Matt Bai kisses YearlyKos bloggers in the hopes they give up their politically disruptive ways
Matt Bai's article on YearlyKos, Can Bloggers Get Real?, has some on the lefty blogosphere atwitter.
Susie Madrak, Jeralynn Merritt commented favorably about it; but it's comments by bloggers not affiliated with DailyKos like George Nemeth and Jill Miller Zimon that I find particularly important. Especially when read before Barbara O'Brien's reality check. I also liked that John Holbo picked on the same quote as I did but for purely onotological reasons.
The quote in question follows :
The Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly, recently profiled a 23-year-old law student who writes on Daily Kos’s front page under the pseudonym Georgia10, positing that she may well be the most-read political writer in the city, even though few people know her real name. (For the record, it’s Georgia Logothetis, and she lives with her parents.) In this way, Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm.
The way I read it, Bai can't make up his mind about this thing he calls these netroots and speaks in forked tongues as a man who is getting paid to be a double agent. He's going in as both an invited speaker and paid representative of the enemy.
The enemy being that fourth branch of government we call mass media.
Barbara nailed this perfectly when she wrote, via The Mahablog � Getting Real
Sure there is still plenty of politicking going on in banquet halls and airport hangars. But these days most politics happens in media, not in the flesh. And the biggest part of that media is electronic --television and radio-- with political hacks and professional insiders serving as the self-appointed proxies of We, the People.
In the mass media age political discourse devolved into something like puppet theater. We turn on the little puppet theater box in our living rooms and watch representative partisans bash each other like Punch and Judy. And we know their strings are being pulled by more powerful forces hidden behind the scenery. The performance may be entertaining, but the audience can only watch, passively. The audience has no part in the script.
Exactly how is that more "real" than the Internet?
Which is why I have my qualms about the DailyKos crowd of readers and satellite blogs. They are a phenomenon that, just as the Newton, Betamax, floppy disks, Netscape, Napster, Silicon Alley Reporter and Suck.com --to name a few disruptive innovations--, are bound to bring earth-quaking change at the risk of being swallowed whole by the very establishment they seek to change ... and not before burning out by their own hubris.
It's the curse of the "first one out".
I read about this curse on a Wired article about Microsoft; which I am sure Steve Ballmer and Billy himself must have read over and over again since today they cannot get enough of that thing called the internets(tm).
"When you're the first one out there and you're ubiquitous - especially in an industry that involves networks - people inevitably will start talking about antitrust. The first and biggest company is the one in the bull's-eye."
- Peter Huber, Manhattan Institute
When I read the New York Times article, I thought about how for the political establishment YearlyKos, is in a way an "anti-trust" move. Ironic, yes, given the convention is meant to be another step into building trust and cooperation among the netroots. But journalists in particular cannot help but secretely wish the days of net neutrality were over so someone, either the government or free-market, would get those pesky wannabe fifth estaters out of their way.
So, if you read the article closely you can see that Bai points at how, to politicians and mass media journalists like him, YearlyKos is an "anti-trust" move away from the power of the internet. With YearlyKos, DailyKos ceases to be the outsider. It's become one of them and, seemingly with them, all of the political blogosphere ceases to pose a threat by this analog kiss and make-up party in Las Vegas.
That's why I consider Bai's article not only written in forked tongues but a cautionary tale coming from a piper for the paper of record.
All of this suggests that for all the philosophizing about the meaning of online campaigns and the passing of the 20th-century political model, this next iteration of American politics won't really look so dissimilar from the ones that came before. Just as the liberal social activists of the first television generation overthrew the urban bosses who had ruled the Democratic Party, so, too, the Gina Coopers of the world, a decade from now, may very well be running for Congress, managing campaigns and lobbying for legislation. This is as it should be. Technologies change and movements flourish, but the essential process of American politics endures. And those who lead the most consequential revolts against the status quo never really vanquish the party's insider establishment. They simply take its place.
Why would he want a 36-year-old Memphis native named Gina Cooper, who until recently taught high-school math and science, reinventing herself as the directrix of the first convetion of We The People media in the country? Why would Matt Bai care for the political disruption of a 36 year-old Latino-Greek-American who has been reinvented on the web as one of the most important political writers in the country?
