Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Essentially, Lieberman heard that Dean and Weiner and a lot of the blogosphere were happy about a Medicare Buy-In proposal, which was something he himself has supported, and that was enough for him to spike the idea.

Booman's referring to reports put out by The New York Times and which Steven Bennen discussed at WEINER SCARED LIEBERMAN AWAY?

I cannot repeat enough how going forward, this "Joe Lieberman" moment has to be remembered for eons to come. Because it doesn't matter if you extricate Joe Lieberman from the senate, or as I suspect will happen, it will not matter a bit the day he walks away on his own accord by "retiring" from politics. You will always have another asshole who will point to a bill or a cause and say, "if that's what those radicals want, am voting against it".

This is a learning moment right here for activists of all stripes but especially bloggers: A unified and one-voiced "The Blogosphere" is not only a myth and a lie; it's ultimately a strategy that has done a chunk of damage during the whole Health Care Reform debate.

"The Blogosphere" or "The Netroots" are politics as usual. It's basically a group of bloggers working as any other interest group in Washington. The only difference? They're on the digital superhighway instead of the brick-and-mortar Beltway. 

The function of bloggers is not to act as another interest group. The role of bloggers is to actually break up interest on an issue so it can spread far and wide and fast. Bloggers have to be virality incarnate because bloggers are needed to exactly keep the opposition's target shifting as opposed to making it easy for them to identify and demonize.

A group of bloggers has worked until now as "the netroots" and it has suited them well. After all, if they work as an interest group they can make money and hold on to influence as so. The problem, in the end, is that it doesn't bring any real change to the political process. It only serves to reinforce it.

It's why it's easy for Lieberman to demonize anything touched or endorsed by "the netroots" or "the blogosphere". They've been sold to Washington DC as "radicals", tin-foil hat wearing extremists who work as a block and who don't know how Washington DC works.

In Lieberman's case, we have the real situation in which not only this block of people tried to unseat him. We now have one of these top bloggers on what's become a very public vendetta against the guy.  It's no wonder it's easy for him to sell "those netrooters" as out for blood and out of touch radicals.

So let this be a lesson to bloggers, advocacy organizations and anybody involved in political organizing and activism: Never ever speak of "the blogosphere" or "the netroots" ever again as a single entity or political block.

Learn to speak of "online communities" or "the regular folk going online to vent their opinion" or even of "the many blogospheres, and many netroots". Or be specific and talk about the one or two bloggers you have in mind because more often than not, that's the case. You've talked to only one of two "big bloggers" and all of a sudden you think you're talking to whole networks of people online.

And do your due diligence when lining up with online activists and communities. Don't put all your eggs on one or two "top tier" baskets. Go out and get yourself immersed in knitting groups, gay parent forums, software developing lists. Go out there an interact in Portuguese, Hindi, Thai and maybe even Spanish-language blogs. Scour Twitter lists for influentials, look into communities you've never thought about looking for "the regular folks worried about immigration reform" like gossip communities on LiveJournal or adoptive mothers at BlogHer.

Go out there and arm yourself with the complete antithesis of what Washington DC thinks online activists look like, talk like and feel like and keep them close to your vest and your heart. So when you have an idiot like Joe Lieberman saying, "am opposing XYZ because that's what the blogosphere likes" you can smack them with the truth that there is not one but many, many oppositions they've never even heard about.

As a last thought, this is what I wrote earlier today in an email about the meaning of RADICAL:

RADICAL doesnt mean I have no grasp of strategy. On the contrary, RADICAL IS A STRATEGIC POSITION. Some radicals are at the front, some at the sides, others at the back and even some in the center of the forces. And each position serves a leadership and/or attack/defense purpose.

I am not a radical because am clueless. Am a radical because I can see the roots AND the branches in the forest while most people are just worried about how they're going to fell the next tree.

The netroots is not at all populated exclusively with radicals. On the contrary, most are not but because extreme right politics and policies have been in place in this country for so long, it's easy to sell them as hippy dippy radicals.

Going forward, we have a responsibility to stop talking about "the blogosphere" as one block and one interest group. This is imperative if anything is going to happen around Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

The internet is an amazing and paradoxical collection of phenomena. It is a space. It is a network. It is a platform for communications. It is an operating system. And it is, in the end, people expressing themselves through 0s and 1s.

Let all the different point of views and peoples express themselves fully. Let's work separately and yet thrive in open and close communication. Yet let's not make the mistake that has now virtually killed Health Care Reform: To speak of "the blogosphere" as the extremists, radical no-nothings that need to be put in their place by talking away real reform.

Think strategically of the network and the power there is in having no fixed center during a political debate. The power is in the network and not, to throw some geek speak around, the nodes.

Think of the network first. Think of networks not of blocks. Sure, it's not the power-structure you're so used to, but it's where hierarchical disruption and real change awaits.