Features » February 6, 2006

Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics? (cont’d)

Cornfield describes the Republican model as, “one person who is online and is plugged into the blogosphere. That person becomes an e-precinct captain, and is responsible for reaching out offline or any means necessary for ten people.”

This time around, Armstrong is determined to match the GOP’s success. GrowOhio.org, which he describes as “a community blog for Democratic Party activists,” will coordinate field operations for not just Brown but all Democratic candidates in each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Its primary goal is to reach rural voters in areas where the campaign cannot field organizers on the ground.

“This isn’t just about using the net for communications and fundraising, but for field organizing,” Armstrong says.

What is also new in 2006 is the effort to redirect attention from the national to the local. “It’s not just about focusing the national blogosphere on Ohio, but about building from the ground up in Ohio,” Armstrong says. “Over 90 percent of our signups on GrowOhio.org are Ohio activists, and we will soon have Internet outreach coordinators in all 88 counties.”

But many like Daou remain skeptical about the power of blogs to directly impact politics at the grassroots level. “You’re not going to go out there and mobilize a million people and have them all come to the polls and donate money. Blogs will never do that,” he says

And they may be even less effective in areas that are traditionally not as internet-savvy as the rest of the country, be it the rural red states or impoverished inner cities. Creating a virtual “community center” is unlikely to compensate for the Democrats’ disadvantage on the ground. Due to the eroding presence of unions, Democrats no longer possess a physical meeting place where they can target and mobilize voters—unlike Republicans, who rely on a well-organized network of churches, gun clubs and chambers of commerce.

What is clear is that the 2006 elections will test the claim of blog evangelists that online activism can radically transform offline politics—a claim that is central to their far more ambitious vision for the future. In their book Crashing the Gate (to be released in April), Moulitsas and Armstrong envision blogs as the centerpiece of a netroots movement to engineer an imminent and sweeping transformation of the Democratic Party:

We are at the beginning of a comprehensive reformation of the Democratic Party—driven by committed progressive outsiders. Online activism on a nationwide level, coupled with offline activists at the local level … can provide the formula for a quiet, bloodless coup that can take control of the party. Money and mobilization are the two key elements of all political activity, and if the netroots have their way, the financial backbone of the Democratic Party will be regular people.

Whether a truly decentralized and “leaderless” netroots can function like a political party is debatable, but the latest wave of technological innovation does offer unprecedented opportunities for constructing a progressive movement for the digital age. Such an outreach effort would use the Internet very much like conservatives such as Richard Viguerie used direct mail to build a powerful political force. But in order to craft a genuinely democratic form of politics, the progressive blogosphere will have to overcome its greatest weakness: lack of diversity.

The rise of the blogerati

In Newsweek, Simon Rosenberg, a beltway insider who lost the DNC chair to Dean, described the progressive blogosphere as the new “Resistance” within the Democratic Party, engaged in a civil war to wrest power from a craven and compromised beltway leadership. According to Rosenberg, the leaders of this “resistance” are the top progressive bloggers, more specifically the most popular and increasingly influential Moulitsas. Rosenberg told the Washington Monthly, “Frankly I don’t think there’s anyone who’s had the potential to revolutionize the Democratic Party that Markos does.”

Yet both the progressive blogosphere and the “revolutionaries” who dominate its ranks look a lot like the establishment they seek to overthrow.

The report by the New Politics Institute—which was launched by Rosenberg’s New Democracy Network—notes: “Clearly, blogging is a world with a handful of haves, and a nearly uncountable number of have-nots. There are likely a few hundred thousand blogs in this country that talk about politics, but less than one-tenth of one percent of them account for more than 99 percent of all political blogging traffic.”

For better or worse, traffic numbers have become an endorsement of the political agenda of specific individuals. While A-list bloggers repeatedly deny receiving any special treatment, the reality is that both the media and political establishment pay disproportionate attention to their views, often treating them as representative of the entire progressive blogosphere.

In a Foreign Policy article, political scientists Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell cheerfully note, “The skewed network of the blogosphere makes it less time-consuming for outside observers to acquire information. The media only need to look at elite blogs to obtain a summary of the distribution of opinions on a given political issue.” Why? Because the “elite blogs” serve as a filtering mechanism, deciding which information offered up by smaller blogs is useful or noteworthy. In effect, A-list blogs get to decide what issues deserve the attention of journalists and politicians, i.e., the establishment.

The past two years have also marked the emergence of a close relationship between top bloggers and politicians in Washington. A number of them—for example, Jesse Taylor at Pandagon, Tim Tagaris of SwingStateProject, Stoller and Armstrong—have been hired as campaign consultants. Others act as unofficial advisers to top politicos like Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.), who holds conference calls with preeminent bloggers to talk strategy. When the Senate Democrats invite Moulitsas to offer his personal views on netroots strategy—treating him, as a Washington Monthly profile describes, “a kind of part-time sage, an affiliate member”—the perks of success become difficult to deny.