Bai, as a good representative of mass media, is really hoping the DailyKos crowd to bow to the status quo and just join their omerta. He's just joping they serve the same shit. He's just expecting them to serve it with a more home-made kind of dressing.
To wish to become part of the mainstream of politics is to obviously have no comprehension of what the power of networks can afford. Are blogs then are just an electronic version of paper, nothing more and nothing less? What's worse? To look at politics conventionally with bleeding edge technology is to miss completely the way in which every single aspect of humanity is being changed by digital and networked technologies.
Digital media is radically transforming democracy and capitalism by taking personal autonomy and augmenting it through larger power meshes the largest being the internet. It's what James Surowiecki calls "The Wisdom of Crowds". And it's what's changing every single aspect of our culture; from the way we mate to the way we die.
The CIA, NSA and FBI now this. So do Microsoft, VeriSign, RIAA, Monsanto and others. There is power in databases and so in digital identities. There is power in participatory media and open-source systems.
The problem with these new wells of power is that they are hard to exploit through scarcity. You can't just easily limit access to them and hence weild the kind of political and financial gain military-industrial complex has been able to do since well before Eisenhower coined the term. If it weren't difficult to limit, we would not have software encryption systems or digital restriction technolgies or internet and wiretapping infrastructures being pushed everyday upon us.
Which is why I keep telling fellow bloggers : Technologically speaking, this is just the beginning.
For true democratic change we need to have systems in place that amplify each voice while aggregating each and every one of them into the collective well of the movement. In the progressive blogosphere we have nothing like that at the moment. We're running right now solely on the grace of a fre popular blogs; not on the power of net-wide networking.
If I were wrong, a new wave of Chuck Pennacchios and Matt Browns and Paul Hacketts would have been washing over Washington in November. The truth is, they are not. We were not successful at putting candidates out because we have yet to find effective ways at using our networks to get people elected. It makes me want to scream:
It's the databases, stupid!
The Republicans now it. That's why the spend millions mining data on 168+ million people. They're voters vault is legendary.
Bloggers have databases too. We have millions of blogs waiting to be networked and tended to as a garden for this new digital ecology. New ecologies bring social, politica, but more importantly economic change. We have yet to tap into that.
There is a lot of work to do and YearlyKos may become the launch pad for some of that heavy lifting. Honestly though, developing technology for the kind of networking that needs to be done takes time and money --and in the political blogosphere we have not been good at putting money into our technologies.
I disagree with Bai --there is so much that has not been tapped technologically speaking. The net is uncharted territory where anything is possible.
It is actually not a bad thing that people can reinvent themselves on the web through blogs the way they do so on Second Life because it proves my point.
We have not even scratched the surface in how whole progressive communities, needless to say worlds.
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Activism | Blogosphere | Blogs | Media | Net Neutrality | Networks | New York Times | Newspaper | Politics | Surveillance | Technology | 2006 Elections
Only ever went there once!
Submitted by JJ Ross on 29 May 2006 - 6:56pm.
I'm with Jill. Don't get it, don't go there. Hate yelling. And foaming at the mouth scares me off no matter what color it is . . .
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Liza gets it.
Submitted by Soylent Green (not verified) on 30 May 2006 - 10:02am.
Liza gets it.
[quote]To wish to become part of the mainstream of politics is to obviously have no comprehension of what the power of networks can afford. Are blogs then are just an electronic version of paper, nothing more and nothing less? What's worse? To look at politics conventionally with bleeding edge technology is to miss completely the way in which every single aspect of humanity is being changed by digital and networked technologies.
Digital media is radically transforming democracy and capitalism by taking personal autonomy and augmenting it through larger power meshes the largest being the internet. It's what James Surowiecki calls "The Wisdom of Crowds". And it's what's changing every single aspect of our culture; from the way we mate to the way we die.[/quote]
Now my 2 cents.
Why do we need a (not that I am going -- and that’s the point -- if regular readers like me can’t go, what’s the point of a Las Vegas meeting but to consolidate power in the hands of a few insiders -- new boss, same as the old boss) face-to-face meeting?
