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August 31, 2006Bloggers vs. Incumbents: The New Fronts
August was a bad month for congressional incumbents, and September already is looking to be equally tough on lawmakers who face intraparty challenges.
Just this week, Democratic bloggers started swarming against Rep. Albert Wynn of Maryland and for his Democratic challenger, Donna Edwards. And up in Rhode Island today, the latest poll puts Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee far behind challenger Steve Laffey, who has the support of conservative bloggers. The tally has Laffey at 51 percent and Chafee at 34 percent.
Both states hold their primaries Sept. 12.
The Rhode Island poll results triggered a flurry of blog commentary today. Moderate Republicans see a Laffey win in September as a sure loss of a Senate seat for the GOP in the fall, and Democratic bloggers eagerly expect the same result.
GOPProgress lashed out at The Club For Growth, a Laffey ally that has used its blog to both promote his candidacy and attack Chafee.
"The Club for Growth is doing a fantastic job of forcing a split within the GOP, which is leaving Republicans fighting Republicans, instead of Republicans -- united -- fighting Democrats," GOPProgress editor Liz Mair wrote. She also called attention to GOP electoral squabbles in Colorado, Michigan and Nevada.
Balloon Juice argued that the contest in Rhode Island merits the same kind of attention that the media dedicated to the fight between Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Ned Lamont in neighboring Connecticut earlier this summer. "Some days I wonder whether many in the news media personally identify with Lieberman so that his defeat is theirs," Tim F. said of the unequal treatment of the two races.
Democratic bloggers at MyDD and Swing State Project rejoiced at the poll results from Rhode Island. The latter predicted that "a Laffey candidacy will be a windfall for Democratic nominee Sheldon Whitehouse" and the national Democratic Party, which then could direct more financial resources to other Senate races.
But conservative bloggers appear ready to fight in Rhode Island and to force Democrats to do the same. The Club For Growth and RedState helped Tim Walberg defeat moderate GOP Rep. Joe Schwarz in Michigan earlier this month, and now the two are firmly behind Laffey now. In the Rhode Island battle, RedState published a podcast with Laffey today, and club blogger Andy Roth, borrowing a page from RedState in the Michigan race, has been listing 20 reasons to dump Chafee.
If Laffey wins the primary, his candidacy could become a test case for gauging the electoral power of the conservative blogosphere to prevail in a general election, just as Lamont's candidacy is for the liberal blogosphere now that Lieberman is seeking a rematch as an independent.
Posted by Danny at 06:05 PM | Comments (0)
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Technology has a tendency to take root unevenly across the nation, and that is proving to be true with the political blogosphere, too. Political blogs are virtually unheard of in many states, but they are becoming a powerful force in others.
Virginia is an example of the latter, and The Virginian-Pilot has the proof in a laudatory editorial published yesterday. Here is an excerpt:
Last Friday, former Gov. Mark. R. Warner dropped by RaisingKaine.com to answer questions and drum up support for Jim Webb even as future gubernatorial hopeful Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling was preparing to give a speech in person to a bipartisan gathering of bloggers in Martinsville.The former governor and future presidential candidate's "live-blogging" came a couple of days after Sen. George Allen's campaign started working with the proprietor of the state's most powerful conservative blog, VaConservative.com to hire a blogger and develop a blog "strategy" for the Republican's Senate campaign.
On Saturday, Attorney General Bob McDonnell addressed the same crowd of bloggers Bolling had the night before, followed by U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, John Brownlee.
The newspaper noted that some people are not too excited by the prospect that the influence of political blogs in the state will continue to grow. They lament blogs' "penchant for fierce partisanship and fact-free opinionizing."
"But judging the blogosphere by its worst members is like judging The New York Times by Jayson Blair, a foolish oversimplification," the editorial concluded. "Over time, blogs will be judged by readers. Those who keep their facts straight and their analysis honest will thrive, while others will wither into obscurity. In the meantime, the more voices that are part of Virginia's debates, the better off we all are."
Posted by Danny at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
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Democratic bloggers have invested as much or more of their rhetorical energy into attacking lawmakers in their own party this year as they have Republicans.
Their first target was Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas' 28th District. Bloggers backed former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, only to see him go down to defeat in the March primary.
Their biggest obsession since then has been Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut, who defeated Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the Aug. 8 primary. Blogs also played a role in the House primary defeat of Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney to Hank Johnson the same day.
So who's next on the list? It might be Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md. He is facing a spirited challenge from Donna Edwards, and MyDD's Matt Stoller both took up her cause and trashed Wynn on Friday. Stoller called Edwards "an extremely principled and savvy progressive," and he labeled Wynn "a terrible congressman," "a villain" and "a terrible politician."
Stoller argued that an ugly scene at a debate between the two last week might indicate that the race is at a turning point in Edwards' favor. "Well, Donna Edwards now has an opening, and a real shot at a victory," he said. "The race is competitive, and if she can raise her ID enough she can take Wynn down."
His arguments persuaded one reader unimpressed by the "Lieberman-esque Wynn" to toss his financial support toward Edwards. That reader happens to live in the congressional district and also held open the possibility of volunteering for Edwards. Two other readers said Stoller's post prompted them to make donations of $25 and $100 to Edwards.
She already is on her way to being the next Lamont. The question is whether Wynn will become the next Lieberman. Maryland voters will decide Sept. 12.
UPDATE: Jonathan Tasini of New York wishes he were the next Lamont, but so far, the New York Post reports that the netroots have not taken up his cause in Tasini's challenge to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. (Hat tip to Instapundit.)
UPDATE II: Stoller made official his crusade against Wynn and for Edwards. Americablog, Daily Kos, Eschaton and Firedoglake promptly joined the crusade, so the swarm once again is in full attack mode.
Edwards also won the endorsement of The Washington Post.
Posted by Danny at 08:15 AM | Comments (2)
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The 'Secret Holder' Is Sen. Ted Stevens
TPM Muckraker got an aide to Sen. Ted Stevens to acknowledge that the Alaska Republican is behind the "secret hold" on legislation designed to combat pork-barrel spending by federal lawmakers.
Cox Newspapers also did a story today on the disclosure and Stevens' reason for the hold. He said the anti-pork bill needs a cost-benefit analysis on the grounds that it could increase bureaucracy.
Mark Tapscott, whose vision triggered the blog swarm over the secret hold, ridiculed Stevens' explanation. "How about we do a cost-benefit analysis of Stevens' tenure in the nation's Capitol?" Tapscott said of the senator whose love of pork has animated bloggers for months.
Stevens' aide also said this to Cox Newspapers: "Senator Stevens has always preferred to handle this at the staff level or member to member. He doesn’t like running to the blogosphere or the media. ... Going to the blogs and the media with these concerns is not the way we have ever operated.”
The gentleman from Alaska might want to reconsider that approach in light of what has transpired the past two weeks. This is the information age, and people aren't content for their elected representatives to keep information to themselves or their aides.
Posted by Danny at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
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Every August, lawmakers leave Washington for relaxing summer vacations, taxpayer-funded junkets abroad, low-key field hearings and high-dollar fundraisers. In even-numbered years, the few incumbents whose jobs are threatened have more hectic campaign schedules, but for the most part, lawmakers don't have to answer tough questions in the month whose name is linked to external triumph and internal peace in the Roman Empire.
Not so this August -- at least not for the 100 unfortunate souls who happen to hold U.S. Senate seats when bloggers across the political spectrum are in a feisty mood. Those bloggers are hot and bothered not by the temperature and summer humidity but instead by the time-honored Senate tradition known as the "secret hold," and they are doing their best to break that hold against policymaking accountability.
The procedural hold in this case is on a bill that would create a public, searchable Web site of all federal grants and contracts in an effort to deter pork-barrel spending in lawmakers' states and districts. Senate tradition allows senators to place such holds anonymously as a way to delay or prevent floor action.
The year-old blog-inspired Porkbusters brigade took up the cause against the current hold several days ago, with Instapundit as one of the leaders. In recent days, the moderate Republican blog GOPProgress and the liberal TPM Muckraker have joined the fight.
Other blogs either involved in the effort or that have plugged it include Captain's Quarters, the Center for Citizen Media, The Club For Growth, Craigblog, Daily Kos and the Sunlight Foundation blog In Broad Daylight. "Here's a no-brainer, zero-cost, pure people-power issue for Democrats to latch onto for November: Get rid of this 'secret hold' crap in the Senate," SusanG wrote at Daily Kos.
Writers and readers of the participating blogs are calling senators and demanding to know whether they are behind the anonymous hold, and the bloggers are tallying the lists of denials and remaining suspects. As of yesterday, they had narrowed the list of suspects to less than a half-dozen (differences exist in the lists on each blog).
"I think we will see the unmasking next week," said Mark Tapscott, the editorial-page editor of The Examiner and the blogger who on Aug. 16 first invited his online colleagues to tackle the issue. "And between that and the coming revelations produced by our earmarks project, the blogosphere's capacity to influence major policy directions in Congress will be clearly established."
The issue also has spurred two laudatory posts by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., at his VOLPAC blog. "This is a moment for participatory democracy in action, an unprecedented cooperation between Senate leadership and the blogosphere to pass a bill," he wrote.
Blogger Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters also put questions about the hold and the bill directly to Frist on Tuesday when he was in Minneapolis, and Frist publicly praised the work of bloggers again.
"The first step is to put it out there so people can read it," Frist said of the legislation. "Probably only 10 of 100 people have read it. But when we get back [to Washington next week], people will know about it because you all have done such a great job with it."
Other bloggers, including Robert Bluey of Capital Briefs, previously vowed to hold Frist himself accountable for following through on getting the anti-pork measure to the floor. But Kathryn Jean Lopez of The Corner remained skeptical (at least she was last week, before the outcry against anonymous holds crossed partisan lines) that anything good will come of the latest blog swarm.
"I have my doubts anything will happen -- and gauging the mood of some Senate staff yesterday I didn't notice optimism but the same-old-Senate realism in the air," she wrote. "Bill Frist could have made some news yesterday; instead he just used the blogosphere to expand his misleadership."
Whatever the outcome on exposing the hold against the anti-pork bill, blogger Tim Chapman of the Heritage Foundation warned his conservative colleagues against scrapping the hold in general. He said it has proved to be a valuable procedural tool for stalling many a liberal bill and pointed to a pro-hold speech by Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, a leading Senate opponent of pork.
"[W]ithout a hold, the bill goes to the Senate floor and passes with unanimous consent for fear of opposing a politically popular piece of legislation that is often either not constitutional or further bloats the federal government," Chapman wrote. "In this case, unamous consent is often anything but. It is more like unanimous ignorance."
CORRECTION: I've fixed the text to credit Jeff Sessions, rather than Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, as being the lawmaker who made the speech in favor of anonymous holds. Flake has been a key House player in the fight against pork. Thanks to two readers for noting my error in the comments.
Posted by Danny at 04:13 PM | Comments (5)
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The greatest failing of candidate blogs is that they are not personal enough. Most politicians are too guarded -- too political -- to truly adopt the spirit of candidness and transparency that makes the blogosphere special.
The Phoenix nailed the mindset of most politicians who blog in a piece that dubbed them "ploggers." They shamelessly and ineffectively use their blogs to make plugs rather than engage voters and constituents. "[A] blog is supposed to be personal, especially when it comes to whacking around your ideological or electoral opponents," the paper said.
Some politicians are starting to get it, though, and Republican Mike McGavick, a Senate candidate in Washington state, is among them. He scored some points in the transparency department this week by posting a puportedly tell-all blog entry that details his failures in life -- a marriage that ended in divorce, his subsequent role as "part-time dad," his arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol, his role in running an attack political advertisement, and his difficult decision to lay off employees at the Safeco insurance company.
"My pledge to you is one of authenticity, civility and transparency," McGavick rote. "I take responsibility for my actions and my decisions, but it's up to you to decide if what I offer outweighs my shortcomings."
Some skeptics questioned the genuiness of the open letter to voters. One commenter, for instance, scolded McGavick for including at the top of the letter a gripe about current character attacks against him. Allan Batchelder said that "disingenuous" paragraph suggests that McGavick still doesn't "get the point. You defend yourself by attacking your opponents? Isn't that what you've just accused them of doing?"
From The Roots, the blog of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, predictably made a similar argument by criticizing a television ad McGavick currently is running against Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell. And McGavick's campaign just as predictably defended the ad.
But others both appreciated McGavick's honesty about his mistakes and praised as an astute political move his decision to air them himself on the campaign blog.
"McGavick's open letter was undoubtedly as edited and re-edited and politically calculated as any other campaign communication," said Mary Katharine Ham of the Republican forum Townhall.com, "but this is a different kind of message. It really does come across sincere and refreshingly Washington-outsider. If McGavick's campaign is aiming to tap into some of that anti-incumbent sentiment, I say he did a good job of setting himself apart. I think it will probably play well."
Real Clear Politics was both critical and laudatory of the blog entry. "McGavick ruined the confessional mood by declaring that the disclosure wasn't a 'campaign tactic.' It clearly was a tactic -- and probably a very smart one at that."
But RCP added this dead-on warning: "The only way this can hurt McGavick is if there is something else in his background that turns up between now and November 7. Then, having gone out of his way to confess to voters 'the worst and most embarrassing moments' of his life, McGavick would look doubly bad -- and he would pay for it dearly at the polls."
Seattle Times political reporter David Postman, on the other hand, proved that most journalists just can't help but be cynical. At his own blog, Postman suggested that McGavick chose to make his confession by blog rather than to the press because he wanted a "softer opening" to the story and that he downplayed the only "unreported" news -- the DUI arrest -- by putting it second in the list of mistakes.
"McGavick has chosen an unusual strategy in trying to protect himself from negative stories and attack ads," Postman said. "I hadn't heard anything about his DUI before, but the rest of McGavick's list are not secrets and he certainly has gotten questions on all of them before. He clearly is making a preemptive move
Posted by Danny at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)
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I'm home in West Virginia this week as the family sorts through the belongings of Grandpa Tumblebug, and I found a wall-hanging that perfectly captured his philosophy of life. It's a souvenir from Zanesville, Ohio, in the heartland of America.
Here is what it says:
If you want your father to take care of you -- that's Paternalism; if you ant your mother to take care of you -- that Maternalism; if you want Uncle Sam to take care of you -- that's Socialism; if you want your comrades to take care of you -- that's Communism. But -- if you can take care of yourself -- that's "Americanism."
Posted by Danny at 07:15 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Katrina Politics Resurrected
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast this time last year, and the damage stretched all the way to Washington, here the devastating storm wreaked political havoc on the Bush administration. A trio of Democratic politicians took to The Huffington Post yesterday to mark the anniversay of the storm by chastising President Bush anew or proposing more solutions to problems that remain.
Here are excerpts of what they had to say:
-- Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin: "I have put together a few different ideas into one bill, building on really good work on housing issues by some of my colleagues in the Senate. ... It includes housing vouchers to help make rents affordable for the lowest-income people and families. It also makes housing like the Katrina Cottages -- which are more like homes and less like trailers - more -- available to those who want them. ... And finally it allows [the Housing and Urban Development Department] to handle temporary rental assistance programs from here on out, instead of [the Federal Emergency Managment Agency], which isn't equipped to handle housing issues like these for the long haul."
-- Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts: "One year later, hundreds of thousands of families from New Orleans and the gulf are still without jobs and unable to return to their homes. One year later, the administration has used less than half of the $110 billion in federal aid approved by Congress to help people rebuild their lives. One year later, families in New Orleans are still waiting for trailers to live in and for demolition and clean-up crews to clear their neighborhoods so they can rebuild their homes. One year later, half of the city's hospitals remain closed and less than half of the New Orleans public schools plan to reopen this fall. One year later, the levees are no safer than the day Katrina hit."
-- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California: "Last week, House Democrats formed a Waste, Fraud and Abuse Truth Squad. ... They will conduct oversight of the Bush administration's handling of taxpayer dollars, giving the Golden Drain Award to those who fail to provide meaningful oversight or hold the administration accountable despite documented instances of waste, fraud and abuse. Last week, the Truth Squad released a detailed report highlighting the financial mishandling and corruption that has marred the recovery process, dedicating the first Golden Drain Award to the president's Hurricane Katrina contract process."
Conservative bloggers, many of whom were critical of the Bush administration's response to Katrina, also are marking the anniversary of the storm. At The Right Angle, for instance, Matt Lewis offered three public-relations lessons for the Bush administration to consider: 1) Get on the front line; 2) show that you care; and 3) avoid negative momentum. And Wizbang revisited the flooding of New Orleans by posting "The Katrina Video Congress Didn't Want You To See."
"This is, in a way, the culmination of our extensive Katrina coverage from [a] uniquely local perspective; going back to well before the hurricane hit," Wizbang publisher Kevin Aylward wrote in an e-mail. "There are approximately 175 Katrina posts in our Katrina archives, including the devastatingly accurate predictions about riding out Katrina in The Superdome, unused school buses, media failures, government failures, and plenty on the Corps of Engineers."
Posted by Danny at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
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Folks in the energy sector can fill their tanks with economic, policy and political news focused on the topic at The Oil Drum, a group energy blog launched earlier this year. An editor of the site who writes under the pseudonym Prof. Goose pointed me to the site in a recent e-mail.
The introductory post suggested that oil production is near its peak or may already have reached it. "I would be quite surprised if the world is able to bring enough new production on stream to overcome those high decline rates in existing production for much longer," Stuart Staniford wrote. "And with each passing year, it's only going to get harder to do."