Armstrong sees the rise of the blogger-guru—or “strategic adviser,” as he puts it—as a positive development. Better to hire a blogger who is personally committed to the Democratic cause than a D.C.-based mercenary who makes money irrespective of who wins.

But the fact that nearly all these “advisers” are drawn from a close-knit and mostly homogenous group can make them appear as just a new boys’ club, albeit one with better intentions and more engaged politics. Aside from notable exceptions like Moulitsas, who is part-Salvadoran, and a handful of lesser-known women who belong to group blogs, top progressive bloggers tend to be young, well-educated, middle class, male and white.

Reach, representation and credibility

The lack of diversity is partly a function of the roots of blogging in an equally homogenous tech-geek community. Nevertheless, women and people of color constitute the fastest rising segment of those joining the blogosphere. Feminist and female-authored political blogs like Feministing, Bitch Ph.D, Echidne of the Snakes, and Salon’s Broadsheet made considerable gains in traffic and visibility in 2005, as did Latino Pundit, Culture Kitchen, and Afro-Netizen. Better yet, they’re forging networks and alliances to help each other grow. There is no doubt the membership of the blogosphere is changing, and will look very different five years from now. “We’re just a step behind, just like any other area,” says Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte.

But while the growth of the blogosphere may increase the actual traffic to a greater number of blogs, it also makes visibility far more scarce and precious for each new blogger. As one of the top women bloggers, Chris Nolan, noted on the PressThink blog, “The barrier to entry in this new business isn’t getting published; anyone can do that. The barrier to entry is finding an audience.”

Elite bloggers can play a key role in generating that audience. As Marcotte points out, “A lot more women are moving up in the Technorati rankings” (Technorati is a search engine for the blogosphere) because A-listers like Duncan Black and Kevin Drum in 2005 made it a priority to promote female bloggers. But when someone like Moulitsas decides to stop linking to other blogs—as he has recently done because he doesn’t want to play “gatekeeper”—or when top bloggers repeatedly cite their fellow A-listers, it has enormous consequences. “It’s pretty darn hard today to break in to the A-list if the other A-listers aren’t linking to you,” says Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon.

If blogs derive their credibility from being the “voice of the people,” surely we should be concerned about which opinions get attention over others. The question of representation affects not just who is blogging—and with great success—but also the audience of these blogs. What kind of democratic consensus does the blogosphere reflect when the people participating in it are most likely to be white, well-educated men?

Yet when it comes to issues of diversity, A-list bloggers like Moulitsas and Stoller can get defensive, and at times, dismissive. “Take a look at what you have today. Take a look at the folks who’re leading the party, dominating the media, or even within corporations. Do you think the top ranks of any of those institutions is any more representative?” responds Stoller, his voice rising in indignation.

Where Stoller openly acknowledges the problem—describing blogs in one of his posts as “a new national town square for the white progressive base of the Democratic party”—and the need to take steps to tackle the disparity, Moulitsas is less generous. In his view, it’s simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an “affirmative action of ideas” within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere: “I don’t see how you can say, ‘Well, let’s give more voice to African American lesbians.’ Create a blog. If there’s an audience, great. If there isn’t, not so great.” Besides, he suggests, if a Salvadoran war refugee—in his words, a “political nobody”—like him can make it on the Internet, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same.

As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent: “I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like.” It’s an odd and somewhat disingenuous response from an advocate of blogging as the ultimate tool of democratic participation.

Keith Jenkins, who authors Good Reputation Sleeping and works a day job as the picture editor at the Washington Post, says the low barriers to entry do not in themselves offer a sufficient guarantee of equal participation. “It’s less about actively stopping and standing in the way and more about affirmatively enabling access, which was the underlying argument of civil rights movements and freedom movements across the board,” he says. “It’s about affirmatively making it possible for everybody to have a seat at the table, which benefits not only the people who are sitting down, but also the people who are already seated.”

“We need to be encouraging a more diverse group of people to blog,” agrees Global Voices’ MacKinnon. “But we also need to be linking to them and giving them traffic so that they have a chance to make it to the A-list.”

While the organic growth of the blogosphere may resolve issues of race and gender over time, it will do little to address its overwhelming bias toward urban professionals. And that can’t be good news for a party that is already being punished at the polls for its weak connection to working-class Americans.

“For me the greatest problem is low-income people,” Cornfield says. “The irony is that it’s not because they don’t have money to get a laptop—especially with the $100 laptop now. It’s that people who are poor don’t have the civic skill sets and motivation to go online and do these sorts of things. That will take a concerted effort.”