The people running the DailyKos blog haven’t evolved as far as they may imagine. They have not realized that this is it. This talking back and forth here. This communication and planning and growth of ideas -- and, yes, donating some hard-earned money when the time comes -- is what is needed. Everything devolves to “who can afford to participate†if we revert back to face-to-face meetings in order to reach some decision about moving forward. If we can’t take the next step and the next and the next online, then why bother?
The frustrating thing is that we can, or we could, if we weren’t wasting time and money and energy schlepping to Las Vegas.
JJ will remember my feeling the same way about another online group that we both work(ed) with. NHEN.org. A fabulous resource for homeschooling families.
But every once in a while the Board (I was the secretary to the Board) would get a wild hair and suddenly “need†to meet face to face. Why? That was my question every time. And the NHEN Board members were polite. They didn’t tell me directly that I was just a curmudgeon. But that was what they communicated.
There were some private (not funded by NHEN) get-togethers and fun was had by all. But I don’t recall one thing being accomplished that wasn’t really the result of the hard work done online.
Now, we were pretty primitive. 
We had email and email lists and IM chats. The Board could never get themselves to spring for cameras (my suggestion if seeing each other was so important to progress). We had discussion forums. JJ was a major participant on those. And all of these things, plus a website, served to establish NHEN as a major go-to resource for homeschoolers.
And they/we were deliberately apolitical. (Which some just could not accept. . .) So there was no fundraising to support a candidate or pay for a blog. They sell t-shirts enough to support the website and that’s all that is wanted.
But if they or some other interest group or some political group or DailyKos readers wanted to expand into actually getting a politician elected or a piece of legislation passed . . . Would they be able to do it electronically? No, they would not. They revert to this “smoke-filled room†mentality, copying what former politicians have done, cutting most people out! Because they do not imagine how much more powerful we could be if we could ALL participate.
And if we could harness the knowledge of people like Liza -- so clearly able to imagine the next steps in linking us all together.
And stop wasting resources on face-to-face feel-good meetings. Yes, I am not a perky little thing. I am a voter. I am disgusted with most of what passes for government. And I would prefer that people take things seriously. The voters will let all of the politicians and the technically-capable know when they can relax and go party together.
Now is not that time!
And a P.S. to JJ -- the DailyKos blog is not for the faint of heart. Don’t ever go to the Rude Pundit’s blog! They are even now having the stupidest argument over how to handle “trolls†on the blog. Remind you of the endless stupidity at the NHEN lists/forum? It’s the same thing but in blog land. They have reached/are reaching the same conclusion that we eventually came to at NHEN -- you have to have some rules and you have to enforce them. But it is a matter of reading what is valuable and leaving the rest for now. And probably always will be as it is an open system. And you will not be shocked to know that the Culture Kitchen blog is sometimes criticized for -- shocking! -- bad language, harshness, even bitchy attitudes! But maybe we need a period with all these rough edges, at least for some of us . . . We can all go relax by the pool and be polite ladies later.
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Right, The French Revolution
Submitted by JJ Ross on 30 May 2006 - 11:25am.
wouldn't be my model!
Too many folks losing their heads at the hands of the not-at-all-wise crowd . . .and it sounds like Liza has read Wisdom of Crowds now, so she will know the keys to making it work are to ask real, productive questions that move the public ball forward, that actually CAN be answered with workable solutions so you can go on to the next thing - PROGRESS!; that you seek out and inspire the contribution of a wide variety of people with an uncoerced interest in helping solve it; and very important, that those people must not cross-contaminate each other with bleeding influence over each other, through in-breeding, nepotism, frequent contact, too similar environments, experience and background, etc.
(A strong argument against standardized "education" by the way-- but that's another topic I guess.)
Crowd wisdom is not mob rule nor win-lose blood sport competition, with rules and referees and a madding crowd, so it's nothing like what passes for "politics" these days either online or face to face . . .
