The week before last (week of June 15), TPMCafe hosted a book club discussion of Eric Bohlert's Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, which was as much a forward-looking discussion of the future of blogging as it was a backwards-looking discussion of the Eric's book and the history it covers. One reason for this was that everyone pretty much agreed-Eric got it where earlier authors did not. So discussions of the past linked more naturally to forward-looking speculation than to criticism of Eric's narrative.
That forward-looking discussion links quite naturally, I think, with my earlier diary, Changing The Dynamic of Congress--"The Choice Is Ours", and where I want to go next-into a deeper look at what it will take to change the dynamic, not just of Congress, but of American politics more generally. An added factor is the perspective I articulated in my series "Three Waves and A Wall: 2008 And The American Future, dealing with the confluence of macro-historical forces in our time, which I'll briefly recapitulate below.
But before doing that, I just want to note that Eric's first post, "The Rise of the Liberal Blogosphere", kicks off by mentioning Chris as the very first blogger he talks about:
In the introduction of my book, Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, I highlighted a YouTube clip from 2006, right after the mid-term elections, when blogger Chris Bowers is talking into the camera (I think) of Matt Stoller and Bowers answers the question: What does it take to be a liberal blogger? He starts listing all the requirements: "If you have no children, no one to support, and no career ambitions, then you too can become a full-time progressive blogger, as long as you're wiling to do nothing else in your entire life."
There's more about Chris in that diary, so if nothing else, you should read it for that. But there's actually a lot more, with folks like Amanda Marcotte, Armando Llorens, Greg Mitchell and Duncan Black weighing in. I want to cite a few of the things they said, before adding my two cents about how the blogosphere--along with the rest of the online new media--may be able to help do even more than any of the contributors to that discussion have imagined. This is not, I hope, because of an over-inflated sense of the blogosphere's importance, but rather, because of a larger sense of its place within a broader inter-active, flat-hierarchy media environment and how that plays into some much, much bigger historical forces at work....
In Chris's diary, "Backroom Deals, Inexorable Right-wing Slides ", Chris described the disastrous legislative end-game of the climate change bill, and briefly indicated the sort of determined progressive opposition that would be necessary to prevent this dynamic from repeating endlessly with every major piece of legislation.
In this diary, I want review what Chris said in light of my old hobby-horse, the lack of progressive engagement in a Gramcian "culture war" (aka "hegemonic struggle")-a struggle to gain coordinated control of reality-defining cultural institutions. Expanding on his discussion of missing in our congressional battles so far-and what it would take to change that-provides an excellent re-entry point to thinking about hegemonic struggle more generally, as well as thinking about winning specific legislative battles.
In other diaries this weekend, I want to further this exploration, reflecting on the confluence of changes happening in the media, the internet, and the world at large. To begin, I turn first to Chris's description:
While environmental groups and climate change activists have repeatedly vowed that the bill needs to be strengthened, no amendments will be allowed on the floor debate that will actually allow the bill to be strengthened. Instead, the backroom deal means that coal and agribusiness get their concessions, but there isn't even a chance for green groups to try and make the bill better....
And if you want to know what the final language of the bill is before it is voted on, good luck with that. Not only is the bill already 1,201 pages, but the deal hasn't even been finalized....