At a time when the visible digital divide may be shrinking as increasing numbers of Americans come online, it may be replaced by an invisible version that benefits those who are well-educated, well-connected and organized.

Stoller does not think that it’s important for blogs to reach a less-affluent audience: “Not everybody has to be part of that conversation. If someone wants to have access to those discussions, they should be able to do that. But for the most part, people—like that person working two shifts—will go on with their lives knowing that good people are making good decisions and policies on their behalf.” Bloggers like Moulitsas—who is equally unconcerned that his blog will never reach “someone working at the DMV”—are likely betting that the cadre of activists they reach will be able to form connections across those differences within their community.

Perhaps sites like GrowOhio.org will prove them to be right if it manages to mobilize a constituency—e.g. rural voters—that is least likely to be wired, and in a region where the party’s on-the-ground resources are weak. But any such strategy is unlikely to work if those in charge of crafting it—be they bloggers, politicians or so-called netizens—show little interest in expanding the reach of the progressive blogosphere to include the largest, most diverse audience possible. If the blogs are unable to bridge the class divide online, there is no reason to think they can create a grassroots movement that can do so in the real world.

“If you do make an active effort, it is easier to accomplish through the Internet than through pretty much any other medium including direct mail,” Cornfield says. “But it will not happen on its own. It has to be a concerted effort.” Social movements are built by people not ghosts in some virtual machine.

The Washington Monthly profile of Moulitsas included a revealing quote, in which he expressed disappointment at not being able to fulfill his dream of making it big in the tech industry back in 1998: “Maybe at some time, Silicon Valley really was this democratic ideal where the guy with the best idea made a billion dollars, but by the time I got there at least, it was just like anything else—a bunch of rich kids who knew each other running around and it all depended on who you knew.”

The danger is that many may come to feel the same way about the blogosphere in the coming years.

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• Reader Comments

  I am now technically a senior citizen.  I am still pissed off.  I still play music loud.

  However…I have learned that no matter what I write…somebody will throw a literary monkey wrench at me.

  What will happen if I write?:

  All cows eat grass.

  Posted by John Olsen on Feb 7, 2006 at 3:33 AM

  If all cows ate grass, they wouldn’t go mad.

  Posted by lynnbradway on Feb 7, 2006 at 4:49 AM

  Thank you!!!

  Posted by John Olsen on Feb 7, 2006 at 4:57 AM

  Until someone can effectively challenge the Dem/Rep two-headed monster, until big-money’s political power is mitigated, until more than the traditional 50-or-so percent of registered voters get off their ass on election day, until the electorate care to do more than imbibe sound-bites when choosing candidates…

  ...then no, progressive politics will not be revolutionized. Politics at large will drag on in much the ordinary way, with insipid or haranguing mainstreamers dominating the scene and “progressives” (fill in your own definition of this term) at the fringe like before. Same old story, same old song and dance.

  Technological advances don’t really change things much in the absence of attitude changes. It’s when people think about things differently that society evolves, which is why “social progress” (again, fill in your definitions at will) is so halting and sporadic.

  Posted by Kuya on Feb 7, 2006 at 10:27 AM

  This is a fine over-view of blogs and bloggers. The questions you raise are legitimate and the potentials you point out are real. Yes blogs are just the newest meida tool for the left to learn to use in it’s organizational struggles. Or more properly the internet, as you point out.

  But the net, because of it’s two-way many-to-many nature will remain a more democratic medium than newspapers, radio and tv. Like the telephone, the rich will still be better able to use it, but like the telephone, how it’s used will be an audience choice rather than the propagandists’ choice.

  Now let me quibble. You say:

  “Others act as unofficial advisers to top politicos like Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.), who holds conference calls with preeminent bloggers to talk strategy.”

  I think the quote above is either in error or it’s pure spin on the part of Emanuel. I have heard the quote in reference to Moulitas, and I have read his denial of everyhaving talked strategy with Emanuel.

  I also know that Emanuel is the subject of heated denuciations within both national and local blogs for his handling of the DCCC 2006 campaign efforts. Indeed Chris Bowers of MyDD once suggested that it might be necessary to mount a national campaign against Emanuel’s meddling in the IL-O6 race where he inserted “his own” candidate where Christine Cegelis was already established as a candidate.

  Indeed our own local Chicago/Midwest blog www.SoapBlox.net/Chicago/ has been engaged in a running battle between progressives upset with Emanuel and those who would give him the benefit of the doubt. With a strong finger on the pulse of all the local midwest blogs, we hear of no communication between Emanuel and any left or Democratic bloggers. Indeed that is our number one complaint about Emanuel, that he appears even hostile to progressives .

  Jeff Wegerson
  www.SoapBlox.net/Chicago/

  Posted by Jeff Wegerson on Feb 7, 2006 at 4:28 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 8 posts.

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