Thread by @mattyglesias

What’s tragicomic is the extent to which the very existence of The Groups is largely a silly misreading of like one Theda Skocpol essay.

The whole machinery could (and should) be turned off.

https://twitter.com/ajentleson/status/1855040347413315839

Skocpol has a long line of scholarship about the role of social movements and mass membership organizations in American politics, and she’s critical of the replacement of that form of politics by a politics dominated by professionalized insider lobby shops.

After Waxman-Markey fails, she’s commissioned to write an assessment of why the strategy didn’t work.

In “Naming The Problem” she says what of course she would say, that it was too much of an insider job and you need a real mass movement which engages the public.

During Obama’s second term, people who want to see progress on all kinds of issues are frustrated — Obama is so good at politics but since Dems lost the House in 2010 nothing new can actually pass.

So they decide the “Naming The Problem” diagnosis applies to all topics.

Well, okay, but it’s not like a program officer can just push the “create an authentic mass movement with broad-based national membership” button.

So instead of saying “what’s realistic in the absence of such a movement” they start creating fake movements!

These Potemkin social movements — the groups — have all the flaws of the unrepresentative insider dominated lobby shops that Skocpol criticized.

But they don’t have the virtue of those lobby shops — actual professionalism and technical expertise, it’s just smoke and mirrors.

It would obviously be very helpful to all kinds of causes to have an authentic grassroots movement demanding change.

But unless you actually have one, stick with political pragmatism and technical expertise and try to do stuff that makes sense. Don’t fund fake BS!