Good News, If You’re A Republican

Here’s an article in Rolling Stone (not exactly a triumphalist Republican magazine) about Moveon.org, explaining why the Democrats will remain electorally impotent for the foreseeable future:

For a political organization that likes to rail against “the consulting class of professional election losers,” MoveOn seems remarkably unconcerned about its own win-loss record. Talk to the group’s leadership and you won’t hear much about the agony of defeat. Wes Boyd — the software entrepreneur who used his fortune from creating the Flying Toaster screen saver to co-found MoveOn — blithely acknowledges the need to produce some electoral wins “in the classical sense.” But he sees the rise of MoveOn’s progressive populism as a moral victory in and of itself…

…Boyd is a whip-smart man with a deep passion for populist democracy. But speaking to him about MoveOn’s constituency is like speaking to someone who spends all day in an Internet chat room and assumes the rest of the world is as psyched as he and his online compatriots are about, say, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He seems to conflate MoveOn with the rest of America. “We see ourselves as a broad American public,” he says. “We assume that things that resonate with our base resonate with America.”

In fact, there appears to be an almost willful ignorance about who actually composes MoveOn. “We’re pretty light on the demographics,” Boyd says without apology. “It’s funny, when we talk to people in Washington, that’s the first question we’re asked.” He adds with note of self-satisfaction: “We’ve been largely nonresponsive.”

Not to mention non-successful. There’s a term for people who gain “moral victories.” What is it again…? Oh, yeah–“losers.”