Prof. Goose also pointed me to posts on the politics of oil, legislation to open the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas exploration and the efficacy of ethanol. The site has localized blogs in New York City and the United Kingdom, with branch offices planned for Texas, Australia/New Zealand and Canada.
"[W]e primarily focus on peak oil and the ramifications, but we also talk a lot about alternative energy sources, etc.," Prof. Goose said. "I would like to think that we're where a lot of smart people come together, bring argument and empirical evidence, and try to figure things out with regard to our energy situation. We have some of the most interesting and informative comment threads I've ever seen in the 'sphere."
Posted by Danny at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)
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I thought it might be useful to post a directory of links to the series of Technology Daily articles and podcasts on the intersection between technology and politics that I have reprinted here over the past several days:
-- Blogs, Podcasts And More On The Trail
-- Voter Outreach In The Information Age
-- Traffic To Some Political Blogs Is Down
-- Getting Real About Politicking Online
-- Third Parties And The Internet
-- Let's Get This (Internet) Party Started
-- The Political Value Of Blog Ads
-- Silicon Valley Sides With Democrats
-- The Blue-Red Battle For Online Bucks
-- Politics And Technology: The Podcasts
Posted by Danny at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)
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Over the past several days, I have republished several Technology Daily articles focused on the intersection between technology and politics. My goal in republishing the articles was to get them out from behind the subscription wall at Tech Daily so bloggers could read them and link to them.
As we published the articles earlier this month, I also made the topic the chief focus of two audio episodes of the Tech Policy Pod. Those podcasts already are freely available, and they include more details from the series that have not been mentioned in the articles I've reprinted. They also provide a brief recap of the entire series and of the articles now available at Beltway Blogroll.
You can listen to the podcasts here and here.
Posted by Danny at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)
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The Blue-Red Battle For Online Bucks
Earlier this month, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I am republishing them here. The latest story is below.
Party Activists Battle For Bucks At Dueling Web Sites
by Michael Martinez
Online activists are aiming to raise hordes of cash to push candidates to victory in mid-term elections this fall.
Democrats are working to perfect an online fundraising model that has served them for the past two years. Last year, Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, who was a candidate in a special House race in Ohio, raised more than $55,000 in an eight-hour span through the ActBlue online clearinghouse. Hackett, who received more than $500,000 via Web logs and other online activists, eventually lost. But his fundraising successes have sparked a nationwide trend.
ActBlue has been used to raise more than $7.2 million for Democratic candidates since its launch in 2004. The most popular page -- the one for "netroots candidates" endorsed by major blogs -- has generated more than $420,000 from about 5,500 donors. PAC For A Change, which is affiliated with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has raised about $220,000 on its ActBlue page.
According to ActBlue's Ben Rahm, the beauty of the site is that it allows users to direct campaign cash to chosen candidates. He said the site itself does not have any agenda.
"Our mission is to help Democrats to win, period," Rahm said.
Ned Lamont, the former communications executive who ousted Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., in a primary last week, has received more than $300,000 through ActBlue, and more than $100,000 of that went through the "netroots candidates" page. Lamont also raised eyebrows this year by matching online donations with cash from his personal fortune.
But not everyone is as successful. Pete Ashdown, an underdog gunning for the seat currently occupied by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has raised only $859.71 on ActBlue. The donations include a $21.28 pledge from the "Candidates for Colbert" page, a site dedicated to honoring politicians who "embody the spirit, courage and honor" of comedian Stephen Colbert.
Republicans have been scrambling lately to make up ground on the online fundraising front. A group of conservative bloggers recently teamed to launch the ActBlue-inspired Rightroots site, which is being sponsored by the ABC political action committee.
The Rightroots site already has inspired some Lamont-like fundraising matching funds. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., pledged to donate $14,000 directly to Rightroots-endorsed candidates from his leadership PAC if the project raised $26,000 in its first few days on the Web -- a challenge that donors met.
"This is our opportunity to send a clear message to folks that Republicans don't just beat Democrats on the streets and on Election Day, but on every battlefield, including the Internet," Kingston said, when he issued the challenge.
The Club for Growth also recently revamped its fundraising Web site to accommodate bundling. Andrew Roth, the group's government affairs director and blogger, said it is premature to declare it a success, but he said the site did receive a spike in online donations in the run-up to a Republican primary in Michigan last week. In that race, Rep. Joe Schwarz, R-Mich., was defeated by state Rep. Tim Walberg.
Roth said that conservatives are playing catch-up in some respects but that he is encouraged by how Republican online activists have focused on policy rather than just on campaigning.
"People talk about how a dog year is equivalent to seven human years," he said. "But a regular year is like the equivalent to 20 Internet years. You can miss the boat really quickly."
"Imitation is a form of flattery," Rahm said of the recent Republican online efforts. But he said progressive political philosophies tend to be better suited for online activism because they are more inclusive and not as reliant on a "top-down" strategy.
"That line of reasoning suggests this model would work better for us," he said. "With that said, in terms of strategy, I would never underestimate the Republicans."
Posted by Danny at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
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Earlier this month, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I am republishing them here. The latest story is below.
Democrats Get Biggest Cut Of Silicon Valley Cash
by Heather Greenfield
A leader in the Silicon Valley venture-capitalist company, August Capital also is among the area's leading donors of political capital for candidates in November.
Andy Rappaport and his wife, Deborah, gained a spot among the top Democratic donors in the country by downloading $7 million during the 2004 election cycle. Rappaport, a research physicist and former president of The Technology Research Group, has been a partner in August Capital for the past decade and has been involved in two dozen high-tech startups.
So far during the 2006 election cycle, he and his wife have donated more than $400,000 to liberal candidates and political action committees, including a $100,000 check to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, $64,000 to Grassroots Democrats, $50,000 to the NDN Political Fund and $25,000 to Progressive Majority.
Rappaport also gave $17,350 to the online fundraising site ActBlue and $4,000 to BlogPac, a group started by the authors of Democratic blogs to encourage their readers and writers to take actions rather than just rant.
Ned Lamont, the Democratic Senate nominee for Connecticut, and Jon Tester, the Democrat running against Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., are among the biggest individual recipients of the Rappaports' generosity. Andy Rappaport contributed directly to both, and Lamont and Tester are among the biggest beneficiaries of ActBlue.
At a reception for the Rappaports' newest venture, the New Progressive Coalition, which they founded to match progressive causes online with angel donors, Andy Rappaport told San Francisco Magazine he hopes to apply what he learned in venture capital to political change.
Rappaport said venture capitalists do not bank on a single vision but on many ideas that may or may not succeed. He also said he learned that large institutions, like the Democratic Party, are unlikely to change because of pressure from within, which may explain why he has not donated to party leadership groups and just one incumbent, Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
But other big Silicon Valley donors focused their political capital on the Democratic Party -- overwhelmingly. The top 20 donors to individuals, party committees and leadership PACs, were donors who gave either 100 percent or nearly all their money to Democrats, according to records in opensecrets.org database of the Center for Responsive Politics.
"In '06, almost everyone on the top list was favoring Democrats," CRP researcher Doug Weber said. "In '04, there were several people on the list who were heavily Republican."
Going back further, before limits on soft money, Silicon Valley looked even more bipartisan in its giving. In 2000, Thomas Siebel of Siebel Systems topped the list of Silicon Valley donors with a $500,000 check to the National Republican Campaign Committee, and John Chambers of Cisco Systems was the top Silicon Valley donor to President Bush.
"Where have all the elephants gone?" asked CRP communications director Massie Ritsch. He said that in 2000, the Republican share of Silicon Valley donations "was 43 percent; now its 4 percent."
John Doerr tops the list of contributors in the current cycle, nearing the limit that individuals can contribute to the traditional parties and federal candidates. He made $98,180 in donations, with 96 percent going to Democrats. He did make a $1,000 contribution to the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Alaska Republican Ted Stevens.
Doerr is a partner at the venture-capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and is a former leader of TechNet, a group of high-tech CEOs that monitors legislative interests of the industry. Doerr's wife, Ann, ranks among top Silicon Valley donors, with all her contributions benefiting Democrats.
The breakdown for the couple includes a total of $25,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and another $25,000 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Doerr contributed to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and gave $8,400 to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
His wife contributed to Lieberman and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
Brooks Byers, also a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, donated $88,733, all to Democrats. Byers' biggest donation was $20,000 to the DSCC. He also gave $10,000 to the DCCC and helped Lieberman and Cantwell.
Tashia Morgridge of Cisco made the top list, as did John Morgridge also a Cisco executive. Their combined $86,900 went entirely to Democrats.
Cisco CEO John Chambers, meanwhile, gave $35,000 to the Republican Governors Association, along with just a few candidates. Lieberman received a check as did Sen. George Allen, R-Va. Most of Chambers' donations were to the TechNet PAC.
The only top Silicon Valley donor giving exclusively to Republicans this campaign season was Peter Wendell of Sierra Ventures, who contributed $35,000.
Apple founder Steve Jobs contributed $26,700 to the DCCC, much less than the $100,000 he donated to the Democratic National Committee in 1996.
His friend, Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison, was more bipartisan in his $12,000 in contributions, with $5,000 going to Every Republican is Crucial, along with donations to both Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. The bulk went to TechNet's PAC.
Posted by Danny at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)
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The Buying Of The Democratic Blogosphere
Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner threw an expensive party for the folks at YearlyKos over the weekend. Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum questioned whether that was a smart move by Warner, a potential presidential candidate in 2008. Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest thinks it was a "brilliant" marketing strategy.
"Some people wonder if it reflects poorly on his judgment, that he lavishly throws money around," Johnson wrote. "I think this may have been a very effective use of marketing dollars and a very sharp strategic move.
"Think about it this way: If Gov. Warner has now established himself in the front of the pack, and grabbed onto a great big piece of the mindshare of the blogosphere, for only $70,000 (or whatever it cost), then good for him. It shows he knows how to reach the audiences he needs to reach, when he needs to reach them."
Johnson also said the blogosphere will benefit from Warner's attention. "[H]e validated the importance of the emerging blogosphere to the American political process," Johnson said. "He lent his own credibility to the blogosphere."
UPDATE: Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos, the inspiration behind YearlyKos, responded to complaints about Warner's spending at the conference. Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, who now works for Warner at Forward Together, are the co-authors of the book "Crashing The Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics."
John Aravosis of Americablog was a bit defensive about the criticism, too.
UPDATE II: Former Wonkette Ana Marie Cox shared her thoughts on Warner's outreach to blogs, as well as on bloggers' criticism of the media and other topics, in Time magazine.
A contributor at The Huffington Post voiced his fears that "many in this sector of the liberal blogosphere can be bought off by a politician showing a little interest and stroking their outsider egos."
And Matthew Yglesias at TPMCafe asks of Warner: "But where's the beef?" (The policy kind, that is, not the bovine kind that may have been part of Warner's lavish spread at YearlyKos.)
UPDATE: Byron York of The Corner dug through recent campaign finance records to confirm that Warner spent $70,000 for the big party at YearlyKos. "Warner clearly spent money in other ways -- t-shirts and the like -- trying to win Kossack favor, so it's not completely clear what his final YearlyKos expenditure was," York added.
Posted by Danny at 12:53 PM | Comments (5)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
Blog Ads Help Challengers Generate Bucks And Buzz
by Brittany R. Ballenstedt
Political advertising dates to the nation's founding, with the first efforts involving everything from public processions to fliers. Radio came along in 1920 and the television boom in 1952, giving candidates new venues to reach far more people with their messages.
In the Internet era, campaigns have another relatively new advertising tool -- advertisements on Web logs -- and many congressional hopefuls are investing in them this year.
"Blogs don't give as much reach as television, but they give more accountability," said Henry Copeland, who founded Blogads, the innovator in the field. He said political activism on the Internet has grown substantially in recent years.
Copeland said Internet advertising, and specifically blog ads, are incredibly effective, especially for challengers who typically lack the funding of incumbents. "You have a lot of D.C. insiders reading this stuff," he said. "It's a very cheap way to drop a hand grenade in the swimming pool."
Whether those insiders lend much credibility to blogs is another issue. A National Journal "insiders poll" indicated a split between the parties.
The survey found that almost 70 percent of Democrats believe Internet political activists will have a significant impact on the mid-term election. Republican insiders voted almost exactly the opposite, with 70 percent claiming that "netroots" activism will have little to no impact.
Michael Turk, the e-campaign manager for the 2004 re-election campaign of President Bush, chalked that up to GOP activists who have been running campaigns the "old-school way" since the 1970s and 1980s. "The GOP is full of people who learned on old media -- mail, phones, radio and TV -- and don't know anything else," Turk said in a blog post. "What's funny is I imagine the same quotes were probably uttered by consultants when cable TV came along."
A 2006 survey by BlogAds revealed that the average blog reader has an annual income between $60,000 and $90,000, and that 70 percent of blog readers have contributed to a cause or candidate within the last six months.
"Online community and blogs are the town halls of this century," said Trevor Miller, a spokesman for the Progressive Patriots Fund, which is affiliated with Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. The fund has run various blog ads to draw donations and an audience for its cause. The foundation has generated enough donations to help five congressional candidates this fall.
"The online community in general has grown a hundredfold since the beginning of the year," Miller said. "It continues to be an outlet for people to have their voices heard."
Laura Leyva, a candidate for the state House in Florida, tried blog ads in an attempt to prove her campaign manager wrong about their effectiveness. Her ads sought to raise $5,000 and succeeded. "Using [blog ads] is certainly better than going to fundraisers," Leyva said.
Some candidates have goals other than money in mind. Jonathan Ossoff, the deputy communications director for Hank Johnson, a Democratic House candidate in Georgia, said Johnson used them to generate excitement for Tuesday's run-off primary election against Rep. Cynthia McKinney that he handily won.
"They've been effective in reaching out to people who make the news and reaching the national media at an affordable price," Ossoff said. "They were not as effective in bringing in donations, but that really wasn't the goal."
In Montana, Jon Tester used blog ads early to try to help gain an edge against his Republican opponent, Sen. Conrad Burns. Tester is now a darling of many top Democratic bloggers, and his challenge to Burns is considered one of the most viable for Democrats this year. That has helped him gain popularity and funding, and now his ads are on television and radio.
But Matt McKenna, communications director for the campaign, said more blogs ads are possible. "We've used blog ads in the past, and we will again," McKenna said.
Copeland said blog ads have a bright future in politics and could become a top medium for campaigns. "You're going to see more ads in blogs that are state-focused," he said. "At this point, we've seen, in one form or another, ads for potential presidential candidates. ... You may even find that blog ads for this election are the first ad spends for '08."
Posted by Danny at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
Toward A New Party: Is The Internet The Ticket?
by Andrew Noyes
Even though the Internet has forever changed American politics and amplified independent voices, upstart political movements still must "scratch some sort of itch" to meaningfully challenge the two-party system, according to Internet and political experts.
The good news is that the Web's "flash mob" mentality means a new party may not have to be fully formed to support a candidate for president or another major office, high-tech politics pioneer Andrew Rasiej said. Citing last year's devastating hurricane, he said voters are "two Katrinas away" from giving a global-warming candidate a shot at success.
Whether there is someone smart and captivating enough to inspire an entire election campaign remains to be seen, said Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, which studies the crossroads of politics and technology.
That special blend of straight-talk and charisma is what earned Texas billionaire Ross Perot 19 percent of the presidential vote in 1992, he said. Perot announced his candidacy on CNN's "Larry King Live" and recruited volunteers by publicizing a toll-free telephone number. "The Internet is an 800-number times 10 in terms of political potential," Rasiej said.
A decade later, a Web campaign led by "regular people" drafted former Gen. Wesley Clark for a 2004 Democratic presidential run, online advocacy expert Madeline Stanionis said. The Internet trailblazing by now-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean in the same primary was attributable to "a bunch of kids who showed up in Vermont," she said.
Both races show that "the Internet is made for uprisings ... and yes, new parties," Stanionis said.
While Stanionis is confident that a "new wave of online thinking and organizing" will lead to the ascendancy of an unconventional candidate or party, the liberal fundraiser is skeptical about whether such a movement could occur as soon as 2006 or 2008. Chuck DeFeo, general manager of the conservative news and opinion site Townhall.com, agreed.
The prevailing strategy for the next two elections will be tried and true, said DeFeo, who managed the e-campaign side of the effort to re-elect President Bush in 2004. Conservatives "will continue to support conservative candidates that reflect their views, so the tactics used will be familiar." That is due to a number of close races expected this November, DeFeo said.
Internet experts from both sides of the aisle are uncertain about the potential of Unity08, a new Web-based movement whose aim is creating a bipartisan ticket with one party for president and the other for vice president. It's "a nice attempt at trying to create some fertile ground," but it lacks a standout leader and a rousing agenda, Rasiej said.
Micah Sifry, who helped Rasiej launch PDF, worries that Unity08 is ahead of its time. "Until the 2006 election plays out, it's too early for people's political energies to crystallize around a third party," he said. The project is setting the stage "for something that could very well catch hold" if the GOP maintains control of Congress and the White House and public confidence in both parties wanes, he said.
DeFeo called Unity08's goals "unrealistic" and said passionate partisanship is "a healthy thing" for democracy.
But Unity08 co-founder Doug Bailey is used to hearing cynicism from those whose jobs are vested in "politics as it is played in this town." Some are angry and fearful that his movement threatens to "upset their status quo," and others are dismissive because "they assume new things never happen" in politics, said Bailey, a media adviser to former President Gerald Ford and founder of National Journal's Hotline.
Times have changed since Perot and his third-party predecessors tried to capitalize on the public's disgust with politics-as-usual, Bailey said, because there has never been such an "overwhelming fear for the future of the country" as there is today.