The "wisdom of crowds" construct is not adversarial and it's about DIVERGENCE, not compromise - the whole idea is to intentionally nurture, find, include and subsequently benefit from real, and really creative, differences - not to lock them all in a conference room, classroom, courtroom (or on a website) to make them fight it out like pit bulls until only one idea is left standing, in some medieval might makes right perversion. Nor to pre-shape and compromise important differences down to one "average idiot" platform.
A wise crowd is about keeping each person's divergence as untainted as possible. You don't rig poll questions, sabotage ideas and people you fear, whip up bloody crowd-diverting, public-pandering spectacles.
(Yes, I got a bellyful of this among "homeschoolers" from across the political spectrum, who'd sooner beat a new idea to death with a stick than open their minds to the possibility of divergence as strength rather than threat.)
In the wisdom of crowds approach, you don't set folks against each other and you don't try to make them all the same, with School or Rule. You WANT individuals to stay happily autonomous and pursue their own paths however they see fit, doing their own thing and continuing to think and learn and grow and diverge even more!
Then when it's time to seek varied counsel and put it through your quincunx, the answers you get back will be rich and varied and wonderfully strong; no single answer will be "right" but taken together each is an essential part of the right, real solution to real problems, not just for gaining an edge in some "political" win-lose power game.
Unfortunately modern politics mirrors modern schooling: Answers in search of questions, the better to create money and power for the few by co-opting the allegiance, talents, thoughts, efforts, expressions, friendships, and money of the many. This Mark KosGuy strikes me as just another cocky answer tooling around in search of questions he can paint over to extort money and power from the system. If he sought the "wisdom of crowds" he would be using technology to pose questions in search of answers, more like Sliced Bread maybe, the better to create - period. And who needs rulers then?
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Speak of the Devil
Submitted by JJ Ross on 30 May 2006 - 1:48pm.
I just this minute saw my latest edge.org update, and guess what it's all about? Wisdom of the crowd using new technologies . . .
[quote]DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism [5.30.06]
"The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?"
[He sees] the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force.
This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous."
Read on as Jaron Lanier throws a lit Molotov cocktail down towards Palo Alto from up in the Berkeley Hills...[/quote]
How does anyone ever get BORED any more??
The essay itself goes way, way on to reach both the wisdom and stupidity of crowds:
[quote]
What I've seen is a loss of insight and subtlety, a disregard for the nuances of considered opinions, and an increased tendency to enshrine the official or normative beliefs of an organization. Why isn't everyone screaming about the recent epidemic of inappropriate uses of the collective? It seems to me the reason is that bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology.
* * * *
The collective rises around us in multifarious ways. What afflicts big institutions also afflicts pop culture. For instance, it has become notoriously difficult to introduce a new pop star in the music business. Even the most successful entrants have hardly ever made it past the first album in the last decade or so. The exception is American Idol. As with the Wikipedia, there's nothing wrong with it. The problem is its centrality.
More people appear to vote in this pop competition than in presidential elections, and one reason why is the instant convenience of information technology. The collective can vote by phone or by texting, and some vote more than once. The collective is flattered and it responds. The winners are likable, almost by definition.
But John Lennon wouldn't have won. He wouldn't have made it to the finals. Or if he had, he would have ended up a different sort of person and artist. The same could be said about Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Joni Mitchell, Duke Ellington, David Byrne, Grandmaster Flash, Bob Dylan (please!), and almost anyone else who has been vastly influential in creating pop music.
The Times has become the paper of averaging opinions. Something is lost when American Idol becomes a leader instead of a follower of pop music. But when intelligent design shares the stage with real science in the paper of record, everything is lost.
How could the Times have fallen so far? I don't know, but I would imagine the process was similar to what I've seen in the consulting world of late.
It's safer to be the aggregator of the collective.
You get to include all sorts of material without committing to anything. You can be superficially interesting without having to worry about the possibility of being wrong.
Except when intelligent thought really matters. In that case the average idea can be quite wrong, and only the best ideas have lasting value. Science is like that.
* * * *
The collective isn't always stupid. In some special cases the collective can be brilliant. For instance, there's a demonstrative ritual often presented to incoming students at business schools. In one version of the ritual, a large jar of jellybeans is placed in the front of a classroom. Each student guesses how many beans there are. While the guesses vary widely, the average is usually accurate to an uncanny degree.
