In an article entitled “Half-baked observations of a VLWC conference,” the influential leftist blogger Markos Moulitsas (of the DailyKos) is both encouraged and disheartened at the work of liberal activists trying to broaden the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy–the coalition that includes MoveOn.org, Democratic 527s, the Center for American Progress, and others. Some selections from Moulitsas’ article:

Last week I spent three days at a conference of various leaders of the budding VLWC, and it was, well, interesting. As happens at any such gathering, the networking was the greatest benefit. Met lots of good people. The sessions were too touchy-feely for me. I’m not a liberal who likes to talk about “feelings”.
At one session, one participant told me “we can achieve world peace if we just visualize it”. What the f**k? I jumped down the guy’s throat–”When people were shooting it out in my front lawn in El Salvador, they didn’t give a flying f**k about what you were visualizing. Neither do the warlords in Somalia, or in Darfur, or the insurgents in Iraq, or terrorists all over the world.”
Man, talk about idiots reinforcing the worst stereotypes about our side.
Jeez. Fantasizing about eliminating the Defense Department isn’t being part of the Reality Based Community. If that’s the sort of thing you like to do, and are offended by my bluntness, then deal with it. Being a part of the reality based community means we must operate in–you guessed it–reality.
So there were the crazies, some of them in leadership positions of fairly prominent organizations. F**king obnoxious, and clearly a reason why our side can seem out of touch.
But there was another wierd dynamic at play–this one generational. There were leaders, all of them older, of extremely prominent liberal interest groups. We’re talking labor, environmental, economic justice, things like that. And some of them were genuinely awesome.
But there was a large contingent of them that were obsessed with one thing–their pet issue. It was about them, them, them. Why wasn’t their issue being addressed? Did they have to stay in some meeting if their issue wasn’t being discussed? Etc.
Wow! Their self-centerdness and lack of interest in working together (unless it revolved around their issue) was breathtaking.
On the other hand, most of the younger activists at this retreat ran community-style groups. They weren’t focused on any single issue, but on using the collective force of their communities to bear pressure on various issues.
So at one point we had a session on organizing, and used the Wal-Mart campaign as a case study. While the older folks kvetched that their “issues” weren’t being discussed, the younger folk seemed eager to find ways they could use their organizations to help execute various components of the campaign…
That lack of single-issue obsession allows these groups to form ad-hoc coalitions to tackle any number of issues. It’s quite inspiring, actually. A new generation of activists seem to be rejecting the myopic single-issue focus of the previous generation–a short-sightedness that has, in large part (IMHO), led to the ineffectiveness of our single-issue groups. The environmental, labor, women’s, lawyer, and ethnic/racial groups have been woefully ineffective in beating back attacks from the Right Wing machine…
There is still a clear role for the single-issue groups, but in the future, it may be more of a think tank model–providing the ammunition and research necessary for the ground troops to wage multi-disciplinary campaigns. DFA [Democracy for America] and MoveOn can mobilize its shock troops at a moment’s notice, ready to wage a campaign in defense of ANWR, in defense of overtime pay, or a defense of a woman’s right to choose. The single-issue groups can’t hope to compete with that in the future. And they won’t have to.
We are in a transition right now. Our model is changing. And it will be for the better. We are on our way to practicing the politics of “we”, rather than the politics of “me” and “mine”. And as we create an infrastructure that lends itself to easy coalition building, unencumbered by turf and big ego battles, we’ll be much closer to a true Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.