Unity08's goals are "viable," he said, but his project faces a familiar challenge: "How do you raise the sword of moderation and have people follow?"
Posted by Danny at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
Third-Party Candidates Make Connections Online
by Andrew Noyes
Most of Maryland is asleep, but Kevin Zeese is roaming the aisles of Baltimore's 24-hour supermarkets with a band of supporters whom the third-party candidate for U.S. Senate recruited via e-mail. While his late-night canvassing strategy may be unconventional, his online recruiting skills are noteworthy. The supporters are out at midnight, after all.
Zeese, the Green, Libertarian and Populist parties' pick for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Paul Sarbanes, has embraced the Internet since its inception and has become an exemplar for independents in the metropolitan area. Green Party Media Coordinator Scott McLarty said Zeese is "doing pretty well, but it's an uphill battle."
"The U.S. Senate is a nut the Green Party has not been able to crack yet," McLarty said.
Zeese, the Montgomery County, Md., reformer who once served as Ralph Nader's presidential campaign spokesman, credits the Internet with helping third-party candidates have a platform for national debate. His years of advocacy for legalizing drugs and against war have profited from the Internet's reach, and now his campaign is the beneficiary.
Nader, a Green Party luminary who thrice ran for president, saw the Internet's potential early in his national political career -- even though he still uses a Smith Corona typewriter for daily correspondence, Zeese said. The medium "levels the playing field" and "brings people together," he said.
Zeese uses various tools -- including three tiers of e-mail lists, short Web videos and a campaign "wiki" that lets users contribute and edit content -- to share views on his core issues of "peace, justice, democracy and prosperity."
Libertarian candidates have made unique uses of the Web this year, party communications director Stephen Gordon said.
Standup comedian Doug Stanhope announced his bid for the party's 2008 presidential nomination on MySpace, and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Barry Hess garnered praise for featuring video, a Web log and interactivity prominently on his site. Loretta Nall, who is running for Alabama governor, has raised eyebrows with online animation that lets site visitors glimpse the candidate's cleavage or waistline in exchange for donations.
The party recently unveiled BallotBase.org, a new voter-outreach tool that allows leadership to target specific races, Gordon said. The initiative will not be formally launched until September, but it was piloted in the special election for the California House seat vacated by now-imprisoned Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, a Republican.
Libertarian Paul King, who challenged now-GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray and Democrat Francine Busby, saw his votes triple with the help of BallotBase, the party said. Few privacy concerns have been raised because data is culled from state voter-registration lists, Gordon said.
"Somebody with a message that resonates can catch on," said Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.
Breakout campaigns by wrestler-turned-governor Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and former presidential candidates Howard Dean and John McCain have shown that Americans are increasingly "unhappy with mainstream choices," she said. The Web is a "perfect vehicle" for third-party candidates and others to find like-minded people "quickly, easily and cheaply."
Posted by Danny at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)
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Getting Real About Politicking Online
Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
By Heather Greenfield
New mediums of communication are shaping not just how information reaches potential voters and donors but what words are said. Or, at least it should, according to the latest campaign advice from both Democratic and Republican consultants.
While the message in "The Velveteen Rabbit" was that love makes you real, political consultants are telling candidates that with the new media, real makes you loved.
Presidential hopeful John Edwards talked openly about being more real at a recent convention with software developers, blog authors and podcasters. Edwards agreed when one attendee said blogs capture how people actually talk and that is much different than how politicians speak.
"The problem is that we're so trained and so conditioned over a long period of time that being normal and real and authentic requires you to shed that conditioning," Edwards said at the Gnomedex Technology Conference.
From LBJ To John McCain
Naomi Baron, an expert on the use of e-mail, blogs and text-messaging as communication tools and a linguistics professor at American University, does not believe the Internet and new technologies have created demand for informal political communication. But she does believe they sped up an existing trend that she pinpointed to the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Larry Powell, a communications professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose expertise is political communications, agreed. He said former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton captured hearts with their down-to-earth personalities, but Powell added that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was the first politician to do that well over the Internet in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.
"He understood the Internet is not just a way of communicating with voters but letting voters communicate with you," Powell said.
Conservative and progressive political consultants have many clients hoping to capture the magic of 2004 Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean when it comes to fundraising, which they attribute to cultivating loyal supporters online.
Diane Thompson, CEO of Campaign Superstore, a conservative high-tech political consultancy, said it is sometimes tough to get her clients to understand that posting a Web site and bombarding people with e-mail solicitations does not work. Thompson said she encourages her clients to build a loyal following through numerous e-mails and sending helpful information that establishes a candidate as credible and personable.
"There are no shortcuts to building meaningful relationships," said Kari Chisholm, the founder of Mandate Media a high-tech political strategy company. "You've got to be authentic."
"Ned Lamont understands that," he added of the Connecticut Democrat who earlier this month upset Sen. Joseph Lieberman in a Democratic primary. "That's part of his appeal." Lamont's campaign has a blog and became a favorite of bloggers who some credit with helping build Lamont's early support and media attention.
Baron said the challenge with writing a blog is sounding off-the-cuff and accessible while really having content that is highly polished and well-conceived. Powell said most politicians would do better with streaming audio than blogs, as they are more used to talking casually than writing.
'My Son Is Not A Pig'
Chisholm's definition of successful new media writing is Colorado Secretary of State Ken Gordon. "He sends e-mails that are clearly Ken sitting at home in his pajamas, telling people what he thinks," Chisholm said. "They're funny and passionate."
In one example entitled "My son is not a pig," Gordon relayed the story of a mother at a news conference who tearfully defended an education program for autistic children that helped her son -- a program that some had called special-interest "pork" and demanded be cut. Chisholm said the e-mail title alone would lead people to open it.
Thompson noted e-mails she gets about once a week from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as an example of someone using the medium smartly. "He picks two or three issues of the week," Thompson said. "It's candid. It sounds like him talking and it's insight you're not going to get anywhere else."
Chisholm added: "Most e-mails we care about come from real human beings. If a candidate wants to be taken seriously in e-mails, be human."
Advice on how to be human varies. Baron said she would not advise typos or misspelled words, "People want a politician who is as smart or smarter than them."
Powell said it may be OK for bloggers to be edgy in online comments but warned against those running for office being too blunt online. "It's real easy to put a mole [from an opposing campaign] on an e-mail list," Powell said. "The opposition monitors daily. They will look for anything to use against you."
But then, there are risks of not being bold. "If you're going to be authentic, you have to take risks," Chisholm said. "Risk avoidance is a plague among campaign staffers."
Other advice includes better tailoring messages to the medium, instead of simply posting documents to the Web or using formal letters as e-mail. Chisholm said the days of a five-paragraph press release with three stiff-sounding quotes are gone -- or at least should be. "That's totally true," Powell said. "If you're putting a press release on the Web site, it's better to have a shorter statement with links to other things."
Powell said people do not seem to mind receiving press releases via e-mail if they include notes at the top saying something like, "This will be released to the press; we thought you might like an early look."
Personality: The Key To Political Success
"How do you be authentic and be meaningful? It's a character issue," Chisholm said.
And a personality issue. What is authentic for some, just does not work for others. "Clinton knows how to pull your heartstrings by being very folksy," Baron said. "[President] Bush's speaking sounds very, very artificial when he uses words more than three syllables. I don't think Sen. Ted Kennedy is ever going to have a folksy blog. Dianne Feinstein is not. But it's OK because she's earned her credentials over the years."
Chisholm added, "I don't like George W. Bush too much, but he's an authentic human being."
In the New Republic Online, self-proclaimed progressive Elspeth Reeve agreed that you do not have to like someone to respect their candor. Reeve said it is not the terrible things and lies Ann Coulter utters that make liberals cringe so much as when she hits a nugget of truth. "Asked to define the First Amendment, [Coulter replied], 'An excuse for overweight women to dance in pasties and The New York Times to commit treason.' Just completely terrible, I know. But I have to admit, I giggled," Reeve wrote.
Humor seems to be an element of authenticity -- or at least the appearance of it. Baron said humor is critical to gain attention in an era when someone may be engaged in several types of new media at once -- e-mail and instant-messaging on several screens, for example. "For an e-mail, people have come to expect lots of humor," Baron said.
She said the goal is to make people feel welcome. "Welcome is the same thing as authenticity," Baron said. "It could mean humor, a punchy choice of words. It could be informal, but very carefully crafted."
She cited the writing on the blog Wonkette as great but said despite the candid tone, it is crafted through many drafts. "That's how you come across as authentic, by not being," Baron said.
Posted by Danny at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
Web Traffic For Political Blogs, Pundits Sags In Summer
by Heather Greenfield
President Bush is not the only one facing falling polling numbers. Conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly of Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" is having to factor in his own losses when it comes to Internet traffic.
Alexa.com, which tracks Web traffic, shows a sharp decline to BillOReilly.com since March, when it had more than 100,000 visits for every 1 million Internet surfers. The decline has been steady and gradual, with visits dropping below 50,000 in August, according to a graph. Another summary pegs the traffic drop over the past three months at 30 percent.
Other conservative sites are losing audience this campaign season, too. Even the recent controversy over Ann Coulter's remarks about Sept. 11 victims did not boost traffic to her site. Ratings there have decreased 16 percent over the last three months. Ditto for Rush Limbaugh, who is down 14 percent, and even the revered conservative site The Drudge Report has fallen 10 percent.
"Partly it's summer time. It's also a general barometer," said David Rothstein, CEO of the IPD Group, which publishes online political reports like U.S. Politics Today. That site alerted reporters to the ratings drop on Alexa.
"We see it as one gauge that the right wing is struggling," Rothstein said. "The mainstream media has been failing. The void was [initially] filled by right-wing media. The left is filling the political void now. There are a lot of Internet sites and bloggers now who are building very solid reputations."
Among the conservatives and liberals who author Web logs, traffic is more mixed, but the drops appear to be greater among the bigger red sites than among the blue sites.
RedState traffic is down 28 percent but page views are up 12 percent over the past three months. RedState underwent a redesign and management overhaul this summer. Right Wing News dropped 20 percent over the same time, Blogs for Bush was down 13 percent, and Townhall, which also was recently redesigned after an acquisition, dropped 14 percent.
By contrast to the big drops for RedState and Right Wing News, readership at the liberal Huffington Post is down 14 percent, and the drop is 12 percent at Daily Kos, the most trafficked blog. Some liberal bloggers even saw gains. Traffic at MyDD is up 9 percent, as is Alternet, and traffic to Virginia's Raising Kaine grew 119 percent over the past three months.
As for the Republican National Committee versus the Democratic National Committee, both saw traffic declines. The DNC was down 24 percent, and the RNC dropped twice as much at 48 percent.
Traffic at the Democratic online donation site ActBlue rose 24 percent. The new competitor Rightroots does not have traffic data yet.
Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, said the data is not scientific enough, especially because there are not equivalent Democratic pundits to compare.
Darr said the numbers may show some early indicators of voter sentiment, but it is hard to quantify. "We had seen similar early online indicators for Howard Dean, while Dean was still flying below the radar, that he seemed to have more energy and traction than the polls were indicating," she said.
Candidates in competitive Senate races nearly all had traffic increases, but whether the Web hits translate to votes remains to be seen.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., had a 10 percent increase in Web traffic over three months, compared with Ned Lamont, who won the Democratic primary and had a 539 percent jump. Visits to the site of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., are down 74 percent, and Web traffic for challenger James Webb is up 165 percent. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., showed a 300 percent increase in Web traffic, while challenger Jon Tester had a 420 percent increase.
"The collapse of Bush's political standing and the growing public reaction against the war in Iraq appears to have produced an asymmetry in cyberspace that, together with other consistent evidence, bodes well for a strong national Democratic tide," Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said of the traffic numbers.
But Mann's colleague, political scholar Stephen Hess, is skeptical. "The answer is [that] come summer, people go the mountains and the beach and everyone is down" in traffic, Hess said.
And if they aren't surfing waves, people are at least surfing more fun venues than political sites. YouTube video traffic is up 137 percent over the past three months; the MySpace social network had 5 percent more visitors; the eBay online auction site snagged 17 percent more visitors; and 38 percent more people tuned in to the Napster music-downloading service.
Posted by Danny at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)
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Note To Sen. George Allen: Get A Blog
Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager for Sen. George Allen, thinks The Washington Post is out to get his candidate. That allegation prompted Marc Ambinder, my National Journal colleague at Hotline On Call, to wonder what Allen might do to bypass that media filter.
Here's a thought for Allen and Wadhams: Get a blog like your opponent, Democrat Jim Webb. Blogging is one way for candidates to take their messages straight to voters and even combat bad press when it surfaces. Granted, few candidate blogs are worth reading regularly -- and some not at all -- but if done right, they're a great communications tool.
You might try another approach, too: Engage like-minded bloggers to get them behind your campaign. Let them bash the Post for you. Hold conference calls with them. Grant interviews to bloggers. Write entries for their sites and respond to readers when you do. Hire a blog expert to connect with online activists. Those are the kinds of things smart candidates already are doing.
When Democrat Coleen Rowley came under fire last week in her Minnesota House race because of a volunteer blogger, the campaign responded to the charges within traditional media. But the volunteer in question also used the campaign blog to write a fuller account of what happened from his perspective. No newspaper or television station ever would have granted him that much space or airtime to tell his side of the story.
So far, blog strategies appear to have worked best for challengers like the three who defeated incumbents in primaries last week. But that's because incumbents are reluctant to be innovative. They play it as safely as they think their seats are -- a strategy that arguably just burnt Sen. Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary.
A little online innovation might have done wonders for Lieberman had he acted before perceptions of his candidacy took firm root among his Democratic constituents.
Now for a warning to Allen and any other incumbents who might decide to play politics in the blogosphere: Don't pay bloggers without disclosing that fact.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., tried that two years ago. (Wadhams was his campaign manager at the time.) So did the political action committee of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., earlier this year. Those episodes now rank as exhibits A and B about how not to engage the blogosphere in a political campaign.
UPDATE: Hotline On Call reports that Allen's team is seeking a "conservative blog maven" in light of last week's bad press.
Posted by Danny at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
The Pros And Cons Of Political 'Robocalls' To Voters
by Andrew Noyes
A telephone call from sweet, Southern-twanged "Mary Ann" might have helped crush the bid by Republican Ralph Reed to become Georgia's lieutenant governor. The caller, who slammed Reed's past lobbying efforts, was affiliated with Campaign Money Watch, a well-known Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to improving campaign finance laws.
Mass-dialed, computerized calls like Mary Ann's have become common in American politics, and most use popular political figures or celebrities. Former President Clinton recorded one for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who lost his primary last week. Actors Billy Crystal and Sally Field recently lent their voices to a pre-school-focused ballot initiative in California.
The technique usually utilizes extensive call lists to reach would-be voters and is classified as political speech, dodging FTC-enforced "do not call" rules against telemarketing. Democratic political-messaging expert Marty Stone said his clients' participation and listening rates have actually increased since the national do-not-call registry was launched in 2003.
"Phone calls, either live or automated, should be used to have a conversation with voters," Stone said. "There are only a handful of mediums where you're having a conversation -- e-mail, phones and door-knocking." Others, like TV and radio advertising, are passive "push mediums," he said.
Even though pre-recorded "robocalls" often are a targeted transmission, they can be heard by millions of citizens with a button-click. The calls for the pre-school proposition, which Stone spearheaded, went to about 3 million Californians on a given day, he said.
Studies showing robocalls' effectiveness are hard to find. According to research from Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies, "it seems to matter who calls whom and what they say." Young, informal callers work best, but the medium is less effective than door-to-door canvassers, research showed.
No campaign practice is perfect. A recording from then-Vice President Al Gore famously awoke West Virginians in the wee hours during his 2000 presidential bid. Earlier this summer, Virginia voters received an erroneous message from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, stumping for Mark Ellmore, who wanted the GOP nomination to challenge Rep. James Moran, a Democrat.
The technology facilitating the calls is improving, Stone said. Interactive campaigns that require users to push a button to respond to pre-recorded questions can tell the sender "who listens and who doesn't." The tactic is least successful with young, white men and most successful with women, particularly senior citizens. Rural voters also respond more favorably to the calls than urban residents, Stone said.
Linda Cherry, who has worked with various GOP campaigns, said robocalls "serve limited purposes." The low cost lets the smallest campaigns reach voters, but the number of calls "has multiplied so many times over, the voter may be inoculated from paying much attention to the message."
Most of Stone's clients pay 6-10 cents per call, and Tony Feather, whose company FLS Connect serves Republican clients, quoted a comparable price. The calls averaged 15 cents six to eight years ago and 50 cents when the practice first emerged, he said.
Feather, who was political director for the campaign of now-President Bush in 2000, said robocalls are especially efficient when responding to opposition attacks. "If someone has put a very negative ad out or dropped a piece of mail, the turnaround time can be tough. But you can be on the phones tonight responding to it," he said.
Politicos are not the only ones making use of the phone lines. New Line Cinema commissioned Chicago-based Varitalk to create semi-personalized robocalls from actor Samuel L. Jackson urging listeners to see his film "Snakes on a Plane," which opens Friday.
Posted by Danny at 04:55 PM | Comments (1)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
Parties Closely Guard Voters' Secrets In Databases
by Andrew Noyes
One of the most closely guarded secrets in American politics is how Republicans and Democrats collect and use individuals' personal information. But as technology improves, more detailed profiles are being built and campaigns are better equipped to reach out and touch potential voters.
