Marc Ambinder’s up with a series of Twitter posts saying that Democrats ignore the rash of disruptive anti-health care reform protests at their peril. But I’m not sure who he’s arguing against.
I take it as a given that it’s very difficult to gin up these kinds of mini-riots if you don’t have at least a very riled up minority of voters who believe deeply in a specific position. I’m also not sure who is arguing that there’s anything wrong with people organizing to get their viewpoint out in a public setting. There’s really no such thing as a purely spontaneous upsurge of protest over any issue. As Dave Weigel points out, the traction Republicans are getting in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey suggests something real is going on right now. (Along these lines, Eric Kleefeld has good posts today on Virginia and New Jersey, showing in each case big Republican advantages in voter enthusiasm and likeliness to turn out to vote.)
The key, I think, from a reporting perspective is who’s doing the organizing, just how many voters these protestors represent and precisely what they’re trying to do. As I noted yesterday, there’s something qualitatively different between trying to have a boisterous presence at public meetings and simply trying to shut them down with chants and bullying tactics — which in at least some cases is clearly what’s happening.
Marc also has this line …
I posit that there is no meaningful distinction b/w grassroots, organized and spontaneous gatherings in the modern world.
First, there’s no such thing as spontaneous gatherings. I think the distinction we’re getting at is whether in the ‘modern world’ there’s any distinction between actual grassroots organizing and astroturf rent-a-riots put together purely for media consumption by monied special interest groups. The two categories often bleed into each other. But in broad strokes they’re fairly distinguishable. To the extent that there’s ‘no meaningful distinction’ in the modern world, that’s almost entirely a factor of reporters doing their jobs poorly.
With these anti-reform rioters, I think there’s a blend of the two at work. But that’s a question for more reporting.
