YearlyKos Convention Underscores Blogging’s Tricky Political Role
August 3rd, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Blogging is definitely starting to come of age politically — to the extent where the Washington Post calls the YearlyKos convention the Democratic party’s other convention.
But the Post also notes that there is also tricky part for Democratic politicians who decide to bond with bloggers as well:
Last month, in a straw poll on the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner for her party’s presidential nomination, won only 9 percent of the vote, lagging far behind former senator John Edwards (N.C.) with 36 percent and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) with 27 percent. She couldn’t make it past 4 percent for most of the year.
But as the who’s who of the progressive blogosphere — the “Net roots” — gather in Chicago for the YearlyKos convention, which started yesterday, Clinton will be there. Her attendance underscores two seemingly contradictory realities: blogs’ growing influence as powerful backroom players in Democratic circles and the fact that they don’t reflect the views of most Democrats, much less the general public.
“The fact is, the Net roots cannot win elections by ourselves,” Markos “Kos” Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of Daily Kos and the namesake of the event, said this week. “But we can be a key component to a winning Democratic strategy.”
Zuniga’s comment indicates he is much more the hard-nosed political realist than some of his critics on the right paint him to be.
And this convention will not always contain the name of the Kos website:
The convention’s chief organizer is not Kos but Gina Cooper, a former high school teacher who became a Net-roots activist and borrowed Moulitsas’s nickname to inaugurate the conference last year. Next year it will have another name.
“This event is much larger than any one blog,” Cooper explained, “though we’re all a fan of Kos and certainly not distancing ourselves from his blog.”
And, indeed, it’s a smarter move to do so. The convention is gaining importance in terms of perceived clout — to the extent where Fox talk show star Bill O’Reilly blasted it and Democrats to who go there (but then O’Reilly is blasting Democratic candidates who dare chat with any liberal groups he doesn’t like ). The importance of progressive weblogs goes beond one weblog (the same holds for blogs in the center and on the right).
And the ascention of progressive weblogs can be seen in a tantilizing fact noted earlier in many news reports: Democratic candidates have flocked to be seen at the YearlyKos convention at the same time as they scrambled to avoid going to recent centrist Democratic Leadership Council get together.
What does that mean? Does it mean:
–The Democratic party’s authentic “center” has now swung to the left?
–Disgust over President George Bush, the Iraq war, and the intentional polarization of American politics made the DLC seem to be too much akin to cooperating with “the enemy?”
–The perception that the DLC had some clout is largely gone now due to the nature of both the 2006 election results and polls that show increasing ire among Democrats over the performance of Democrats in Congress who are perceived as not being tough enough?
–All of the above?
Regardless, bloggers are increasingly seen by campaigns as being people who can help raise money for candidates, help get the message out (particularly through these “blogger conference calls” candidates in both parties hold that should more aptly be called “friendly bloggers conference calls” since only perceived blogging buds are invited), and help recruit campaign workers.
The dangers for candidates: convention bloggers can be cranky (Hillary Clinton as just found this out) — and their ideas (and demands) may not be the ideas that can help win in a general election but could turn off some voters. Bloggers on both sides tend to be uncompromising.
The trick for candidates: use blogs as a useful component but don’t forget that elections can’t be won unless centrist and independent voters are wooed and convinced. And right now polls show those voters heavily flowing to the Democrats.
UPDATE:
– A conservative blogger attending the convention for Pajamas Media comes away with a different view then he might have had than if he unquestioningly believed Bill O’Reilly.
–Thoughts on the convention from the always independent The Gun Toting Liberal.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 4:20 am and is filed under Hillary Clinton, Media, Democratic Party, Bill O'Reilly, Democrats, Internet News Media, Politics, 2008 Elections, Liberals, Blogging. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:07 am
I sometimes wonder I have my own special alternate-universe version of DailyKos that only I can see. I skim the front page, and pick out the interesting diaries on the Recommended list, and when I’m trying to avoid real work I’ll skip through the rest of the diaries. I rarely read comments since like me, they’re mostly by the kibitzers, not the dedicated policy wonks.
I’m bewildered by Gun-Toting Liberal’s tone of outrage. GTL says he’d want to have Bill Richardson or James Webb represent the Democrats. But Richardson has his supporters on dKos (my impression is the consensus is that he has good positions but is too far behind the front-runners in money and endorsements). And James Webb is adored on dKos, and they claim him as one of the successes of the left blogosphere. dKos was supporting Webb from before his formal announcement when the Democratic establishment thought George Allen was unbeatable.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 am
GTL doesn’t say anything about YealyKos, he isn’t there, got no clue what’s going on. All he does is spreading his same old same old prejudices about ‘the far left’. That’s lame.
Why did you even link his noninformations here?
That’s simply not in the same league as the good story by that pajamablogger, who provided a real inside account from a different angle.
:-/
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 am
Kos doesn’t speak for me.
GTL doesn’t speak for me.
Current conservatives don’t speak for me at all.
Libertarians don’t speak for me, either.
Independents as a third party doesn’t seem an attractive idea, because ‘independent’ is not a platform.
I feel lonely.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:48 am
As a Democrat, I’m disgusted that our Democratic presidential candidates are attending this event.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Joe - as a fellow (or sister….) blogger, I beg to differ. If Kos were a player in any game other than the Democratic Party, he’d be soft. (This post on The Hankster)
But thanks for the headsup to The Gun Toting Liberal - as you say, always the independent!
I really appreciate your effort to bring a mature political dialogue to our current extremist name-calling enviroment that is the partisan American political discourse!
Nancy