David Brooks Insight: As usual, David Brooks offers those of us on a tight schedule a huge dose of insightful commentary during his regular Friday appearance on PBS Newshour - followed up by an elucidation of his TV remarks in his NYT column. The target of his attention this week? Howard Dean. Brooks has a take on Dean's heading up the DNC that you wont' find anywhere else, but is most likely right on the money. Brooks begins with his knack for ferreting out cultural transformations that most fail to notice:

Back in the 1950's, tens of millions of Americans were members of fellowship associations like the Elks Lodges, the Rotary Clubs and the Soroptimists. These groups had lodges or chapters across the nation, where the affluent and not so affluent, the educated and not so educated, would get together once a week or so for schmoozing and community service.

But as Prof. Theda Skocpol of Harvard has demonstrated, these fraternal associations lost members in the 1960's. Instead, groups like NOW, Naral and the Heritage Foundation emerged as the important associations in American life. But these groups were not like the old fellowship organizations.

Many of these groups were formed to champion some specific cause. Instead of relying on a vast network of local chapters, they tend to organize their work from central offices in New York or Washington, with a professional staff. They raise money through direct mail appeals or by asking for foundation grants.

These new groups are dominated by experts - people who live within the network of grant officers, activists and scholars. Being a member of one of these organizations doesn't generally involve going to a local lodge once a week and communing with your neighbors; it involves sending a check once a year and reading a newsletter.

Furthermore, as Skocpol observes in her book "Diminished Democracy," these new organizations tend not to bring people together across class lines. In 1980, at a time when about 15 percent of the electorate had a college degree, roughly 80 percent of the members of the Sierra Club and Naral were college graduates.

Brooks then makes the political connection:

But the two major parties were affected unequally. The Republican coalition still contains some cross-class associations, like the N.R.A. and the evangelical churches, which connect corporate elites to the middle classes. The Democratic coalition has fewer organizations like that. Its elite - the urban and university-town elite - has less contact with the less educated.

Not coincidentally, Republicans have a much easier time putting together electoral majorities.

Brooks then narrows the focus to Dean:

Howard Dean, in his fervent antiwar phase, mobilized new networks of small donors, and these donors have quickly become the money base of the party. Whereas Al Gore raised only about $50 million from individuals in 2000, John Kerry raised $225 million, including $87 million over the Internet alone. Many of these new donors are highly educated. The biggest groups of donors to the Dean and Kerry campaigns were employees of the University of California, Harvard, Stanford, Time Warner, Microsoft and so on.

They tend to be to the left of the country, especially on social and security issues. They may not agree with Michael Moore on everything, but many enjoyed "Fahrenheit 9/11." Perhaps they are among the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos and other blogs that savage Democrats who violate party orthodoxy.