Chris Bowers wonders how the neoliberals ever came to define the Democratic Party. "The past generation of neoliberal pundits," he writes, "smacks of a fraternity that was oriented toward business school. This is probably because virtually all of these pundits are male, because they all wrote for either The New Republic or the Washington Monthly at one time...In a very real way, it was the rise of the blogosphere that finally gave a means for people on the left who vehemently opposed the rise of the various neoliberals frats to disseminate and distribute their message." I agree with much of that. But though I'm something less of an honest arbiter in this debate, I'd suggest that the funneling of more traditional progressives into the "elite" media is important as well. And in that way, The American Prospect has assumed the role that TNR and The Monthly once played, bringing young journalists into the conversation, albeit from a more forthrightly progressive, labor-liberal stance.
I've made this point before, and again, it's impossible to separate out my own self-interest here, but I don't think liberals do nearly enough to support institutions like TAP. Here you've got a magazine that opposed the Iraq War, fought neoliberalism throughout the 90s, rejects bullshit counter-intuitivism, battles against the punditocracy's tendency to separate itself out from the left, has long been a participant in the blogosphere, and actually hires and publishes members of the medium. I defy you to show me another publication that has given multiple bloggers full-time writing gigs, or published bloggers ranging from Jane Hamsher to Markos to Brad Reed to Echidne of the Snakes.
But for all the anger at TNR (which essentially admits that these magazines have an important role), there's no concerted effort to build up TAP's capacity as a counterweight. There aren't subscription drives -- or even efforts -- among unaffiliated blogs. Why, when TNR wanks out, don't folks put up a little "Subscribe to the American Prospect" link? There's a lot of effort put into punishing bad behavior, but much less into rewarding good.