A law requiring states to compile official voter databases got the ball rolling in 2002, and most states were able to gather files from each county. Private-sector firms then began merging state voter information with commercially kept files to form exhaustive catalogs. Those are routinely sold to parties and political campaigns.
The 2004 presidential race saw the emergence of the GOP's Voter Vault and the Democrats' DataMart. Both databases were colossal and their technical details clandestine. Voter Vault still exists but DataMart was decommissioned and a new system was launched. Their particulars remain largely enigmatic today.
The parties collectively amassed about 165 million entries in 2004 for get-out-the-vote and fundraising efforts, according to news reports, and their repositories have deepened since then. A Republican official said Voter Vault now holds information on "pretty much every registered voter and millions and millions of unregistered [citizens] as well."
A voter's physical address, telephone number, party affiliation, voting history, ethnicity, gender and age are among the factors tracked. Information brokers can add statistics on whether a person owns a home or makes charitable and political contributions.
The GOP even knows about peoples' magazine subscriptions, which can be indicators of voting behavior, the official said. "There's a lot of information out there that we won't include," he said, like Social Security numbers or credit-card information. A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee said his party keeps similar statistics.
Republicans routinely make headlines for being ahead of the high-tech curve, but Democrats have come a long way since DataMart, which was plagued with inconsistencies and errors in voter profiles. "We have completely changed the playing field," the DNC official said. "We've reinvented the entire system and process and invested in the quality of the data."
Much is unknown about what happens behind the scenes in either camp. "Anybody who claims that they know everything in this area is not being honest with themselves," communications strategist Mark Steitz said. Steitz, a former DNC communications director, said the databases' details are less exact than most have been led to believe.
Rumors of "wildly specific" datasets, like "yoga practitioners who drink bourbon," are not accurate, he said. Much of the information comes from large-scale surveys and publicly available databases, which can provide generalized information.
Security controls for the databases are tight, and users can only access certain areas, officials for both parties said. GOP data is protected through redundancy -- "multiple filters and all sorts of things" -- and security experts are routinely hired to try to hack systems in order to expose flaws, the GOP official said.
The DNC also puts a premium on securing its platform, which holds about 240 million records. Privacy advocates' fears should be put to rest, officials said. Keeping the data secure "is a juicier topic in imagination than in practicality," Steitz said.
When he worked at the DNC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Steitz said he was told that a national voter file was technically "implausible." Data tools like XML, or extensible markup language, have changed that.
"We've seen this in the commercial world, and politics is catching up," he said.
That kind of technology is priceless in an age defined by "fragmented media channels addressing increasingly self-identified, smaller groups of people," Steitz said. Political campaigns, like advertisers, are "trying to find better ways to express their ideas to people more in the context of their lives."
Posted by Danny at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
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This is old news to people who follow Virginia politics and blogs closely, but I just learned today, via a link from Commonwealth Conservative to my weekend post about press passes for bloggers, that two bloggers in the Old Dominion are now columnists for Campaigns & Elections magazine.
Republican Chad Dotson of Commonwealth Conservative and Democrat Waldo Jaquith announced the deal in March. Their mission is to write dueling columns about the intersection of politics and technology -- an issue that we at National Journal's Technology Daily coincidentally tackled in a special report over the past two weeks.
"As blogs become more involved in the political process, we wanted to ensure they were involved in tracking campaigns and technology," the magazine wrote in a note reprinted by Jaquith. "To that end, Jaquith and Dotson write on the various uses of technology their parties are employing. This month the two spar on voter lists and how the parties are using voter data to make extensive databases."
Dotson picked up on my blurb about press passes to insist that even though he is now a columnist in an established magazine, he doesn't desire a press pass. "I just can't get worked up about it," he wrote. "I'm not a reporter, and don't claim to be."
I disagree. Dotson and Jaquith may not be reporters in the nonpartisan, professional sense, but if they want to keep their gigs as columnists at a magazine with a solid reputation, they certainly will have to do some reporting and research. And from what both have written about their freelance experiences so far, I gather that they are doing the legwork necessary to produce good journalism.
"I can toss out a 425-word blog entry without thinking twice," Jaqith said, "but a column for a magazine is so much more real. ... If I write something really stupid, you understand that not everything that I write is really stupid. In C&E, I only get 10 opportunities each year -- perhaps ever -- to demonstrate that I'm not a drooling moron."
I love seeing this kind of convergence between professional and citizen media. The next step is for publications like C&E to realize how ridiculous and counterproductive it is to force bloggers to wait two months for the right to reprint their own words on their blogs.
The column about voter databases that Jaquith wrote for the May issue only went online for free in July. He since has followed it with an even meatier post the expands on the reporting he was able to fit into the limited news hole C&E gave him, and Jaquith's blog audience will have to wait until September to read his thoughts on national political blogs.
That's a shame. Campaigns & Elections deserves kudos for welcoming Dotson and Jaquith into its elite fold. But the publication's old-media mindset is hindering its ability to fully appreciate the benefits of that relationship by broadening its audience to the blogosphere.
Posted by Danny at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)
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A Friendly Warning About E-Mailing Bloggers
The Porkbusters fight for Senate tranparency that I mentioned yesterday merited an editorial in The Wall Street Journal today, and that attention in turn prompted an e-mail broadside against Porkbusters by a Senate staffer.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds called attention to the e-mail and followed it with this friendly warning: "[A]ngry e-mails to bloggers are a bad idea. They usually get reprinted in full."
The episode reminds me of the anti-Porkbusters tirade by Sen. Trent Lott earlier this year. The words of that Mississippi Republican are now prominently displayed on the Porkbusters home page: "I'll just say this about the so-called Porkbusters: I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since [Hurricane] Katrina."
The next short-tempered Senate communications director might find his e-mail there, too, and his or her boss probably won't consider that the best public relations.
Posted by Danny at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)
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David All, the "spokesblogger" for Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, is taking a leave of absence from the Republican's staff to campaign for another Republican near All's home turf in Ohio.
All announced in an e-mail today that he will turn over the blog and press reins in Kingston's office to Krista Cole until November. During that time, All will be the communications director for Senate candidate Mike Bouchard, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
"As a native Ohioan," All said, "I’m looking forward to working for a statewide Republican candidate in a Midwest battleground state. ... This race has all of the ingredients of being the premiere race to help Republicans maintain control of the Senate. I’m pleased to be joining the fight."
Bouchard does not have a blog on his campaign site. Perhaps that should be the first task for All, who has earned a reputation as one of the more technologically innovative GOP press chiefs on Capitol Hill. Why a Senate candidate in a "premiere race" doesn't have a blog by mid-August is beyond me.
UPDATE: Other blogs, including Hotline On Call, The Ballot Box and RedState, are reporting All's temporary move to the Midwest, a further testament to his reputation in the conservative blogosphere and beyond.
Posted by Danny at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)
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Over the past two weeks, National Journal's Technology Daily published a special series on the intersection of politics and technology. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The latest story is below.
Innovations Give Candidates New Avenues To Voters
by Michael Martinez
Political candidates this year have a lot of brand new toys at their disposal to help reach voters.
Campaigns have put candidate profiles on online social networks like Facebook and MySpace. They have uploaded videos to file-sharing sites such as YouTube to broadcast their platforms and, in some cases, for a little political mischief. Some candidates even have doctored the online encyclopedia entries of their opponents to try to gain an edge.
But no one knows for certain whether any of the innovations will help candidates where it counts: at the ballot box in November.
Julie Supan, YouTube's senior marketing director, told The Washington Post last month that she believes her company's service is a "game changer" that enables anyone, including activists and even lesser-funded candidates, to produce content and reach an audience.
Web log authors and online activists loaded hordes of homemade videos onto YouTube in the run-up to this month's Connecticut Democratic primary. Millionaire challenger Ned Lamont largely funded his campaign himself, but the videos helped generate attention for his bid, and he defeated Sen. Joseph Lieberman 52 percent to 48 percent.
A similar philosophy of engaging voters also appears to be behind Campaigns Wikia, an online political encyclopedia that anyone can edit launched earlier this summer by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. In a July mission statement, Wales said Campaigns Wikia and other new online tools are "participatory media" that he hopes will usher in a new era of "participatory politics."
"Broadcast media brought us broadcast politics," he said. "And let's be simple and bluntly honest about it: Left or right, conservative or liberal, broadcast politics are dumb, dumb, dumb."
According to Wales, the wiki model could elevate debate in political campaigns by facilitating the collection of collaborative knowledge. Some candidates already are incorporating wikis into their campaign Web sites. Pete Ashdown, a long-shot Democratic candidate running against Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, allows anyone to contribute to his policy wiki.
"The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens," Wales said.
Campaigns also are experimenting with social-networking sites, where candidates have created profiles with details about their platforms and tidbits about their personalities.
But some campaigns also have used that arena to take shots at their enemies. Democrats in Maryland, for instance, acknowledged earlier this year that they authored a fake Facebook profile for Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit government and campaign watchdog Democracy 21, also said that applications such as YouTube could affect elections because of their broad reach. "Communications is central to politics," he said. "It is central to government. It is central to elections. It is at the core of how our system works."
But Wertheimer said it is still uncertain how YouTube and other new tools can best be exploited to communicate political messages and mobilize groups of voters. He said campaign experts are watching their performance during this year's election closely.
"It's kind of hard to get past the fact that we're still in the middle of the Atlantic floating to New America," he said.
Posted by Danny at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)
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Politics and technology are inextricably linked in the information age. Candidates have ties to the tech and telecom industries and raise money from those sectors. Tech issues bubble to the surface. New tools help political parties and candidates raise money and rally voters.
This year, National Journal's Technology Daily connected all of the campaign dots for our readers in a special series that we published over the past two weeks. Some of those stories will be of interest to bloggers, so I will be republishing them here over the next few days. The first story is below.
Medium Versus Message: Candidates Sample New Tools
by Heather Greenfield and David Herrera
A candidate vying for Maryland's open Senate seat began a video advertisement by tossing a pebble in a pond, likening the ripples to sending a traditional politician to Washington. A moment later, he has jumped in the pond himself -- suit and all -- and said instead that his election would make a "real splash" in Washington.
"That has really appealed to young people," said American University professor Allan Lichtman, a Democrat running for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md. "How that will play out in how many votes it turns out, we don't know. We can be running under the radar because it runs under the radar."
Lichtman credited his college-aged interns with keeping him abreast of the newest media trends and opportunities in politics. He claims to be one of the first candidates to have a profile on the MySpace social network thanks to them.
He is among the candidates to seize upon new media like Web logs, audio "podcasts" and online video as ways to reach voters. A Technology Daily survey of such media in key House and Senate races found that nearly all candidates have Web sites, but the offerings on them vary in terms of how well each uses different communications tools.
"The Web site is more than just a brochure to carry the basic message for the campaign," said Mindy Finn, director of new media and political technology for the re-election campaign of Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. "It's more an interactive online headquarters where every element of the campaign [is there]."
As of May, 70 percent of Senate campaigns said they offered videos online, according to a study by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. "Web video is becoming the must-have medium of 2006," IPDI Director Carol Darr said.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, featured a traditional video with childhood photos, showing where she came from and where she would like to lead. Three vulnerable Republican senators -- Conrad Burns of Montana, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Mike DeWine of Ohio -- all posted their television ads online as well.
Both Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and Democratic challenger James Webb posted video of their recent debate. Webb also linked to a YouTube video of his March appearance on the "Colbert Report," a Comedy Central spoof on news and public affairs.
A handful of campaign Web sites feature more unique content. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo, posted his TV ads but recorded special commentaries at the end in which he discussed the bills mentioned in the ad -- much like a director's cut, he said.
Observers of the evolving use of video say the candidate ads tend to be "bland," but that should not be surprising. "I don't expect the campaigns to put out edgy stuff that people would send to their friends," said Julie Barko Germany, IPDI's deputy director.
Instead, the amateur postings have both the humor and the viewers. For example, two independently produced YouTube videos featuring President Bush kissing Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., after the State of the Union address had nearly 5,000 viewings each.
Darr said one study showed that having video offerings near online donation buttons slightly increased the size of each campaign contribution, though not the overall number of them.
Nearly all the Senate campaigns, 97 percent, are using online fundraising, the IPDI study said. IPDI also found occasionally updated blogs at 63 percent of Senate campaigns. But podcasts and text-messaging are still media of the future, with 21 percent of Senate campaigns using podcasts and 5 percent saying they will use or plan to use text-messaging.
High cost and few opportunities to sway undecided voters have slowed text-messaging growth, said Zack Exley, a media consultant who was the online communications director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "It's really the dumbest thing in the world," Exley said.
Too often, he said, people get so excited about new media that the goals of a campaign -- gaining volunteers, funding and ultimately winning votes -- are forgotten. "They're not approaching it from a practical angle," Exley said.
Similarly, podcasting remains mostly for campaign supporters. "That's not a medium that's going to sway votes," Exley said. He noted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., may boost loyalty among his tens of thousands of podcast subscribers, but the audio segments are not likely to raise funds because supporters usually are not near their credit cards or computers when listening.
But New Politics Institute Director Paul Leyden said that with 50 million blogs and video production getting cheaper, new media is becoming critical to reaching voters as other opportunities shrink. Leyden said that by 2008, one-third of Americans will have video recorders and will use them to skip TV ads.
He predicted that more candidates will switch to Internet and even videogame ads in the future.
Candidates are vying to stay abreast of the changes as consultants help them develop effective new media campaigns. Some predict that the newer, cheaper media could bring further democracy to the political process.
Darr said consumers of new media appreciate the more personal connection to politicians and expect the communication to be less formal and more direct. But Exley said the message is still more important than a flashy medium.
Posted by Danny at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)
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The Days Of Senate Reckoning
Bloggers from right to left are working to hold senators accountable for actions both political and legislative, whether it's seeking disclosure about who is blocking a bill designed to combat budgetary "pork" or demanding loyalty to Ned Lamont after his victory in Connecticut's Democratic Senate primary.
Mark Tapscott, the editorial-page editor of The Washington Examiner, is the brains behind the effort to reveal which senator or senators have put a procedural "hold" on the anti-pork bill. The measure would create a public, searchable Web site of all federal grants and contracts, exposing the kind of federal spending that now stays buried in bureaucracy and that some senators apparently want to keep there.
Senate rules allow lawmakers to put anonymous holds on bills, and that's what happened to the database bill last week, according to a blog post by Tapscott. But rather than admit defeat on the bill, he invited bloggers to expose something else: the senators who don't want the bill to go to a vote.
"Whoever it might actually be," Tapscott wrote, "the blogosphere could be instrumental in uncovering the offending senator or senators identity by calling every Senate office and asking if the boss is the one. Let's keep a tally of the responses."
N.Z. Bear liked the idea so much that he created a Porkbusters page dedicated to the mission. Bloggers have been calling Senate offices to ask if their lawmakers are responsible for the hold, and Bear has been posting the results. So far, only nine senators, including the bill's sponsors, are in the clear.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds added this thought: "I think I agree with the commenter who observes: 'While we're at it, maybe we should try to force an end to this 'secret hold' crap.'"
Bob Geiger, a blogger at The Huffington Post, is doing something similar but with a political goal in mind. He is holding Democratic senators accountable about whether they support Lamont or Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who launched an independent bid for re-election after Lamont defeated him in the primary.
By Geiger's count, 27 of 43 Democratic senators have said they support Lamont. He divided the others into categories of "undecided" (10) and "Rogue's gallery of the total sell-outs" (6). "So there's 16 of them who are going to have a hard time looking Senator Lamont in the face when he shows up in the halls of Congress in January," Geiger wrote. He encouraged readers to call their senators and apply some pressure.
Posted by Danny at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)
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Earlier this year, law student Ian Best confirmed what many blawgers probably already suspected -- that judges read blogs, too.
Best compiled a list of court decisions that have cited law blogs. A couple of weeks later, he buttressed his underlying point about the impact of law blogs by publishing a list of blog citations in law review articles.
He updated both lists this month. You can see the additions here and here. The clear leader in both categories is the blog Sentencing Law and Policy. Other top reads include The Volokh Conspiracy and SCOTUS Blog.
David Boaz of Cato@Liberty made a similar point about the influence of blawgs by citing the prominence that legal experts who write blogs received in a front-page New York Times story. The subject was a federal judge's decision on anti-terrorism surveillance.
"The first three legal experts quoted are bloggers; two of the quotes are from the blogs, one appears to be from an interview with a lawyer-blogger," Boaz said. "Stop writing those law review articles, legal scholars, and get thee to Blogger," the free Google-owned blogging service.
Posted by Danny at 02:53 PM | Comments (0)
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Pressing On For State Press Passes
The National Conference of State Legislatures held its annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn., this week, and local blogger Bill Hobbs was there for the action. Hobbs had to fight for credentials just to cover the session about blogging, but he won that small battle for himself and in the process moved citizen journalists as a whole another step closer to winning the credentials war.
I covered that topic in a column earlier this summer and Hobbs' experience reminded me that I have more information to share. Specifically, I didn't have room to mention in my column the details I gathered from NCSL about states granting credentials to bloggers.
The short answer is that only one state, Kentucky, has granted credentials to a blogger -- and that decision came after a fight. The blogger in question, Mark Nickolas of BluegrassReport, did not receive the credential until he was invited to be a columnist for a newspaper.
Back in June, I asked NCSL public affairs manager Nicole Casal Moore for more details on blog credentials, and here is what she said in an e-mail:
We recently had a question about this from one of the states, so we polled our communications staffers. People in 14 states responded. Only one state -- Kentucky -- had ever had a request for press credentials by a blogger. And that request was denied.The legislature there does not recognize bloggers as bona fide media. They deny credentials to anyone whose work only appears on the Internet.
