More Yearly Kos

by: Chris Bowers

Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 15:30

The second YearlyKos convention is a show of strength for the new blogging establishment: A parade of Democratic politicians, and almost every presidential candidate, will troop to Chicago today to show their respect for 1,500 bloggers and activists.

And yet the influence of the liberal blogs on the Democratic presidential primary is a shadow of what it was in 2004.

Then, a united blogosphere propelled Vermont Gov. Howard Dean to prominence and struck fear into the hearts of cautious, establishment Democrats. Now, the blogosphere is divided on which candidate to support, and the two leaders -- Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) -- have ignored pressure from online activists to move left on important issues, including the speed of withdrawal from Iraq.

The change: Democratic presidential candidates have started treating the blogosphere like any other special interest. They've reached the conclusion that the liberal bloggers are more a community than an ideological movement, more like, say, the Armenian-American community than NARAL.(...)

Officials of the Democratic campaigns, meanwhile, speak about the Netroots with a new relief and distance.

I am not going to really argue with Smith in this instance.  Obviously, I think he is wrong about the blogopshere losing relative power and influence. Last time I checked, one the reasons the blogosphere got behidn Howard Dean was becuase he opposed the war in Iraq and favored universal health care, something few other Demcorats were willing to do at the time.  Now, I'm sitting in a room where several presidential candidates, including all of the leading candidates, are directly telling bloggers that they agree with both positions.  Yeah, we have really backslid in terms of power.

However, I think what Smith is expressing is a common perception in many establishment Democratic ciricles. Back in 2003, they probably were scared to death of a new force they did not understand, and are not nearly as scared of the blogosphere now htat they now more about it. As in many other areas of life, ignorance tends to breed fear. Further, many insiders are probably more worried about the prospect of the blogosphere getting behind an outisder candidate like Howard Dean, Ned Lamont or Donna Edwards and propelling him or her to take out important establishment cogs than they are about the blogosphere trying to push every Democratic candidate in a more progressive, and pro-netroots direction. Advocating on behalf of issues or commuities is something all so called "special interests" do, and establishment types are used to dealing with groups who act like that.  Lining up hard behind an anti-establishment candidate in a primary, and propelling him or her to frontrunner status, is far more unusual.

In the end, it seems that Smith's means of measuring blogosphere influence is how scared insider and establihsment types are of the blogosphere. Frankly, I think that is a pretty immautre appreciation of the situation. If the only thing we had the power to do was scare people in the establihsment, then the blogosphere would never change from the way it operated circa 2003. However, the progressive blogosphere has grown twenty times larger since 2003, making change both inevitable and necessary.  It is almost as though Smith is saying "I liked the blogosphere's earlier albums, before they got popular and sold out."

Besides, is there even a candidate running for president that the progressive blogosphere could back en masse, propel close to the top, and scare establishment tpyes in so doing? I don't think so--none of the eight announced candidates both have a chance to win the nomination with blogosphere backing and are unpalatable to the D.C. establihsment. We can't do the impossible. If there are no no electable candidates who the establihsment is truly turned of by, we can't just invent one out of thin air and build a 20 point lead for him or her in Iowa by December. However, if there is a prevailing notion that the blogosphere can do that sort of thing, I can see why so many int he establishment were scared to death of us back in 2003.

Update: Here is some more Yearly Kos video:



You can check out the entire Politics TV archive of Yearly Kos video here.