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I’m just glad to be here.
Years ago I was engaged in a conversation with an old acquaintance – we went on something of a metaphysical tack. He stopped the conversation with, “Well, you know, I’m just glad to be here.”
I’m also very glad that progressive blogtopia (yes, we’re very much aware that skippy coined the phrase!) is here in its present form (since our old media does such a uniformly poor job). The progressive blogs were not quite there for the 2000 and 2004 elections.
I had some interesting experiences on the Internets in the lead up to the 2004 election. I spent far too much time on the Forum for America, the Howard Dean campaign’s lesser know cousin to the much more famous (and less sophisticated) Blog for America.
One of those eye opening experiences was an interaction between denizens of the Dean Forum and Newsweek:
The Dean Dilemma, January 12, 2004
…The murmurs of doubt are faint, barely audible above the background hum of the Internet cosmos, but they are worth listening to at the moment, for the doubters don’t seem to be “trolls”–provocateurs in digital disguise–and they express concerns about their favorite son, Dr. Howard Dean, in the bosom of his own blogosphere.
“Dammit, tell him to get his mouth under control!” says “WVMicko” on a forum conducted by Dean’s official Web site. “He’s been all over the map on a lot of things, and the way he shoots off his mouth is a big reason why.” A poster to the site named “Lancaster” frets that his wife is put off by Dean’s confrontational personality. “Her initial reaction to Dean? ‘That guy scares me.’ Now, I’m not a full-fledged Deanie, but I’m strongly leaning that way… but she’s still not convinced that Dean is the right guy for the job.” A writer named “irmaly” also views Dean’s personality as a vulnerability. “I am a strong Dean supporter,” irmaly declares, “but I think the campaign is missing this most important point–the need to focus strongly on getting up over the perception of ‘mean, angry Dean.’ Dean is portrayed as a man who, rather than share a beer in a local hangout, will fight you for yours. I realize this isn’t true, but Bush and Company knows perception is everything, and they have already had some success at seriously hurting Dean on this perception. I don’t know how you get up over this, but you have to, or we will lose…”
There are a lot of lessons in those two paragraphs. The individuals quoted in the article spent an ungodly amount of time and effort trying to correct the record – to no avail. If I recall correctly the discussion on the Forum (the old archives are long gone – there are a few fragments on the wayback machine) pointed out that a stringer had taken the quotes and passed them on to Newsweek which just plugged them into their pre-existing narrative.
A question: How could Newsweek prove if someone was a troll or not?
The main lesson: Never give the media anything that detracts from your candidate’s messages and strategies. Another simpler lesson: The Internets are forever. If everyone on this public blog can read it, so can the media.
The memory of that early January 2004 distraction was dredged up by a series of exchanges I took part in this weekend on another political site I used to visit more frequently in the past. Until this crazy season for the amateur fans of our candidates ends (I’m hoping for February 5th) the once venerable site will continue to be the equivalent of a bunch of junior high school students throwing food in the cafeteria.
Contrary to my best intentions, I got sucked into the vortex.
I’m old school when it come to snark. Sarcasm combined with experience and an economy of words can be far too much fun. Though directing snark at humorless and psychotic true believers can generate a lot of heat.
Too many of the undisciplined amateur fans (of all Democratic presidential candidates) spend their time perpetuating right wingnut stories, talking points, and memes by directing them at the other Democratic candidates. They throw everything against the wall in the hope that something will stick, never realizing, or caring about the long term damage. The reality is that one of those candidates will be the nominee – and our lazy old media will dredge up all kinds of stuff on the progressive Internets to fit into their pre-existing narrative.
A disciplined and savvy candidate fan intent on working the progressive blogs could reinforce their candidates’ campaign message while simultaneously directing their search engine skills at the foibles of whoever happens to be that day’s republican front runner. I know, it’s probably too much to ask.
The right and their media stenographers have already started in on all of the Democratic candidates (as if any of us should ever believe anything Novacula writes). We don’t need to do their work for them.
Remember the 2000 campaign? Remember 2004?
Campaigns know about controlling their messages with the media. Too many amateur fans don’t have a clue. When I walked the Harkin Steak Fry in September the sea of campaign workers and volunteers seeing my red press credential avoided me like the plague. The campaigns drill that into their staff and volunteers at these events – that’s discipline. And discipline is what it will take to beat the republicans at all levels in 2008.
Repetition is sound pedagogy. Never give the media anything that detracts from your Democratic Party nominee’s messages and strategies.
using right-wing talking points about Hillary murdering Vince Foster or Obama’s secret Muslim connection or Edwards’ hair is stupid, even if droning it temporarily advantages your own preferred candidate. Same thing goes for local candidates.
But I can’t agree with the statement that we as bloggers need to become a disciplined machine in lockstep with a certain candidate – that’s going way too far. A blog is a weblog, a diary, something written from your own point of view. My own point of view isn’t necessarily the same as the candidates I support, even ones who I am really active on behalf of. From time to time, I’m going to disagree with them on tactics and on policy, and I’m going to say so.
And after all, the candidates themselves are going after each other on both personal and policy differences. Why shouldn’t us observers do the same thing?
I’m incredibly disappointed with the level of commenting and user blogging about candidates going on at the big blogs.
I don’t mind if negative things that aren’t GOP/right wing talking points are posted. To me the whole point of political blogs that allow users to post their own work and make comments is to have full and frank discussions about politics, including candidates. Any full and frank discussion is going to include discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. And the price of that full and frank discussion is that you might get mud slinging too. Yes, it lives forever, but that’s life. As long as it’s a small part of the discussion I’m not too concerned about it.
However … What is especially troubling to me this election cycle is the level of mud slinging. It is incredibly difficult to have a real discussion about a candidate at any of the larger blogs. And frankly I’ve stopped trying. I think a lot of people have stopped trying – thus adding to the imbalance between the true discussions and the mud slinging.
I’ve simply stopped going into most candidate diaries. It isn’t worth my time.
I question the efficacy of most candidate diaries at this point. They aren’t going to convince undecideds when they drive undecideds away by the tenor of the conversations.
I simply do not know what they are trying to accomplish but what they are accomplishing is mostly negative. There is too much mud and at this point I agree with you that a lot of that mud is going to get tracked around by other people who aren’t on our side. We can’t help what the media finds but the uglier it gets the more likely that it will get blown out of proportion.
The thing is, the whole thing seems like an enormous waste of time to me. The nomination is not going to be won on the blogs — it’s going to be won on the ground and somehow that point seems to have been lost on most of the Amateur Fans. In my opinion, what blogging can accomplish is (i) conveying information to people who need it, (ii) getting people off their asses and out on the ground doing some work and (iii) getting people to donate money. You can’t convey information to people who need it if all the undecided people like me refuse to even enter the war zone. And the way to get people off their asses is by positive blogging not negative blogging. I guess they can raise money – I don’t know I don’t look at those diaries anymore.
I don’t think you can (or should) impose the level of discipline at the blog level that exists at the campaign level. That’s not what blogs are for. But individual bloggers need to understand the ramifications of their mud slinging and that the long term damage they may be inflicting certainly isn’t worth it in the long term.