(Note: I wrote this a long time ago, but never finished it. A post over at Pandagon today reminded me of this, so I spent my lunch polishing and putting it out there… Here ya go.)

Atrios points the way to a quote in the Washington Post that bothers me (and apparently folks like Matt Stoller):

“The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. “The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left.”

And that’s why they lose.

Take a look at the Republican party. Not only do they harness their activists for their fundraising and energy, they have folded their activist right into the highest levels of the party. From Grover Norquist and his anti-tax crusade to James Dobson and ultra-conservative morality, the Republicans not only listen to and take money from their activist right, they hire them and work with them. The right wing activists are integrated into the Republican party at the highest levels. It has, quite obviously, been a winning strategy for them.

Activists are the lifeblood of change in our society. They have found a meaningful answer to a hard question. The kind of question the rest of us non-activists, the middle, don’t think about. Whether it’s about the health of the poor or the potentiality of an embryo, activists find a clarity the rest of us lack. They advocate their answer with passion and, with some luck, move society with them. This isn’t to say that all activists are right or that the answers are good. Just that the rest of us don’t worry about these hard questions. In general, we choose to go about our lives concerned about our family’s needs and not about these hard questions. When activists find hard questions and hard answers that resonate with society, they change minds. Without them, we’d stagnate.

Unfortunately, the Democrats have abandoned activists. All of them, of all ideological stripes. By trying to appeal to the middle, they’ve become too bogged down in the chaos of all of our personal, daily lives. The day someone sees their doctor or fills their prescriptions, they might be very concerned about health care. The day they pay their mortgage or their rent, they might care about poverty or wages. Most of us have different daily needs based on our own particular circumstances. Whether we’re white or a minority, Christian or not, poor or rich, we’re all part of the middle, and we all consider ourselves part of the middle. It’s impossible to appeal to all of us directly, by targeting our needs.

This is where the activists can help a party. The way to appeal to the middle is to pull them to your side on an issue. Get them to look up from their daily lives and say, “You know, they’re right. This matters.” Think about the broad sweeps of political power over the past dozen or so presidents. Republicans came to power based on concerns of moral decline and eroding values, eventually personified by a philandering president. Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement influenced an entire generation of Democrats. You have to harness the clarity of an activist to appeal to the middle.

The closest the Democrats got to this vision was Obama’s 2004 convention speech (on iTunes for free). In it, his litany of progressive ideals captured so well the things that activists on the left fight so hard for. That speech resonated and his stock soared so high not because he appealed to the middle, but because he eloquently expressed the ideals that best exemplify the progressives and liberals in our society.

That’s why I always get frustrated by reports like the one above. Parties aren’t “captive” to their activists. They’re powered by them. A party that fails to leverage activists is doomed to failure. I hope the Democrats are listening.