The other 13 states that responded are: Alaska, Alabama, Delaware, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, the Tennessee House, West Virginia, Wyoming, Mississippi, Utah, Washington, and Oregon. Several said only that they had never had a request by a blogger, but most of them say they would not grant press credentials to a blogger.
Their reasons include:
-- Bloggers aren't subject to the same standards of accuracy and ethics as news organizations;
-- Bloggers write mostly opinion rather than fact;
-- Space is so limited on the floor for regular press, there just isn't room for bloggers, but they're welcome to report from the gallery;
-- Many bloggers are anonymous online;
-- The courts have yet to determine how freedom-of-speech issues apply to bloggers.Another interesting thing I learned in answering this information request is that in Oregon and Washington, the press corps is responsible for granting press credentials. In Pennsylvania, it's a committee, which includes members of the traditional press. Sounds like in [Pennsylvania] at least, the traditional press don't want to give the bloggers credentials.
Of the explanations given for not granting credentials, the only one that has any legitimacy involves space. If the press space at state capitols is as tight as it is at the U.S. Capitol -- and I suspect that it is -- then officials really have no choice but to restrict access based on reasonably objective criteria.
But the ultimate goal should be to include as many people as possible, not to exclude people based on whether they are citizen journalists rather than professionals (or some combination, like Nickolas).
(Hap tip to Instapundit for calling attention to Hobbs' work from Nashville.)
Posted by Danny at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)
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Republican House candidate of Tramm Hudson of Florida made an allegedly racist comment on Thursday, and RedState called attention to the gaffe by posting video. "His words will, justifiably, mostly likely destroy his campaign and sink his chances of victory," wrote Erick-Woods Erickson, the CEO and managing editor of RedState.
A short time later, Hudson apologized and made a point of telling RedState. "Well done Mr. Hudson," Erickson wrote. "It's nice to know there is a candidate out there who will not try to back peddle from mistakes, but takes ownership and apologizes."
Robert Bluey of The Ballot Box at Human Events Online cited the episode as the latest example of the positive role citizen journalists are playing in politics, both by holding politicians accountable and by breaking news. He listed other examples to buttress the point.
"it’s quite clear that bloggers and amateur videographers will play a very important role in this year’s mid-term elections," Bluey wrote. "But just wait until 2008, when you’ll see an explosion in the blogosphere as more citizen journalists take an active role."
Capitol Weekly in California touched on the similar topic recently when bloggers launched a new group site aimed at electing Phil Angelides governor. Columnist Dave Dayen praised the effort and others like it in different states.
His take on the emergence of local blogospheres: "What local bloggers provide, more than anything else, is much-needed attention and focus. ... Bloggers and blog readers understand that government has a significant impact on the lives of every individual, and yet finding substantive news and information about government is often a difficult process. They also understand that blogging and online activism is merely an extension of participatory democracy, and that they have the best chance to impact that process by focusing on their own states and their own communities."
The goal of the Angelides blog is activism rather than journalism, but the same could be said of RedState, whose properties include a blog aimed at electing Lynn Swann governor of Pennsylvania. The bottom line is that bloggers are changing both politics and journalism -- and in most cases for the better.
There are potential problems, though. One of those, noted yesterday at Instapundit based on an episode at EdCone.com, is "sock puppetry" -- people posting comments at blogs under phony names. That kind of nonsense could undermine all the good that bloggers do, just as the Jayson Blairs of the journalism world have helped tarnish the reputation of the mainstream media.
Posted by Danny at 03:42 PM | Comments (1)
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Bloggers across the country are hard at work checking the spending earmarks in one of the federal government's biggest annual spending bills and pestering their lawmakers about who is responsible for the spending. Their efforts are part of the "Exposing Earmarks" project organized by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, media organizations and government watchdogs.
News of the project broke earlier this week, and we reported on it yesterday at National Journal's Technology Daily, where I am the managing editor. Here is an excerpt from our story:
A diverse group of online writers, advocacy groups and one newspaper group is turning up the heat on government budget earmarks by bringing them to light.The "Exposing Earmarks" project was unveiled this week and asks citizens to be the eyes searching for earmarks in the House's version of a bill to fund the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments in fiscal 2007. Participants will not have to look far given the estimated 1,800 earmarks, which are specific line items that direct money to projects in lawmakers' states and districts. ...
The challenge asks people to look for projects in their own ZIP codes, call their members of Congress, find out if the lawmakers requested the earmarks and report back. The information gathered by the "citizen journalists" will be published. ...
"It gives me a stringer in every congressional district in America," said Mark Tapscott, editorial-page editor at The Examiner in Washington. "Until now, it's been impossible to get a list of earmarks."
The Washington Post also wrote about the project this week. And it has captured the fascination of leaders in the "citizen journalism movement, including Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine and Jay Rosen of PressThink.
The Club For Growth is a partner in the project, and its blogger, Andy Roth, is keeping a related "pork scorecard" on how House lawmakers voted earlier this year on 19 specific spending earmarks. Bloggers are playing a role in that effort as well.
As Roth reported yesterday, one blogger recently asked Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, about her votes on the earmarks. Neither the Ohio blogger nor Roth were impressed with her defense of the votes.
At his own blog, meanwhile, Tapscott noted that various senators have placed anonymous procedural "holds" on a bill that would create a broader federal database aimed at providing advance details about earmarks. He invited his readers to try to identify the senators behind the holds.
"Whoever it might actually be," Tapscott wrote, "the blogosphere could be instrumental in uncovering the offending ... [senators' identities] by calling every Senate office and asking if the boss is the one."
UPDATE: I meant to mention the fascinating YouTube video about the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska, perhaps the most infamous piece of pork to come along since the Maysville Road during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Check out the video if you want to see where the bridge is supposed to be built and hear why.
Posted by Danny at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)
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Friday Festival Of Blog Bits
Ambassador John Bolton has been in the news again as his "recess appointment" to the United Nations nears an end and President Bush seeks a longer-term confirmation to the job for Bolton. And what better way to find support than grant a blog interview?
OK, maybe that's not exactly what Bolton was thinking when he decided to answer questions from Pamela Oshry of Atlas Shrugs. But it's still significant that the U.S. representative to the world's most-recognized global body agreed to talk to a blogger.
"We're pleased to see conservative heavies, like John Bolton, reaching out to those who support their mission," wrote David All, the "spokesblogger" for Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "It's important to note that Pamela asks her readers to consider taking action to help support Bolton's confirmation. This is the 'new' grassroots folks."
Unfortunately, the interview appears to have brought more controversy Bolton's way, at least from his critics in the blogosphere. U.N. Dispatch included in its latest roundup two blog excerpts that blasted Bolton for agreeing to the chat -- not because blogs are evil but because they think Oshry is.
Mark Goldberg and Scott Paul tag-teamed Bolton/Oshry over at Bolton Watch, an affiliate blog of TPMCafe. Both bloggers called Atlas Shrugs an anti-Muslim "hate site," decried Oshry's line of questioning in the interview and chastised Bolton for letting Oshry make statements unchallenged.
"During the interview, Pamela called [U.N. Secretary-General] Kofi Annan a 'jihadi tool' and said that someone needed to slap Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora," Paul complained. "Bolton, for his part, allowed this rhetoric to stand, even sheepishly reaffirming some of it along the way."
Goldberg suggested that merely granting the interview could further damage the U.S. image abroad. "I wonder what message this interview sends to the Muslim countries with whom Bolton must work day in and day out. I wonder how granting this interview advanced American interests abroad."
Now for this week's blog bits:
-- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is blogging now. The blog, available in Persian, English and other languages, was launched just as news broke that Iran is taking a hard line on blogs not written by the president. Think Progress noted the irony, and Scrapple Face was inspired to satire. Captain's Quarters and Real Clear Politics were among the many blogs to comment on the development. UPI reported that Israeli bloggers targeted Ahmadinejad's site.
-- What exactly did Sen. George Allen, R-Va., mean when he said "Welcome to America" to an Indian campaign worker for his opponent, Democrat James Webb? The Right Angle and The QandO Blog gave two potential explanations. They're certainly better than the explanations Allen's staff are giving for why the senator called the worker "macaca."
-- Mary Katharine Ham decried the "Whack-a-Racist gam" that liberals play anytime conservatives pop up with "dumb, but not dastardly" comments.
-- Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine dared to write something critical about the role of blogs in the Connecticut Senate race. That earned him the standard juvenile rebuke from Duncan Black of Eschaton. "Proud to hold the title," Jarvis responded. "Yeah, this is the way to win friends and influence election."
-- MyDD boasted that Democrats recruited candidates to run in 425 out of all 435 House seats this year. MyDD also is among the liberal blogs demanding that Democrats punish Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut for running as an independent candidate in the fall by stripping him of committee seniority now.
-- Might the Internet help elect a president someday? Zack Exley is intrigued enough by the possibility to write about it at both Daily Kos and The Huffington Post -- and to invite readers to share their thoughts at the collaborative "wiki" where he is working on the subject in full public view.
-- Bloggers of various political stripes are seriously pondering the possiblity of a presidential ticket featuring Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lieberman and what that could mean in 2008. That has been a topic for Barone Blog, Austin Bay, GOP Bloggers, New Donkey, Right Wing News, Andrew Sullivan and TPMCafe.
Robert Bluey of The Right Angle said McCain is no friend of conservatives. And The Wide Awake Cafe made a pitch for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani instead.
-- Ezra Klein talked about the potential of third parties online.
-- Democrats in California created a http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/08/ca-gov_bloggers.php">group blog aimed at electing Phil Angelides governor, while the Democratic National Committee listed its picks for best blogs by state Democratic parties.
-- Media outlets are beginning to find a pet them about blogs as political attack tools. Fox News had a broad story on the topic, and a newspaper in Hawaii have offered local perspectives.
-- Firedoglake announced the Spotlight Project, which encourages blog readers to e-mail specific posts from the site to journalists. The announcement warned against sending angry e-mails -- or so many of them that it lessens the tool's effectiveness.
-- Wanna know what people really think of Congress? The Sunlight Foundation has the unvarnished truth collected on the road across America.
-- The Center for Citizen Media announced five online training modules for bloggers and others who want help in their pursuit of citizen journalism.
-- Democratic bloggers Ed Kilgore, a moderate with the Democratic Leadership Council who blogs at New Donkey, and David Sirota apparently do not get along, and they took their differences public this week. Kilgore took offense at "a toxic little note" that Sirota published about Kilgore and the DLC. Sirota had even more to say after Kilgore's criticism.
-- A newspaper in Delaware painted an unflattering picture of liberal bloggers, including Americablog's John Aravosis, over conspiratorial comments about a foiled terrorist plot. Aravosis griped that the paper inaccurately called him an "anti-war blogger."
-- La Shawn Barber talked about the challenges of getting recognized in the blogosphere and offered some generic advice on how to make it happen.
Posted by Danny at 07:08 AM | Comments (0)
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Raj Bhakta's Take On The 'Macaca' Moment
My first column of this month focused on the upstart congressional campaign of Republican Raj Bhakta in Pennsylvania and his activities in the blogosphere to generate money and interest in his bid.
He made his biggest media splash last month after a wisecrack by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-N.J., about Indians working for Dunkin' Donuts and in 7-Eleven convenience stores. Bhakta, who is of Indian ancestry, blasted Biden for the comment and used the incident as the inspiration for the "Joe Biden 7/11 Challenge" to encourage campaign contributions.
Sen. George Allen, R-Va., found himself a target of much greater criticism this week when he directed another wisecrack at an Indian campaign worker for his opponent, James Webb. He called the worker "Macaca," a nickname that some observers have interpreted as a racist slur.
I thought Bhakta might have something to say about the controversy, so I called him this afternoon. "Sen. Allen's 'macaca' moment was a true ca-ca moment," Bhakta said of his GOP brother. "It just betrays ignorance of the Indian community and our contributions to American society."
While no one can be certain that Allen meant to demean the campaign worker because of his Indian ancestry, Bhakta said, it was totally inappropriate of the senator to call attention to the only Indian person at the event, tease him and say "Welcome to America." He called Allen's comments "stupid" and unenlightened.
But don't expect Bhakta to start another fundraiser at Allen's expense. "Macaca doesn't have the same ring as the 7-Eleven thing," he said.
Posted by Danny at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
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Blackface Versus Macaca
Two weeks ago, a liberal blogger was embarrassed into removing her depiction of Sen. Joseph Lieberman in blackface from the Internet, and her like-minded colleagues said nothing of the racial gaffe. Yesterday, Sen. George Allen made a racial blunder of his own in Virginia, and liberal bloggers can't stop talking about it.
If you want to read what blogs that were silent about Lieberman in blackface have to say about Allen, R-Va., calling a campaign staffer for his opponent "macaca," here are some links:
-- Daily Kos
-- Ezra Klein
-- MyDD
-- Talking Points Memo
My personal favorite is the post by Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, the blogger responsible for the blackface incident. She filed her entry on the Allen incident under "bigotsphere." She also blasted conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who drew a lot of attention to Hamsher's goof in Connecticut. "I’m sure Michelle Malkin, on full bigot-watch, has her outrage-ometer pinning."
Malkin happens to be on vacation this week, but one of her guest bloggers addressed the Allen incident with sarcasm directed at Allen's critics. Downplaying the incident seems to be a theme in some Republican quarters of the blogosphere, namely The Corner and Right Wing News.
But for one writer at Wizbang Politics who at least initially took Allen to task, the lesson in all of this might be that racial slurs are only signficant when a political enemy is either directly responsible or has ties to the one who is.
"I don't know if Allen used it with the intent of a racial slur," Jim Addison wrote at that GOP site, "but it could only have been, at best, derisive and disrespectful. If the young man is dark-complected and of south Asian heritage, it is hard not to take it as an ethnic or racial slur."
UPDATE: Allen has now issued an apology that is eerily similar in tone to the one Hamsher issued after the blackface incident. He blames others -- namely, the media -- for the misunderstanding.
Blogs that ignored Hamsher's non-apology apology, including Americablog, Daily Kos and Eschaton, are all over Allen for his.
Over at Captain's Quarters, meanwhile, big-name conservative blogger Ed Morrissey chastised Allen both for his initial "macaca" moment and his apology. Morrissey is even having second thoughts about Allen's fitness as a potential 2008 presidential candidate.
UPDATE II: Steve Clemons of The Washington Note said that if Democrats are smart, they will do whatever they can to see that Allen wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Who better for Democrats to run against than Macaca Man?
Posted by Danny at 09:13 PM | Comments (3)
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Bloggers of all political persuasions hate "the establishment." If that wasn't clear before the Aug. 8 primaries, it certainly is now. Voters in Connecticut, Georgia and Michigan handed electoral pink slips to three members of Congress, and blogs were a factor in all three upsets.
The Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut, where netroots hero Ned Lamont defeated Sen. Joseph Lieberman 52 percent to 48 percent, generated the most attention. If blogs were published in newsprint instead of online, the Internet activists who fret about global warming would have consumed enough paper in writing about the Connecticut battle to destroy a rain forest.
But the role of blogs in defeating Lieberman went far beyond just ranting against him for his support of the Iraq war and other initiatives of President Bush. Bloggers were involved in the race from start to finish, as detailed by writer Ari Melber at The Huffington Post and The Nation.
Lamont met with at least one key blogger (Matt Stoller of MyDD) early in his campaign, later hired another (Tim Tagaris) away from the Democratic National Committee, and used a third (Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake) as a volunteer production editor for his first video blog. Bloggers helped raise more than $300,000 for him online. They also followed his campaign across Connecticut and swarmed his headquarters on Election Night.
Before the votes were counted, some top bloggers tried to downplay their role in aiding Lamont. And when Hamsher embarrassed the campaign by painting Lieberman in blackface, Lamont unconvincingly claimed, "I don't know anything about the blogs." Now that Lamont has won, though, bloggers are beginning to boast of their newfound power within the Democratic structure.
"[B]logs are now vital parts of the party, displacing the lobbyist-lawyers-operatives whose organs were The New Republic and The Washington Post editorial page, and whose power flowed through their alliances with insular state machines and bigwig journalists," Stoller wrote Wednesday.
Lieberman's status as a former vice-presidential and presidential candidate, the amount of personal wealth Lamont invested in his campaign, and the persistent blogging about the race helped keep most political eyes trained on Connecticut. But blogs also made their presence known in electoral skirmishes to points west and south.
"Everybody in the country knows who Joe Lieberman is," said Andrew Roth, the blogger at The Club For Growth. "... Since blogs were writing about him, the media was practically obliged to follow it."
What they didn't follow as closely was the mirror intraparty Republican battle between freshman Rep. Joe Schwarz and Tim Walberg in rural Michigan. Roth's group financially backed the conservative Walberg and also used its blog to solicit more donations and cover the race. RedState joined the fight late in the game, publishing "The Top Ten Reasons Joe Schwarz Must Go" -- and go he did, losing to Walberg 53 percent to 47 percent.
"The Walberg campaign was gracious with its time and let us do a podcast," said Erick-Woods Erickson, the CEO and managing editor of RedState. "We also raised some money for Walberg. Most of our time, however, was devoted to the drumbeat that Joe Schwarz is a liberal. And I think the voters believed it."
Unlike the Connecticut race, bloggers did not coordinate with the Walberg campaign, and Walberg had no blog of his own. Other than doing the RedState podcast, manager Joe Wicks said in a telephone interview that the campaign had no interaction with blogs and ran no blog advertisements. In fact, Wicks struggled to say much at all about blogs.