This is an example of the special kind of intelligence offered by a collective. It is that peculiar trait that has been celebrated as the "Wisdom of Crowds," though I think the word "wisdom" is misleading. It is part of what makes Adam Smith's Invisible Hand clever, and is connected to the reasons Google's page rank algorithms work. It was long ago adapted to futurism, where it was known as the Delphi technique. The phenomenon is real, and immensely useful.
But it is not infinitely useful. The collective can be stupid, too. Witness tulip crazes and stock bubbles. Hysteria over fictitious satanic cult child abductions. Y2K mania.
The reason the collective can be valuable is precisely that its peaks of intelligence and stupidity are not the same as the ones usually displayed by individuals. Both kinds of intelligence are essential.
What makes a market work, for instance, is the marriage of collective and individual intelligence. . . .
In other words, clever individuals, the heroes of the marketplace, ask the questions which are answered by collective behavior. They put the jellybeans in the jar. . . .[/quote]
Read it all, do. It's nearly 6,000 words I think but I would LOVE to talk about it here among wise folk.
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Sanctity of Election Tech
Submitted by JJ Ross on 30 May 2006 - 2:42pm.
Michael I. Shamos, computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University:
He is confident in his [voting machine] testimony and believes most security holes can be plugged. But he wonders whether Diebold cares enough about security and the sanctity of elections.
"There's a broader philosophical question that's been worrying me more and more lately," Shamos said. "What are these companies really doing? They don't seem to have embraced the seriousness with which people in this country take their elections. It's been kind of an adversarial thing where companies want to make profits, and they just haven't spent enough time and energy designing secure systems."
. . . "You don't want the success or failure of an election to be based on the individual."
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Hey, There's a Real Idea!
Submitted by JJ Ross on 31 May 2006 - 10:01am.
[quote=Jim VandeHei in WaPo today]
A group of old Washington hands has launched a campaign to remake Internet politics, taking a forum that until now has been associated with ideologues and angry partisans and using it to start a movement culminating in a bipartisan presidential ticket in 2008.
The group is called Unity08, and no one would accuse its founders of thinking small. They include Democrats Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon, who gained political fame for their role in electing Jimmy Carter 30 years ago, as well as Doug Bailey, a media adviser to former president and representative Gerald R. Ford (R-Mich.). They are being joined by former Maine governor Angus King, an independent.
Their goal is to offer an alternative to the two major party choices -- a unity ticket that will emerge after secure, online balloting that they hope will include millions of Americans. In an announcement statement, Unity08 said its efforts are a reaction to a system that has "polarized and alienated the American people" through partisanship and interest-group politics.
Unity08's organizers estimate that if 20 percent of the voting public signs on -- hardly a modest goal but only slightly more than what independent H. Ross Perot won in his dramatic 1992 presidential campaign -- then "our voters will decide the 2008 elections."
This is different from Perot and his budget charts. Unity08's founders said they do not want to create a third party but, rather, force Democrats and Republicans to revamp themselves by becoming more issue-focused, responsive and candid. These are the same traits millions of Americans say they clamor for each election but never seem to find.
"What we are trying to do is to create a forum for people who are in the middle who have been left out of politics," Bailey said.
The 2004 elections proved the Internet can energize politics. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean went from obscurity to front-runner almost overnight as liberals organized -- and contributed money -- over the Internet in ways the political establishment did not anticipate. Now, Internet strategy is central to the campaign plans of both parties. Its potential is unlimited -- if highly uncertain -- in shaping future elections.
Yet the blogosphere is often dominated by voices from the ideological extremes. Jordan, Rafshoon, Bailey and King are betting that the Internet has room for an activist middle, as long as the process is controlled by the people -- especially the young. Their theory is that most Americans are fed up with both parties, a belief backed by recent polling data, and are eager to shake up the political process if they can find an outlet.
Noting that about 85 percent of Americans use the Internet, Rafshoon said that "they can't all be extremists. There has got to be room out there for us."
[/quote]
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stay-at-homeschooling moms are extremists?
