught beginning of the netroots. In brilliantly illustrating the 2002 gubernatorial race for Governor between Republican Rick Perry and Democrat businessman Tony Sanchez, Feld and Wilcox provide a comprehensive understanding of how the internet and what the authors call 'bottom-up' politics began to be tentatively synergized to effect meaningful political change. They successfully show how attempts to use internet technologies such as comment blogs were implemented, only to be made redundant by career consultants descending on the campaign from Washington, and reveal with great skill exactly how innovative methods suffer such as the use of large voter file databases suffer when candidates like Sanchez, at the behest of such advisors, mindlessly reverse their long and authentically held positions for a series of flip-flops that render them normal politicians. In addition, they help us to understand why they fight, what the point of it all is. In evoking the ubiquity of Republican hegemony in Southern politics, the authors exhibit with flair how the anger felt by so many citizens at the early years of the Bush Presidency and the collapse of the energy giant Enron translated into action, how internet activists have begun above all else to want to win, to crush the poisonous influence of Tom Delay and the politics of personal destruction that begun to reach throughout the South with the success of Bush and Rove in 1994. Describing how Wilcox thrashed around in frustration after Sanchez's landslide defeat to Perry in 2002, they give us a window the drive of the netroots, demolishing the myth that they are loners sitting in an attic somewhere with a desire simply 'to win awards from CNN', highlighting for us their passion to achieve progressive victories and demanding we peal back our preconceptions of who they are in the process.

Next, the authors also manage a successful relation of the 2004 election and of how the netroots began to exert themselves at a national level. Seen through the experiences of both men on the campaign trail, the abortive Draft Wesley Clark Movement of 2003 and Howard Dean's fully-fledged grassroots primary campaign are honest and frank accounts that will prove invaluable to future activists and historians. Through a wide variety of evidence, both campaigns are minutely well-documented from start to finish. We learn how they began with individuals researching a candidate online and deciding that 'this is the man that will beat President Bush', and discover how their dreams came to die as citizens like Matt Stoller who had previously used the internet to draw attention to their chosen candidates were forced out by professional staffers. We see first-hand the lingering resentment created between the former and consultants such as Joe Trippi, who are singularly found to have failed to utilise the enthusiasm and willingness to organise they had at their fingertips after being installed. Equally insightfully however, the authors also focus well on the issue of how the blogosphere began a challenge to corporate media, and its increasing role a 'fifth estate.' Particularly in their discussion of how right-wing outlets contradicted CBS anchor Dan Rather for investigating Bush's time in the Texas National guard, Feld and Wilcox skilfully highlight the power of sites such as Josh Marshall's 'Talking Points Memo' to act as watchdogs on the mainstream cable news channels and newspapers, illustrating clearly the attempts of blogs and bloggers to dictate broader news coverage or dilute 'uproars' over topics such as a candidate's previous military service or probity.

Finally, it is worth praising the way in which the authors of Netroots Rising have offered a dramatic and evocative account of recent triumphs achieved by net-based organisations, particularly the web-based draft movement to elect Democrat Jim Webb Senator of Virginia in 2006. Recalling very recent history, the bloggers masterfully weave together memories of the dramatic and improbable victory Webb won against wealthy businessman Harris Miller in the Democratic primary, and subsequent ejection of republican George Allen, detailing precisely through a wide variety of emails, newspaper articles and face-to-face interviews the spin, grassroots organisation and raw energy that contributed to the campaign that proved the difference in getting a majority in the House of Senate. These are coupled with superb depictions of those involved in the 2006 election and how they react to immense political changes that are exceptional in their own right. Among their portraits of the Old Dominion's leading politicos, Feld and Wilcox make us appreciate the charismatic and passionate Webb as he hoarsely belts out message of progressive change as the campaign enters its final stretch, and loath his boorish republican rival as he oafishly struggles to understand how his viral slurring of one of Webb's Indian-American volunteers finally comes to kill off his career and embryonic dreams of the White House. In their characterisations of many of the political engaged citizens who get involved with his candidate's campaign, the authors demand an admiration those such as S R. Sidarth, who stand tall in the face of being dubbed not part of 'the real Virginia' by Allen and others like him. And in doing so once again, they encourage the reader to appreciate fully the grassroots activism of countless progressive Americans, their drive to democratise the process of selecting those that represent them and prize it away from the hands of corporate politics in their country.

The book has faults enough: in particular, perhaps given the timing of the book's release, the conclusion doesn't elaborate as much as it could on the disconnect many members of the netroots felt towards the three major Presidential candidates who ran in the Democratic Primary in 2008. Yet this is a topic that can be saved for an altogether brighter day in the very near future when a Democratic President has been safely installed in the White House. This a first class work about a group of activists who are attempting to change the way their nation's politics operate, a classic narrative of hopes dashed and regained that touches on a battle for the very soul of American politics.  

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