"It's nothing we were directly involved in," he said of their interest in Walberg. "It just sort of happened because of the excitement about the race."
Coordinated with the campaign or not, the blogging worked, and Liz Mair, editor of the moderate Republican blog GOPProgress, gave her online rivals their due. "The support for Walberg shown on sites like RedState probably offered his camp comfort as to their prospects and motivated them to continue their campaign efforts right up to the last minute, which obviously paid off," she said.
The results have Roth eager for the future. "I think there is a fantastic opportunity for The Club for Growth to work with the right-of-center blogosphere to find the Senate and House races that matter the most to fiscal conservatives and to cover them diligently," he said via e-mail. "Once we can do that, we can catch up to the netroots, which has a definite lead over us right now."
The third race where blogs rallied around a challenger and helped boot an incumbent occurred down in Georgia. That's where Democrat Hank Johnson handed Rep. Cynthia McKinney her second primary defeat in four years, trouncing her 59 percent to 41 percent in a run-off.
Johnson had the most unique blog strategy by far. He didn't embrace the blogosphere until after he finished second to McKinney in a three-way Democratic race July 18, but then he became the first candidate to post at Congress Blog. He also wrote for at least one other blog and bought ads on blogs from left to right to generate buzz and money about his candidacy.
"They've been effective in reaching out to the people who make the news, the people who determine what's hot and what's not ... and reaching the national media at an affordable price," Jonathan Ossoff, Johnson's deputy communications director, told National Journal's Technology Daily.
The outcomes in Connecticut, Michigan and Georgia serve as a warning to incumbents across the political spectrum this election season: Enrage the blogosphere at your peril.
Posted by Danny at 07:07 AM | Comments (0)
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Manufacturing Group Hires Blog, Web Strategist
The National Association of Manufacturers has hired as its director of Internet strategies a man whose previous tasks while on a contract with the National Institute of Justice included blog outreach and podcasting.
NAM, an early adopter of policy blogging inside the Beltway at Shop Floor, announced the development in a press release issued Monday. Nathan Koble will fill the post.
Koble previously worked for Lockheed-Martin, which deployed him to NIJ, the research, development and evaluation agency of the Justice Department. He directed the institute's push to embrace podcasts, online syndication feeds, blog outreach, webcasts and other new media. He also collaborated with Harvard University to launch a Web portal and offer Web seminars on innovations in government.
"Nathan Koble brings to the NAM a proven track record of embracing technologies, developing partnerships and achieving results," said Doug Kurkul, NAM's vice president for member communications and marketing services.
Posted by Danny at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
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A retired judge from Oregon who earlier this year characterized the blogosphere as a place where "character
assassination, defamation and dirty business tricks" run rampant is trying to get broader circulation for his view that the law and the courts need to demand accountablity from bloggers.
Edward Fadeley, who served as an associate justice on the Oregon Supreme Court, wrote the column in June for The Oregonian. Last week, at Fadeley's request, a public relations firm based in New York redistributed the piece over PRNewswire to reach a broader audience.
The judge cited an attack piece by Forbes magazine last November to support his call for legal action against blogs. "Unfortunately, many innocent companies are being damaged by individuals out for profit or self-promotion," he wrote. "Even in instances where legitimate organizations have been seriously damaged by bloggers, it's difficult to counter unfounded attacks or to demand the actual sources, let alone seek the protections of the law."
Fadeley's column noted the lawsuit filed by Apple Computer against bloggers who revealed inside information about the company. A California appeals court sided with the bloggers in May, and Apple dropped the case at about the time Fadeley wrote his column.
The bloggers in that case argued successfully that their work was journalistic in nature and thus protected by the First Amendment. Fadeley is not convinced of that logic. "Journalists are held to account for what they say, whether or not they are quoting someone else. Unfortunately, the law has yet to create reasonable standards for the Internet and allows anyone to quote any source, with almost no liability for what they say."
He closed with an appeal for action against bloggers. "It's high time to fill the gap in a system that allows defamation in the blogosphere to go unchecked. The harm can be wide-ranging and devastating," Fadeley wrote. "Until the law catches up with technology, innocent parties have little or no protection in the volatile world of cyberspace."
Posted by Danny at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)
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As noted in this morning's edition of National Journal's Technology Daily.
Iranian authorities are increasing restrictions on the authors of popular Web logs as part of tighter Internet restrictions launched after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president last year.
AP reports that the rules target sexual content, international politics, complaints about local government, chat rooms and anything else that disrupts Islamic leadership. According to a prominent human rights lawyer, at least 50 bloggers have been detained in the last year.
"It's the classic Iranian battle of freedom against controls," said Isa Saharkhiz, a member of the Iranian branch of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "The crackdown on bloggers is part of a growing censorship policy by the state."
Posted by Danny at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
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Poll-Tested 'People Power'
Liberal blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD love to talk about "people power," the rallying cry of Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga in their book "Crashing The Gate."
But self-professed curmudgeon John Cole of Balloon Juice finds the term annoying. "I instinctively cringe when I hear the phrase 'people power,'" Cole said. "It is just so hokey, so faux-populist, so nauseatingly poll-tested. There has to be a better phrase/word. Oh yeah, there is. Democracy."
I'm with Cole.
But then again, some people have been calling me a curmudgeon since I was 25. I'm fast approaching my 40th birthday, so imagine how bad my disease is by now!
Posted by Danny at 09:49 AM | Comments (2)
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Friday Festival Of Blog Bits
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a supporter of the war in Iraq, was defeated in Connecticut's Democratic primary by war opponent Ned Lamont on Tuesday. Two days later, America went into "red alert" for the first time because of a terrorist plot to blow up airplanes between the United Kingdom and the United States. Surely the two events are related.
Well, they are in the mind of John Aravosis of Americablog anyway -- and he is taking a verbal beating in the blogosphere for his "tin-foil hat" conspiracy theory.
Aravosis' theory: "The message is spreading across the land that incumbents who embrace the president are in serious trouble. And the Republicans needed to divert attention, to stop this meme in its tracks, and lo' and behold we have our first terror alert that I can recall since the last election, and it's our first ever red alert! What a coincidence!"
My former National Journal colleague Bill Beutler concluded that Aravosis' theory and subsequent comments on the terrorist plot prove that he "is not very serious about terrorism." Bill also provided links to others who are getting a laugh at Aravosis' expense. They include Stephen Bainbridge, George Gooding and Pejman Yousefzadeh.
Mary Katharine Ham had this to say at Townhall: "This is why another meme was starting yesterday -- the one that says the Netroots liberals are driving the Democratic Party over the anti-war edge, to a place where they can no longer be trusted on national security issues."
Now for the rest of this week's blog bits:
-- Anytime terrorists make their way to the front page, The Countterrorism Blog is a must read. The site has roundups of news from Day 1 and Day 2 after the plot was exposed, plus a whole lot more.
-- Bloggers decried a doctored Reuters photo of the aftermath of bombing in the Middle East, and their success in publicizing the shoddy journalism prompted coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs was not happy with the Post story, which featured his role in exposing the photo. But Ezra Klein suggested that the Post was too soft on Little Green Footballs.
-- Matt Stoller of MyDD asked for and secured sponsors for his activist coverage of the Lamont-Lieberman race. The takers included "Grassroots: The Movie" and Paperplain.com.
-- "Blogfather" Jerome Armstrong made a couple of appearances this week at MyDD, the blog he built. His topics: "How The Blogs And The Internet Change Campaigning" and what Lamont's win in Connecticut says about bloggers.
-- Political Wire helped The New York Times spread the rumor that Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman would cite Lamont's affiliation with blogs as evidence that Democrats are captive to the extreme left of their party. Stoller's reaction: "The Republicans are apparently going to run against random people who post on the Internet. This is going to be a fun mid-term election."
Political Wire retracted the story when Mehlman didn't mention blogs in a speech, but the RNC soon made the connection visually with a new image of "Defeat-ocrats" on its home page. The picture features Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Moulitsas was glad to be included in the photo but implied photo-doctoring of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean by the GOP.
-- Mehlmen held a conference call with conservative bloggers in the wake of the Connecticut primary. The Blogometer recapped the call, and Tim Chapman of the Heritage Foundation noted Mehlman's reluctance to talk about the Republican candidate in a three-way fall race that will feature Lieberman as an independent.
-- The Right Angle focused on another congressional primary that featured the defeat of an incumbent: Rep. Joe Schwarz, R-Mich. He was defeated by Tim Walberg, a favorite of conservative bloggers. I'll have more to say about that race myself in a column that will go online here Tuesday, so be sure and check back.
-- Jim Geraghty of National Review Online reported on another blogger with connections to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The other one is Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits.
-- Blog readers are not your average Joe, but Matthew Yglesias of TPMCafe thinks the audience will "converge with the overall demographics of the population" over time, as has happened with other technological innovations.
-- Scripps Howard News Service's take on anonymous bloggers: "the rank armpit of politics on the Internet, a place where anyone can now set up a Web site under a pseudonym and fire away." It's the kind of story that may have helped inspire "Kevin's Law" on highlighting outrageous blog comments to foolishly try to make a broader point about how bad blogs are.
-- The latest installment at Extreme Mortman about blogs and the 2008 presidential campaign focuses on Caucus Cooler in Iowa. Meanwhile, Extreme Mortman namesake Howard Mortman was among the speakers at a Public Relations Society of America forum on blogs this week.
-- An investor just dumped $5 million into The Huffington Post.
-- Ian Schwartz of Expose the Left has a new gig. He is working for conservative blogger Michelle Malkin at Hot Air, the online video service she launched earlier this year.
-- RedState unveiled its redesign, and Bill Beutler critiqued it. Tim Chapman gave the new look and feel a thumbs-up.
-- The latest count of blogs, according to Technorati founder David Sifry: 50 million. Just for the record, I have created no fewer than five myself, though I don't know if they are in his count or not.
This blog and Tech Policy Pod, where the podcasts I create for Technology Daily are published, are the most active. The others tend to be ignored for weeks to months at a time. I suspect that's true of many of the other 4,999,997 blogs, so I'm not sure the running count means much.
Posted by Danny at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)
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As noted this morning at National Journal's Technology Daily, with additional reporting by me.
The campaign of Republican Rep. John Kline has accused Democratic challenger Coleen Rowley in Minnesota of using a blogger as a "double-agent," the Star Tribune reports.
Kline's campaign alleged that the blogger, David Bailey, attempted to make an illegal campaign contribution and hurt Kline's re-election effort. "Our campaign has never sent anyone in there to do anything like that," Rowley campaign manager Terry Rogers said in denying the charge.
Bailey, currently Rowley's director of "earned" news media, said he did attempt to make the contribution in order to get on the mailing list because he wanted to learn more about Kline's beliefs. But he was only a volunteer for the campaign at the time and said he acted independently of it.
Kline spokesman Marcus Esmay said Bailey gave his real e-mail address and home address.
The Star Tribune noted that Bailey "was a Rowley volunteer and blogger who posted an Internet blog critical of Kline" at the time of the incident. Since May, Bailey has been a staffer on the Rowley campaign and writes much of the content for its blog, The Blotter. He posted a disclosure to that affect at John Kline's Record when he quit writing entries there.
Rowley's campaign finance report for the quarter that ended June 30, available electronically through the Federal Election Commission, does not indicate any payments to Bailey. Walter Winger, the policy research director for the campaign, said that's because Bailey is filling a "nontraditional position" that evolved out of his work as a blogger/volunteer for the campaign.
Bailey is not paid for his work as earned media director. Winger said the campaign "wanted to give him a title when he was talking to radio producers." He added that Bailey also interacts with blogs, "trying to get Coleen's name out there."
At The Blotter, Bailey called the latest story about his attempt to get on Kline's mailing list "an attack against me, in yet another effort to distract the media and the public from the issues that matter."
"I live in the second district; I'm one of John Kline's constituents, and as a constituent, I was trying to get answers about his position on the issues," Bailey wrote. "I didn't get answers that day, and John Kline is still stonewalling about his positions today."
Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, a conservative blogger based in Minnesota, is not buying Bailey's explanation of what transpired. He also questioned Bailey's decision not to blog about his "attempt to donate money to Kline's campaign on [his blog about Kline]. It would seem to be a bloggable event, having met with Kline staffers in both his district office and his campaign headquarters."
Posted by Danny at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
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The Best Of Lieberman-Lamont
The defeat of Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman at the hands of intraparty rival Ned Lamont in Tuesday's Democratic primary has dominated the attention of both the mainstream media and the blogs. I haven't had much time to write about the battle myself, but I've been reading plenty of the coverage.
Here are some of the stories and blog posts that grabbed my attention the past couple of days:
-- What was the scene inside Lamont headquarters on Election Night? There were lots of escatic bloggers for one thing, once again putting to the lie Lamont's statement last week that he doesn't "know anything about the blogs." Ari Melber has more at The Huffington Post and The Nation how bloggers came to be such a force in Lamont's campaign.
-- Lieberman had barely conceded the race before Democratic bloggers like John Aravosis of Americablog started attacking him -- and again urging readers to donate to Lamont, a wealthy communications executive who has largely self-funded his campaign.
-- Cato Institute founder and president Edward Crane sees a lesson about campaign-finance law in Lamont's victory. "More than 60 percent of Ned’s campaign expenditures came from Ned," Crane wrote. "Without Ned, Ned loses. ... Give everyone the 'loophole' of being able to spend as much of their own money to promote their political beliefs and we’ll throw a remarkable number of incumbents out of office. And with good candidates instead of bumbling millionaires."
-- Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos named winners and losers in the battle, while MyDD highlighted the benefits of Lamont's victory. Instapundit said the end result is newly earned power within the Democratic Party for liberal bloggers -- and voiced hoped that Republican bloggers also might get more respect from politicians in their party.
-- Kos tried to put his enhanced power to work by rallying his "Crashing The Gate" troops to apply pressure for robbing Lieberman of his Democratic committee assignments, among other things. The response from Right Wing News: "That's right! Fall in line, boys, because there's a new boss in town! ... Everyone get to work or else you'll have to suffer the wrath of Kos!"
-- John Cole at Balloon Juice questioned the conventional wisdom about Lamont's presumed victory: "I would like to point out that no one has really won anything yet, as the election is yet to come, and the netroots left has already won a number of primary elections. This is no first, this Lamont victory; it just seems like it because of all the hype."
-- You can count John Hawkins of Right Wing News among the Republicans who now hope Lieberman wins, and he told others why they should. Hawkins also ran the numbers to arrive at a scenario that easily re-elects Lieberman. Never mind the fact that Lamont already proved his ability to beat the spread.
-- Democratic candidates across the country are invoking Lamont's name in their races. MyDD has a list and is looking for more names of people trying to hitch a ride on Lamont's coattails.
-- Experts at the Sunlight Foundation praised Lamont's new approach to using the Internet as a way "to enable people's creativity and passions, instead of simply to direct door-knockers and mobilize (though they did that, too). They brought to the campaign people with enormous creativity and passion, rather than shunning them."
-- The Washington Post credited Lamont's victory to the netroots and grassroots. Liberal bloggers no doubt loved the distinction because they have been whining for days about journalists not knowing the difference. The whining apparently was heard by at least one reporter in the ivory tower.
-- Bloggers in the netroots also have complained about journalists saying their animosity toward Lieberman is based on a single issue: his support of the Iraq war. The New York Times apparently didn't get the memo, as it published a post-election story that says Lamont's blog-endorsed success will force more Democrats to distance themselves from the war. At least one netroots-friendly blogger, though, is on the same wavelength as the Times. So is Tim Chapman of the Heritage Foundation.
-- The National Republican Senatorial Committee has a blog of its own but used the broader forum at Congress Blog to say that Lieberman's defeat proves that the "angry, fringe left has taken over the Democrat Party." Rather than veer left, one Democrat told blogger Andrew Sullivan he is bolting the party.
-- Oh, and I love the irony of Lieberman's Democratic foes using the "Sore Loserman" slam that Republicans created in 2000 to bash the man Democrats once supported for vice president.
Posted by Danny at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)
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The NewsMax online news service is running blog advertisements to promote what it bills as "one of the first online polls" about the independent re-election candidacy of Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to challenger Ned Lamont on Tuesday.
"NewsMax will provide the results of this poll to major media," according to the polling page where people are directed if they click on the ad. "Additionally, NewsMax's results will be shared with every major radio talk show host in America."
The poll questions ask readers some seemingly random questions: whether they support Lieberman's run as an independent; whether they agree with his support for the war in Iraq; whether his loss in the Democratic primary helps or hurts Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.; and who they voted for in the 2004 presidential election.
Posted by Danny at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)
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Politically active people are among the most regular blog readers, but they probably don't know that they could expose themselves to identity theft or other online woes by the mere act of subscribing to blogs. That's the word according to one cyber expert, as reported in a recent Metroactive column headlined "Blog Menace."
SPI Labs security engineer Bob Auger shared his insight at the Black Hat computer-security conference in Las Vegas. According to Annalee Newitz of Metroactive, Auger said "the mere act of checking out somebody's RSS feed might allow bad guys to steal money from your bank account, post Web spam from your computer and snoop on everything you've written anonymously in that online porn community you secretly visit."
Posted by Danny at 07:17 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Ned Lamont, The People's Choice
The vote was far closer than liberal bloggers had hoped, but Ned Lamont prevailed Tuesday in his Democratic primary challenge to three-term Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
The downside: The closeness of the vote -- 52 percent to 48 percent -- has emboldened Lieberman to stick with his plans to run as an independent in a three-way race this fall. That means more intraparty bickering among Democrats and more focus on Connecticut when their time could be better spent in other states as they try to recapture control of the Senate.