Submitted by liza on 1 June 2006 - 3:19am.
people who consider bloggers extremists are generally scared of the fact that we are more cogent than our representatives in government and political. they still want to live in the world whenn the masses were stupid.
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Not "left-out"; independent until interested in being engaged
Submitted by Jill (not verified) on 1 June 2006 - 2:59pm.
"What we are trying to do is to create a forum for people who are in the middle who have been left out of politics," Bailey said.
Now see, this statement, IMHO, incorrectly characterizes unengaged individuals. It's not for being left out - sure, some might be in fact left out. But mostly? This batch of folks, and I include myself, just don't like what they've seen - something about the formal party structures turn us off. In my case, not so much that I don't support the Ohio Dem. Party, not so much that I'll outright dis them for being...whatever bad thing others say they are.
But I've just found some of what I'm learning they do as strategy to be distasteful and not something with which I want to be directly associated. I still want to say I'm an Ohioan and a Democrat and I support the ODP as the official state entity for the party. But I don't support all the acts of all the individuals there, or the entity as a whole, every single time. And I absolutely always reserve the right to say why I don't support or don't like or don't want to be aligned with a particular state party effort.
Likewise, I believe the state party owes ALL Ohio's Democrats - whether we're raving supporters or unconstructive critics - to hold itself out with the absolute, utmost integrity - upfront and straight up.
When you see any formal entity not doing that, that's when people opt-out of engaging. And that is not being "left out" - that's choosing to stay independent.
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Hey Jill
Submitted by liza on 1 June 2006 - 4:05pm.
Can you quote the "left out" part? So many juicy details, I can't keep them all straight
In the meantime, I so totally concurr with this :
[quote]I still want to say I'm an Ohioan and a Democrat and I support the ODP as the official state entity for the party. But I don't support all the acts of all the individuals there, or the entity as a whole, every single time. And I absolutely always reserve the right to say why I don't support or don't like or don't want to be aligned with a particular state party effort.[/quote]
If you have not checked us out at The Daily Gotham, you should. We have exactly the same attitude about the way we handle state party politics. And I don't know about you guys, but we've been kept at arms lenght by the NYSDP eventhough every major newspaper and political club in NYC considers us a pesky force to contend with
Heh
"It has not escaped me we were not invited to attend the New York State Democrats convention", is my latest on the subject. In a bit of navel-gazing, here's the heart of the post :
[quote]A certain congressman once told me : "We don't want to deal with the nastiness of blogs".
My reaction has always been : Dude, these are the people that want you to win.
Which is why I cannnot stress this enough to the people partying in Buffalo : Activists who take to blogs are not nasty because they hate you. They are pissed off because they think you're not listening. They are people like me who have no significant anmount of money to give but have words, have wit, have wisdom to spare; but more importantly, have influence over their own networks of voters.
Which is why you have to understand why we are tired of knocking on neighbors doors for candidates we do not feel passionate about.
Rage comes not of emotion. It comes from the personal understanding that the country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Whenever I hear of politicos talking about the scourge of bloggers, it makes me wonder about their definition of courage. I mean, wouldn't you rather deal with the wrath of the people who want you elected? Why would you want to shun them and instead go to bed with the people who want you dead? Because, honestly that is what the extremiststs that have taken hold of the Republican party want : they want us all to go to hell. Literally. [/quote]
So we're totally on the same page here.
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Hey Liza - That "left out"
Submitted by Jill (not verified) on 1 June 2006 - 4:25pm.
Hey Liza -
That "left out" in my last sentence was intended to be one of those lovely writerly things that harkens back full circle to the start of the comment, which was this:
"What we are trying to do is to create a forum for people who are in the middle who have been left out of politics," Bailey said.
which came from the WaPo excerpt in JJ's comment (about 2/3rd in) just above your Stay at homeschooling comment.
I took umbrage with the "left out" description of people whom the parties feel aren't engaged. As though anyone not engaged, was left out, or something. I'm saying - as I think you get - that, hello - we're not left out. We're choosing not to engage. So, if you want to engage us, why not learn about why we're choosing to stay independent?
Does that make more sense?
