MoveOn moves up

Salon - O'Reilly, DeLay and the GOP have declared war on it. But the online citizen movement grows richer and stronger by the day.

"They get things done," says Todd Gitlin, the veteran activist and Columbia University professor. "They raise money, they hold straw votes, they're constantly dreaming up practical activities that have a constituency."

Though Gitlin says MoveOn has taught progressives about the Internet's potential, it's gained respect and influence in the Democratic Party the old-fashioned way: by raising cash

Predictably, as MoveOn has grown, the right has pounced, though conservatives have yet to figure out a way to cause the group more than mild annoyance.

MoveOn's mere existence drives Fox News fulminator Bill O'Reilly into such fits of rage that he once devoted a segment of his program to attacking the group while refusing to allow its staff on air to answer his charges.

Though its tactics might be insurgent, MoveOn's political orientation isn't far from the center of the Democratic Party. The group sees itself as representative of the new silent majority, average Americans abused by right-wing ideologues who claim a monopoly on national definition. Its support suggests just how many people in America have felt voiceless and yearned for some way to make themselves heard.

Boyd says that if it hadn't been for the impeachment, "we wouldn't have gotten involved in politics. But at a certain point, you can't look away. You wonder about what was lost and what we could lose if we don't step forward."

Their sense that American politics had run off the rails began during the impeachment, but was driven home after the 2000 election. During the recount, the right mustered mobs, but Democrats were oddly quiescent.

MoveOn was among those that failed to act. "We totally blew it," Boyd says now. The reason wasn't a lack of passion -- it was a kind of disbelief that American democracy could go so awry.

"There was tremendous energy within our base, but we didn't engage because I thought for sure that the system would work, that the wheels would turn and a fair result would be found, and I was wrong," he says. "And we now know that the system, to be fair, has to be people screaming on both sides."

For months, the group has been taking out ads in major newspapers that feature details of Bush's misdeeds with the headline "Misleader," and the group runs, a Web site devoted to chronicling the administration's misdeeds. The idea, says Boyd, was to "brand" the president as a "misleader," attacking head-on the public perception of Bush's integrity.

Even the slogan on MoveOn's new T-shirts, "Democracy is not a spectator sport," was chosen democratically: Members submitted more than 700 suggestions, with a vote determining the winner.