Lieberman's Democratic colleagues in Congress recognize the pitfalls of his independence and are not staying silent about it. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., took to The Huffington Post his warning about a race that "seems destined to divide Democrats in the most insidious ways."
"This was not a low turnout non-event on a hot August day," Conyers wrote. "It was a primary in which the Democratic electorate turned out in numbers far exceeding expectations for a primary. A substantial number of voters who supported and opposed the incumbent wanted to have their voices heard. In the end, it was a decisive and historic victory. Ned Lamont won and Joe Lieberman lost."
Conyers was particularly annoyed by references to black Democrats made by Lieberman and his supporters. They specifically called Lamont an "Al Sharpton Democrat" and lumped Lamont and Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat who campaigned for Lamont, into the bloc of "extreme" Democrats. "This type of rhetoric degrades the political process and should not be tolerated," Conyers said.
He urged Lieberman to "abide by the wishes of his electorate." "Will he do the right thing and respect the choice of his party or tarnish a respected career in public service?" Conyers wondered.
Posted by Danny at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)
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Who's Funding The Connecticut Primary Push?
Sifting through Federal Election Commission records is a chore, especially for Senate candidates who still do not have to file electronic returns. The task is so tedious that even voters inclined to follow the money trail are not likely to undertake it in the final days of a campaign, when the money really starts to flow and the hand-written Senate filings are submitted.
It's a perfect opportunity for some enterprising bloggers to do the heavy lifting -- and that's exactly what blog supporters of Democrat Ned Lamont did yesterday at MyDD, the last day before balloting in Lamont's bid to unseat Sen. Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut.
They examined the latest reports from the Lieberman campaign and posted the information online. "In about five hours, we collectively downloaded and sorted 14 separate FEC filings from Joe Lieberman and put them out for analysis," Matt Stoller wrote. "The total amount of high dollar money coming in for Joe over the last 15 days is slightly over $1.2 million."
Larry Makinson of Dollarocracy praised the effort and used it as a springboard to criticize the Senate as a whole. "This is exactly the kind of information that should be available to anyone without going through all that trouble," he said. "But the U.S. Senate exempted itself from the rules that all other federal candidates, [political action committees] and parties have to live by -- namely electronic reporting of their campaign contributions."
MyDD, an aggressive advocate for Lamont, understandably focused on the money going to Lieberman and said nothing about Lamont's last-minute donations, like the $5,000 from Americans for Democratic Action PAC on Aug. 2 and $2,100 from actor Tim Robbins on July 28. But Makinson, who made a name for himself at the Center for Responsive Politics, also targeted Lieberman and said nothing about Lamont.
The failure to treat two well-funded candidates in the same race equally caught the attention of MyDD reader Dan Conley, too. "So what's your point, Stoller, it's OK for an inherited-wealth Democrat to buy an office but not OK for a Democrat born into a middle-class family to raise money from the successful? ... If you're looking for a Good Government Paul Wellstone/Russ Feingold type in this race, you're obviously in the wrong state."
Posted by Danny at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)
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Connecticut voters are making their way to the polls today to decide whether Sen. Joseph Lieberman deserves another term or whether Ned Lamont, Lieberman's Democratic primary foe, is the better choice.
But something besides the Senate seat is at stake. The outcome also will help shape, or reshape, perceptions about Democratic bloggers within the political realm, so bloggers already are trying to spin the story to their advantage.
The blogospheric bloviation about the Connecticut race and what it says about bloggers has reached a fever pitch in recent days. The commentary can be divided into three broad categories: downplaying the influence of blogs, diverting attention from the blogs by attacking the press for the way it covers blogs, and claiming that the netroots win even if they lose.
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos, dubbed the "Keyboard Kingpin" by New York Times columnist David Brooks earlier this year, has led the we're-not-as-powerful-as-everyone-says-we-are charge. He penned his latest screed yesterday, laying blame for the blog hype on the Washington establishment -- "the jokers in D.C."
"Those are the same idiots who are trying to destroy bloggers by claiming we are all powerful and pulling all the strings in Connecticut -- people like the [Democratic Leadership Council] brain trust, D.C. Dem consultants and lobbyists, and and Lieberman's conservative defenders," Moulitsas wrote. "And, of course, the useful idiots in the media writing it all down."
Playing off a post by Chris Bowers of MyDD, Moulitsas this morning took another poke at people who are showering flattery on the blogs and netroots. Bowers lambasted the media for missing a perceived opportunity to identify blogs within the larger context of a "progressive" movement, and Moulitsas agreed.
"The people-powered movement isn't about blogs," he wrote. "In fact, most of its foot-soldiers don't even know what a blog is. It's about creating a new political order in which ordinary people can take charge of their political destinies and do something to make their country a better place. They're the heroes in all of this."
Ezra Klein, who blogs at his own site and at Tapped, took the third approach: claiming victory in defeat for the netroots on the off chance that Lieberman happens to win the Democratic Senate nomination today.
That tactic is not a new one. Democratic bloggers did the same thing when Paul Hackett lost a special election in Ohio a year ago and have repeated the routine with losses by other blog-backed candidates this year. Klein himself compared Hackett with fictional boxer Rocky Balboa from the first "Rocky" movie.
But Klein's victory-in-defeat analysis before the polls close -- and after recent polls showing Lamont with leads of anywhere from 6 percent to 13 percent -- adds a new twist. Here's what Klein had to say in The American Prospect:
With the netroots having proved they can generate an existential challenge to a safe-seeming incumbent, actually defeating Lieberman would be little beyond icing on the cake. Moving forward, a Lieberman victory would do nothing to blur the traumatic memory of his near-loss. And that gives the netroots an extraordinary amount of power, vaulting them into a rarified realm occupied by only the strongest interest groups.
Political Animal Kevin Drum put all of the pre-vote pontification in the appropriate context yesterday. "In the same way that all the chatter about 'who won' a presidential debate is more important than the debates themselves," he wrote, "the chatter about the power of the blogs is probably more important than whether they really had any power to begin with. Like it or not, they do now."
UPDATE: Bob Fertik of Democrats.com is not buying the spin from Moulitsas, Bowers & Company that the blogs have been a minor factor in the Connecticut Senate race, and his distinction between "power" and "influence" is an insightful one.
"What Lamont desperately needed were the things that money alone can't buy: a credible political resume, a list of prominent endorsements, positive media coverage, a small-donor base, a statewide grassroots organization, and a daily message machine," Fertik wrote. "And that's where the influence of national blogs played a decisive role."
The contributions of the blogs, Fertik said, included giving Lamont a political resume (anti-war champion), offering influential personal endorsements, creating positive buzz online that then moved into the media, encouraging donations that took Lamont's candidacy beyond self-funding, encouraging activists to work in the field, defining the campaign message daily, and rebuttin Lieberman attacks. "
"All of these activities were crucial," Fertik said. "Without them, Lamont would be struggling to break 20 percent in the polls" like Jonathan Tasini in his intraparty bid against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York.
UPDATE II: Dripping with sarcasm, Eschaton penned a guide for journalists on how to write about political blogs.
The Boston Globe published a piece on the role of blogs in the campaign. I'm not sure whether they followed the guide.
In any case, I agree wholeheartedly with New Donkey: "Well, August 8 is finally here, and no matter what happens in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary, it will be nice to read about something else in the progressive blogosphere for a while."
Posted by Danny at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)
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The Netroots Anti-War Stereotype
Bloggers on the left generally hate the ongoing U.S. military involvement in Iraq, but they may hate something else even more -- the perception, perpetuated by the mainstream media, that the netroots are a one-note, anti-war band.
Almost every time the netroots are portrayed as anti-war, you can count on at least one of the big-name liberal bloggers to rage against the MSM machine. John Aravosis of Americablog took up the cause yesterday after hearing a report from George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.
"We are not 'anti-war activists organized on the Internet,' as Stephanopoulos claimed. ... We are political writers and political activists," Aravosis wrote. "We are partisans, to be sure, but the war is NOT our only issue any more than it is the only issue of any publication or political partisan."
He decried what he sees as the media's stereotypical characterization of the netroots. "[Y]eah, some bloggers are far-left, many of us are not," Aravosis said. "Many are liberal. ... Some of us are strident and doctrinaire, some aren't. Some of us have political experience, some don't. Some of us see ourselves as writers and journalists, some as activists, and some as both. The point being, it is disingenuous and misleading to portray this thing called 'the netroots' as some kind of all-powerful, sieg-heil, far-left monolith."
Posted by Danny at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
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'Blogicide' In Connecticut
The battle between Democrats Ned Lamont and incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman is getting ugly in Connecticut -- so ugly that one blogger got sick of covering it and quit just days before Tuesday's primary.
Matt Smith of Philadelphia injected himself into the intraparty rivalry at LieberDem a little more than a month ago. His two goals: prove "that there are firmly Democratic bloggers who support Senator Lieberman and ... report on the happenings in the CT Senate race that are ignored by the "pro-Lamont" (well, they are more appropriately called 'anti-Lieberman') blogosphere crowd."
Smith abandoned the cause Saturday by committing "blogicide." He made one last entry and closed the comment section of LieberDem -- though he said he might be willing to turn the site over to a Lieberman supporter for future posts.
Smith's decision came amid a week when one high-profile pro-Lamont blogger posted a doctored, racist image of Lieberman, and when a Washington-based lobbyist named Richard Goodstein and other Lieberman supporters confronted Lamont at a diner.
"I was always planning to end this blog once primary day arrived ... but events of the past few days at first disillusioned me, and then made me decide to speed up the clock on my announcement," Smith wrote. "Anyone who has read the blog over the past two days could no doubt detect my growing despondency."
In making the announcement, he said he actually agrees with some of the criticisms Lieberman's foes have leveled against the incumbent. Smith added that he now leans toward hoping the Lamont-Lieberman battle ends with a Lamont rout that would discourage Lieberman from running as an independent in the fall.
He said he started LieberDem because "the methods employed by some of Lamont's supporters in making their case against Lieberman were often marked by brazen intellectual dishonesty -- taking quotes out of context, focusing on one vote while ignoring 200 others, and pounding on exceptions as if they were the rule."
So what is Smith's next challenge? Law school, the breeding ground for the next generation of Lamonts and Liebermans -- and plenty of bloggers, too. He starts in a few weeks. Hopefully his short but apparently harrowing month of warfare in the political blogosphere hardened him for the educational task at hand.
UPDATE: Across the continent in Washington state, another political blog announced last week that it will be going offline soon. Washington State Political Report, a liberal blog, will end its run after about three years. Carl Ballard cited "burn out" as one factor in his decision, though he announced plans to try another Web venture of some sort soon.
Posted by Danny at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)
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The Federal Communications Commission has embarked on a new proceeding to revise the rules governing limits on media ownership, and Rep. Diane Watson has a keen interest in what the agency ultimately decides.
The California Democrat, who is black, believes that "growing media concentration has been harmful to minority owners and minority communities," and the FCC should write rules to address that concern.
Writing at The Huffington Post, she cited numbers to make her case: 175 minority owners with 426 ration stations (4 percent of the total) and 23 minority-owned commercial television stations (1.9 percent). "This is the lowest level recorded since tracking of the data began in 1990," Watson said.
She warned that if the FCC lifts restrictions on owning multiple TV stations in a single market or owning TV stations and newspapers in the same markets could lead to an even greater decline in minority media ownership.
"A media environment lacking in diversity affects not only minorities but all Americans," Watson wrote. "A multiplicity of views that can be seen and heard is essential to a healthy public discourse, which is what democracy is all about."
Posted by Danny at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)
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Last week's Senate debate about the "trifecta" bill -- a Republican-crafted measure to cut estate taxes, renew expiring tax credits and increase the minimum wage -- prompted Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell to blog her thoughts at the Northwest Progressive Institute.
Citing her history as one of five children in a "working family" and as a student who needed financial aid to attend college, Cantwell said she appreciates the importance of "a living-wage job." She decried as a "cynical ploy" the GOP decision to push a federal minimum-wage proposal that would undermine the already higher minimum wage for nearly 123,000 workers in Washington state.
"There is a better choice than what the Republicans offered: We can increase the minimum wage fairly for all working families, and we can do it without penalizing Washington and six other states for already doing right by our citizens," Cantwell wrote. "I've been working in Congress to increase the minimum wage, because I know that Washington State's example shows how we can do much better for all our working families. We should not settle for anything less."
Posted by Danny at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Friday Festival Of Blog Bits
Most political insiders assume that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to be the next president of the United States and will seek that honor in 2008. But blogger Steve Clemons of The Washington Note reported this week that Clinton, D-N.Y., may have a future as Senate Democratic leader instead.
Citing "high-level Democratic political insiders," Clemons said current Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has sent signals that he wants to exit the post in early 2009. "What Reid is offering Senator Hillary Clinton is his total, robust support to succeed him as [presumed] Senate majority leader if she elects not to pursue the Democratic nomination for president," according to Clemons.
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos (no Clinton fan) downplayed that possibility, noting that Reid's people are denying. But he also questioned the conventional wisdom that Clinton will run for president -- or that she will win the Democratic nominatin if she does.
"Hillary polls well, but not that well," Moulitsas wrote. "She seems to top out in the high 30s in most early polls even though everyone knows who she is, while few know her opponents even exist."
Ezra Klein also said the deal for Democratic leader also is unlikely to happen but added a few other insights, including this: "This deal would actually make an enormous amount of sense. I've been arguing for years that Hillary's natural place is as leader of the Senate Democrats. There, her megaphone, fundraising prowess, and media attention can enable even a minority caucus to enter the debate on even footing with the right."
The Clinton-as-Senate-Democratic-leader rumor was just a brief interlude from the dominant political story in the netroots this week, which was the Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut. Here are some of the blog bits generated by that race.
-- In reporting on the controversy over an image of Lieberman doctored by a blogger, Slate noted that the controversy isn't likely to affect the outcome in Connecticut but may change the way campaigns engage bloggers."Candidates and campaign managers don't like unpredictable events, and bloggers are highly unpredictable," John Dickerson wrote. "They knew that about the bloggers who would be against them. They hadn't focused until now on the hazard of bloggers on their side."
-- The Plank explained why blogs have mattered in the Connecticut Senate race: "The point is not direct communication with average voters; it's indirect--via impact on local media coverage, which is what really counts. Having an army of obsessive bloggers on your side is tantamount to dozens of unpaid opposition researchers on your staff. ... Blogger scoops, and even their spin on events, often migrate fast into the local media."
-- A blogger at America Abroad who supports Lamont was attacked by bloggers who agree with him because he dared to challenge "the rhetorical tone in the lefty blogosphere."
-- A quartet of bloggers -- Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Matt Stoller of MyDD, Ed Kilgore of New Donkey and Matthew Yglesias of Tapped -- pondered Lieberman's historical place in the Democratic Party and how his career came down to the current intraparty battle.
-- MyDD and the blog of challenger Ned Lamont accused Sen. Joseph Lieberman of adopting a "thug strategy" by sending supporters, allegedly including a Washington lobbyist, to aggressively confront Lamont on the campaign trail.
Democratic bloggers also were the subject of other entries this week.
-- Bull Moose Marshall Wittman had plenty of bad things to say about the netroots in an interview at Pardon the Disruption. A sample: "[T]he real central issue for the left‑wing blogosphere is national security and the war in Iraq. They care for very little other issues. They somewhat on trade but not that much. They were involved in the Social Security fight, but really the animating issue is national security and the Iraq war, and if you differ with them on that they will heap all their indignation and opprobrium on you for it."-- The American Prospect studied the netroots and identified "two shared orientations": opposition to the Iraq war and "a pervasive populism" evident in their economic views and their animosity toward the political establishment. "These two characteristics go a long way toward clarifying the patterns of support and opposition the netroots display toward Democratic politicians and candidates," Scott Winship wrote.
-- And MyDD reported the results of a poll on why netroots favorite Francine Busby lost her bid for the House in a California special election earlier this year.
Now to balance your blog diet for the week, here are some tidbits from the right and other realms:
-- Right Wing News revealed the two goals of the new Rightsroots online fundraising project organized by Republican bloggers: 1) raise more money than the netroots from Aug. 1 through the election; and 2) muster a better win-loss record than the netroots come Election Day.
-- The Gizz-ette identified "Another Fight For GOP's Soul In Virginia," and it's in my home county of Prince William. An update to the story: The Senate on Thursday confirmed county Board of Supervisors Chairman Sean Connaughton as the next administrator of the Maritime Administration.
-- Hotline On Call noted the launch of a new moderate Republican Web site called GOPProgress.com.
-- Candidate blogging is becoming another niche at Congress Blog. As I reported previously, Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson has made some appearances there. This week, fellow Democrats Diane Farrell of Connecticut and Lois Murphy of Pennsylvania posted entries as well.
-- La Shawn Barber posted the second entry in her how-to series on avoiding blog scandals, the latest topic being plagiarism.
-- The New Yorker published a piece on the emergence of citizen media called "Journalism Without Journalists." The essay prompted pointed retorts from citizen media advocates like Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen.
-- Also on the citizen journalism front, Mark Tapscott highlighted survey results that said most major newspapers now allow their staffers to write blogs. And Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist online classifieds service is blamed for hurting the bottom lines of traditional journalism, talked about some of the new media ventures he is supporting in word and/or financial deed.
-- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took time away from her congressional recess to discuss a very important topic -- the symbolic end of "freedom fries."