I'll check out the links and posts you mention. Thanks. Will try to follow here more often.
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Could substitute Ohio for NY
Submitted by Jill (not verified) on 1 June 2006 - 4:45pm.
(btw - how do I leave a comment without the avatar, or replace the avatar?)
The sentiments of that post on Gotham re: the NYSDP didn't invite echo sentiments in Ohio. In your free time, haha, check out Buckeye State Blog. I don't care for Russell Hughlock's ("Staff") style or even positions a lot of the time, but his forum offers some good posts and information and he's passionate. And I'll toss in my thoughts from time to time. I've met Russell and overall, he's just as eager as the rest of us to turnaround Ohio, as the Dem gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland says.
As an example of just how disengaged and sometimes irritated the ODP seems to be - though I have no firsthand knowledge of them saying that that is how they would describe themselves, vis a vis the blogs - check out this post on Ohio2006 about how Barack Obama has purchased tickets for an entire table of bloggers at the ODP state dinner Saturday night (hubby and I paid our own way but will join the bloggers for a sitdown with the senator at some point during the evening).
So, clearly, some candidates - like Barack Obama, get it. And that makes it inexcusable that other groups and individuals don't.
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We loves us some Obamarama
Submitted by liza on 1 June 2006 - 5:14pm.
He's awesome. He gets it. He gets pissed off with bloggers but he still gets it.
Here in NYC? Maybe Anthony Weiner. But he doesn't go out of his way to show the love.
The political clubs still rule in NY with an ironfist. That's the problem. These are the groups of people they coddle. There are some bloggers in these clubs but most of us work from the outside ... ok, well, I don't anymnore. I joined New Democratic Majority but I have yet to join one of the actual clubs of the Democratic Party. It's a thought that, honestly, does not turn me on at all.
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thanks!
Submitted by liza on 1 June 2006 - 5:08pm.
my feelings exactly.
i have a very plain vanilla life ... well ... if plain vanilla involves using the wifi i get at my local playground to post on the blog while my kids are at play, then you can call that plain vanilla.
here on my local playground i talk to a lot of DWINKS who are very political but not engaged at all. not because they don't care but because they don't feel at all connected to politicians.
it's up to people like us to try to figure out how to get them back into the civic fold.
OT : if you ever want to cross post stuff over here, please do so. join us an open a blog. we are an open community site after all!
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BTW
Submitted by liza on 1 June 2006 - 5:15pm.
Now the SMILEY's table appears on all pages but the front one.
It's on the first side column toward the bottom.
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And thank you
Submitted by Jill (not verified) on 1 June 2006 - 5:25pm.
Would love to crosspost, thanks very much for asking. (Besides my own blog, I've been blogging on Mondays at The American Street for a month or so.) But you must tell me how to change that avatar! I'm kind of techbackwards at times.
I agree about the playground pals - no connection. Ted Strickland is pretty homegrown but there are some big issues -and I'm sure you can relate in NY - between urban and rural needs (just smoothed out some endorsements folks consider key today).
To help with that lack of connection, I've been participating with a forum called Meet the Bloggers. We interviewed five out of seven gov. candidates - including two GOPpers (Ken Blackwell refused, no surprise). It's a very issue-oriented gathering of normal people who like to ask questions. The list of interviewees is impressive, but still not enough Republicans - we're really trying to just get out info for all voters, not just Dems.
Anyhow - I'll try to stay on the radar, especially if I can delete or change that avatar!
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Thanks; be sure to read comments
Thanks very much for the mention.
Your post reflects precisely reflects my thoughts and I appreciate your belief that it's bloggers who choose not to read Daily Kos etc. (in my case, only because I find it too confusing and clique-y, like I'm late to the party and haven't a clue re: who makes sense and who doesn't) that merit some observation. Not because that describes me, but because even with all the folks reading Kos, how many more millions don't read Kos and function still in social networks that attract readers, thinkers and their thoughts, and often move others to blog their perspectives?
What people are feeling and what they want is just so much bigger than Kos - not that he hasn't achieved something unique and notable. But there's much more. You very, very aptly describe what I too would say Bai is presenting. And frankly, isn't what that is scary?