-- As someone who has been subjected to bizarre e-mails and blog comments simply because I share a name with actor Danny Glover, I found MyDD blogger Matt Stoller's paranoid attack on Timothy B. Lee to be, well, paranoid.
Posted by Danny at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
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Before a blogger close to the campaign of Ned Lamont depicted Sen. Joseph Lieberman in blackface, the Connecticut Democrat had this to say about bloggers:
Before the mainstream media were taking us seriously, bloggers told my story with honesty and insight and compassion. The free exchange of comments and ideas in the blogosphere carried the tale and forced the traditional media to take notice. Ordinary people with video cameras, with petitions, with Web sites volunteering their time and their passion forged an army that no K Street lobbying money could buy. To all of you, I am eternally grateful.
After that blogger embarrassed Lamont, this is what he said:
I don't know anything about the blogs. I'm not responsible for those. I have no comment on them.
Posted by Danny at 09:06 PM | Comments (1)
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Blogger Kills Lieberman Image At Lamont's Bidding
The unofficial interplay between independent bloggers and political candidates reached a new level yesterday as the campaign of Connecticut Senate hopeful Ned Lamont convinced a blogger to remove a doctored photo of Sen. Joseph Lieberman from the Internet.
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who has been traveling with Lamont's campaign in recent days and posting frequently about the intraparty race between him and Lieberman, posted an image of Lieberman in blackface at The Huffington Post. When Lieberman complained about the image and demanded that Lamont disavow it, his opponent did just that.
Lamont's campaign also appealed to Hamsher to remove the photo. She agreed and then apologized at both The Huffington Post and Firedoglake. But Hamsher also blasted Lieberman for using the controversy "to hurt [Lamont] and score political points," accused his campaign of distributing "race-baiting" fliers and attacked "right-wing Republicans" like blogger Michelle Malkin for calling attention to Hamsher's blog entry.
At the top of her "sincere" apology for people who were "genuinely offended" by the image, Hamsher included this disclosure: "It’s also important to note that I do not, nor have I ever, worked for Ned Lamont’s campaign."
Tim Tagaris, Lamont's campaign blogger, called Hamsher's manufactured image of Lieberman (and former President Bill Clinton) "terribly disappointing" and "in poor taste." But he emphasized that the campaign was not responsible and complained of a "direct attack on us, using a blogger as a proxy."
"It’s worth noting [that] well over 500 bloggers write about the campaign almost every day, none of which are campaign staffers," Tagaris added in a post headlined "Weapons Of Mass Distraction."
He did not mention the role Hamsher played in directing Lamont's first video blog.
The use of blackface images and other racial stereotypes by liberal bloggers has arisen before, as noted on two occasions at The Blogometer last year.
Ironically, liberal blogs such as Eschaton and TalkLeft have criticized the use of blackface in other settings. And even more ironically, Hamsher herself went ballistic last fall when first lady Laura Bush made a reference to comedian Eddie Cantor, who gained a following with his blackface routine.
"Does the first lady not know who Eddie Cantor was?" Hamsher wrote. "Or does she actually think it's appropriate to invoke a comedian famous for appearing in blackface when talking about minority students, and then crack wise about their erstwhile future as criminals?"
UPDATE (snippets of what others are saying):
-- Kevin Aylward at Wizbang: "Coziness with bloggers like Hamsher (and several million of his own dollars) helped propel Lamont from nowhere into a tight race for the Democratic nomination [for] U.S senator, but that coziness comes with a price. When one of their biggest boosters has a ... moment like this, they have little choice but to distance themselves, potentially alienating their biggest boosters."
-- Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics: "it's interesting to see Lamont throw the crazies who've essentially made his campaign under the bus so quickly when their antics put some heat on him."
-- Erick-Woods Erickson of RedState: "Ned Lamont went to bed one night in the arms of left-wing bloggers. He rode them for all they were worth and woke up apparently regretting the experience."
-- Jake Tapper of Political Punch (ABC News): "From the classic school of 'It can't possibly be offensive when I do it because I'm a liberal!' which is so popular on the internet these days."
UPDATE II: Oliver Willis weighed in with a thought for his fellow liberal bloggers. "Incidents like this continue to fuel my belief that liberal bloggers need to really think of their role as journalists/commentators and get over the activist thing. Yes, the GOP infrastructure is clearly more advanced than the DNC's, but at some point you have to just let the party be the party and do your work from the outside."
Posted by Danny at 08:00 PM | Comments (2)
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In The Blog's-Eye: YouTube In The Internet 'Tubes'
Sen. Ted Stevens has been a target of ridicule in the blogosphere for weeks for calling the Internet "a series of tubes." Americablog promoted the latest new video mash-up of Stevens' "tubes" speech today.
The creativity spawned by the Alaska Republican's speech is sheer joy to behold. The blurb on "The Daily Show," the t-shirts, the satirical MySpace fan club -- I love it all.
Perhaps best of all, though, is the irony of people using a video-sharing site called YouTube to mock Stevens for calling the Internet a series of tubes. Now that's rich.
Oh, sure, I know the "tube" reference in YouTube is to the television, not the Internet. But YouTube is an Internet site made famous by people using their blogs and e-mail to spread the word about America's funniest videos of the information age. That almost sounds like a series of tubes.
Convergence is an amazing thing to watch.
Posted by Danny at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)
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Georgian Jack Kingston is a House incumbent who does not appear to face a difficult race for re-election this year, so that disqualifies him for financial help from Rightroots, the online fundraising arm started by Republican bloggers this week. But Kingston found another way to be a part of the effort: helping raise money.
Hours after Rightroots went online yesterday, Kingston issued a challenge in the blogosphere. He vowed to donate $14,000 to the effort if other people contribute at least $26,000 online before midnight Saturday. The money would come from Kingston's leadership political action committee and go to select candidates.
"This is our opportunity to send a clear message to folks that Republicans don't just beat Democrats on the streets and on Election Day, but on every battlefield, including the Internet," Kingston wrote in an e-mail letter to "friends."
Most of the blogs behind Rightsroots -- Captain's Quarters, RedState, The Right Angle, Right Wing News, Townhall and Wizbang -- publicized the offer.
As of mid-afternoon, Rightroots was just shy of halfway to meeting the challenge, with about $13,000 in the bank.
Rightroots also won a plug from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who actually met with a select group of Republican bloggers yesterday afternoon. The Tennessee Republican blogged about the effort and joined Kingston in adding his name to the Rightroots endorsers.
"Kudos to Frist for engaging bloggers -- and spending a valuable hour of his time during a very busy week before recess," wrote Robert Bluey of The Right Angle, who has been helping organize regular Capitol Hill sessions between Republican lawmakers and bloggers.
Larry Scholer also has a report on Frist's session with bloggers. Scholer is the guest blogger at TimChapman.com this week.
At least one Democratic blogger, Chris Bowers of MyDD, has noticed the Rightroots effort and took the time to critique it. "[I]t makes me feel very good to se conservatives claim the progressive netroots are crazy and ineffective out of one side of their mouths and then try to figure out ways to copy us out of the other side of their mouths," he wrote. "It makes me feel even better to see them fail in their attempts to do so."
That prompted a response from John Hawkins of Right Wing News about the story behind Rightroots.
"[K]eep in mind that I made a snap decision to do this on the 12th of last month," he said. "So, that meant a selection committee had to be assembled, we had to choose candidates to be studied, they had to be researched -- then a slate had to be sent over to ABC Pac which had to prepare the page, and then we had to promote this thing to make sure it would have a decent debut -- all in less than three weeks."
Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum also has a post on the project.
Posted by Danny at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
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Four lawmakers in the Florida delegation -- three Republicans and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson -- flocked to Congress Blog after word of health problems being endured by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro prompted him to temporarily relinquish some power. Here's what the lawmakers are saying:
-- Rep. Katherine Harris: "There is cautious optimism in the Cuban community today that the end of Castro’s brutal regime may be near. His long history of human rights violations and his bankrupt ideology has led the Cuban nation to economic and moral ruin."
-- Sen. Mel Martinez.: "I don’t know what will be the future of his health, but what we do know is that it is not appropriate for there to be a transfer from one dictator to another. After 47 years of dictatorship, it seems to me it is time for the Cuban people’s voices to be heard."
-- Nelson: "We’ve been through this before. Even now we don’t know whether this is the beginning of the end. Let’s hope it is."
-- Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: "This is the beginning of the end for the despised Castro regime. Never before in his close to half a century rule has the dictator given up power, even on a temporary basis."
Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, also posted an entry at Congress Blog. "[T]he goal remains a transition in Cuba towards democracy, the rule of law and the free market," he wrote. "That implies the immediate release of political prisoners, recognition of basic human rights and the dismantling of the repressive state security apparatus."
Hotline On Call pondered the potential political impact of Castro's death, whenever it may come. And a blogger at The Huffington Post used the latest news as a springboard to resurrect questions about U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Posted by Danny at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)
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As noted in this morning's edition of National Journal's Technology Daily (also mentioned at the TalkLeft blog).
A California freelance journalist and blogger was jailed yesterday after he refused to relinquish a video he filmed during an anti-capitalist protest in San Francisco, The New York Times reported.
Josh Wolf, 24, also refused to testify before a grand jury about the protest.
The protest, which was tied to a world meeting of economic leaders in Scotland, culminated with a clash between demonstrators and San Francisco police. Wolf had posted some video of the protest on his Web site and sold parts of it to local television stations.
He met with investigators who requested the entire raw video. Wolf, a recent college graduate, refused to provide it. He is in a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., where he could be until next summer when the grand-jury term expires, according to his lawyer.
Posted by Danny at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)
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The 'Vast And Powerful' GOP Blog Conspiracy
The Democratic netroots have earned a reputation as successful Internet fundraisers, and ActBlue is their chosen vehicle. Now the "GOProots" have created a competing online fundraising site of their own.
The Rightroots project, which just launched today and is affiliated with ABC PAC, designates candidates for targeted fundraising. There are 14 House candidates and four Senate candidates on the roster for this year. The site had raised a total of $5,225 for the candidates at last check.
"Rightroots is a broad coalition of conservatives joining together in support of a solid slate of Republican candidates for the U.S. House and Senate," according to an explanation of the project. "Properly funded, these candidates represent our best chance to retain control of Congress and to enact a conservative agenda."
The bloggers who have endorsed the effort include Robert Bluey of The Right Angle, Lorie Byrd of Wizbang, Erick-Woods Erickson of RedState, Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall, John Hawkins of Right Wing News, Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits and Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters.
"You'll notice that no incumbents were identified, and no Republican primary challengers are in the mix," Bluey wrote. "That's a decision we made based on fundraising totals for incumbents and the long-term outlook for primary candidates. Governors, who are subject to different campaign-finance laws, were also excluded."
Ham called Rightroots an attempt to create "a properly Vast and Powerful Conspiracy."
"The Internet gives us the opportunity to contribute to candidates quickly and easily," she said. "Our mission with Rightroots was to streamline that process as much as possible so that you could feel good about plunking some change in the jars of these guys without too much hassle."
Posted by Danny at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
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The recent controversies surrounding Democratic blogger Jerome Armstrong and Republican blogger Patrick Hynes have sparked a bit of online soul-searching about where, if at all, to draw ethical boundaries in the blogosphere. Two Republican bloggers posted entries on the topic yesterday.
Jim Geraghty of National Review Online, who broke the story about Hynes, used an entry that Armstrong posted at MyDD on Friday as a springboard to talk more about blog disclosures. He said he fears that "the phenomenon of bloggers secretly being on candidate's payrolls ... is, or is going to be, the new trend in campaigns."
He also warned bloggers that he is scouring Federal Election Commission records to find such connections. (Coincidentally, I've been doing the same for about a month, and it's a chore.) "Think of this as a one-time amnesty," Geraghty wrote. "If you’re a blogger, and you’re being financially compensated by a candidate, and you have not yet disclosed this fact to your readers, send me an e-mail. Tell me your side of the story."
He ended his screed with this advice to blog consultants and paid campaign bloggers: "Simple solution – disclose it, guys. It doesn't have to be done repeatedly, but it's probably best to keep it in a prominent spot on the blog. And after the work is over, try to keep it in a convenient spot."
La Shawn Barber also joined the debate with an entry titled "How To Avoid A Blogosphere Scandal: Disclose!" It was the first of what she promises will be a series of posts on sound blogging principles.
Barber started with praise for the mainstream media. "While we may question mainstream media’s truth-seeking ability or whether they truly strive to provide a 'fair' account of events," she said, "I believe that in general, most journalists recognize that with a free press comes responsibility." She added that bloggers need to keep that in mind as the medium develops.
"Bloggers should disclose financial relationships with politicians and businesses they blog about," Barber said. "If you don’t and a blog swarm ensues, you can’t blame anyone but yourself."
Over at Dean's World, meanwhile, Dean Esmay said Armstrong's defense of the scandals surrounding him is "good enough for me."
And Geraghty highlighted comments that Hugh Hewitt made about the Hynes scandal. A couple of weeks ago, Hynes leveled a pointed criticism at Hewitt for considering himself "King Republican" and suggested that Hewitt was working for potential presidential contender Mitt Romney, currently the governor of Massachusetts.
Hewitt's response: "[F]or Patrick -- while already 'in the services' of John McCain to suggest I was 'in the services' of Mitt Romney -- is to my eyes a much worse offense than non-disclosure of a relationship which would have been disclosed eventually. It was the pot calling a non-kettle black."
Geraghty added, "[O]ne can't help but wonder if Hynes suspected that others were/are secretly working for a 2008 presidential candidate because he himself had that undisclosed arrangement."
Posted by Danny at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)
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Two years ago this fall, Raj Bhakta made a splash on the reality TV show "The Apprentice." His wardrobe (bow ties) and antics (jogging in his boxers after losing a bet) helped make him the standout personality among 17 other candidates.
But in the end, Bhakta didn't make the cut. Donald Trump fired him in the ninth episode, costing Bhakta the chance at a $250,000-a-year job with one of America's most famous entrepreneurs.
Bhakta is in another competition this fall. He is trying to parlay his "Apprentice" fame and entrepreneurial experience into a lower-paying ($165,200) but higher-profile job as a congressman, and in his bid to unseat Democrat Allyson Schwartz in Pennsylvania's 13th District, he is using the blogosphere to generate buzz and bucks.
The most obvious element of Bhakta's effort is his campaign blog. "Team Raj" typically posts multiple entries a day, and the candidate himself makes an occasional appearance. On Friday, for instance, Bhakta penned a critical response to a speech about violent crime by Philadelphia Mayor John Street, whose city is in the 13th District.
The blog also includes a "donate" button in the shape of a bow tie. It takes visitors to a page that until recently featured the "Joe Biden 7/11 Challenge." The fundraising gimmick called attention to a wisecrack in early July from Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., about not being able to "go into a 7-Eleven or into a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."
Bhakta, who is of Indian ancestry, seized on the quote as an opening to invite donations of $7.11, $70.11 or $700.11. "I hope you'll show the senator what a silly thing he said," Bhakta said in an audio statement explaining the challenge. The challenge, which was promoted by some bloggers, yielded several thousand dollars, Bhakta said in a telephone interview.
That's just one example of Bhakta's outreach. The candidate granted an interview to The Real Ugly American that in turn generated links to Pennsylvania and national blogs. "We don't have to beg [the media] for an interview," a worker for Bhakta wrote. "This campaign and the blogs can communicate directly with the people."
Bhakta, who said he is running in the "Republican tradition of Theodore Roosevelt," also has a blog presence at the redesigned Townhall.com. And he has been pursuing endorsements from both local and national bloggers. He has at least seven: Blogs for Condi, Blogs for Fox, The Centrist, Church and State, Right in Philly, Save the Soldiers, and Tom Shakely & Friends.
"The age of the Internet truly has arrived," Bhakta said. "Our use of blogs and our use of the Internet is a component of a grassroots strategy" that is focused on "reform, reform, reform" -- of health care, education and environmental policy.
Bhakta was motivated to run for Congress in part by what he called the corrupting influence of big money in politics. He said it has "insulated and deafened our representatives in Congress from the real needs and concerns of the people," and blogs have forced that issue to the top of the agenda. "The issue of money in politics is one where the blogs are very helpful," Bhakta said.
He likened the emergence of the blogs to the "age of pamphleteering" and called them "a revitalization of the political system and reporting on politics."
But Bhakta's embrace of the blogosphere may not bear any more electoral fruit than his stint on "The Apprentice" bore professional fruit. Corrupting or not, money matters in politics, and his campaign doesn't have much -- slightly more than $28,000 as of the end of June. Schwartz has nearly $1.5 million and the advantage of being an incumbent who won her first House race in 2004 by a spread of 56 percent to 41 percent.
Four House races in Pennsylvania currently make the most-competitive race rankings of Hotline Editor Chuck Todd. A fifth is listed on the "fringe." The Schwartz-Bhakta battle is not even on the radar.
Building a grassroots campaign online, furthermore, has been tried before and failed -- repeatedly. Republican bloggers are fond of noting that most of the candidates backed by Democratic bloggers have been defeated. And last year, Utah House Majority Leader Steve Urquhart briefly ran a blog-based campaign against fellow Republican Orrin Hatch for the U.S. Senate but quickly abandoned the race.
Micah Sifry, who had a disenchanting experience as the e-campaign director for Andrew Rasiej in last year's race for New York City public advocate, knows the challenges firsthand. The Internet helped the campaign enlarge its base, raise $350,000 and triple the size of the mailing list, Sifry said. But Rasiej finished fourth in the Democratic primary.
Blogs are "a very effective way to reach 'political junkies' and the media," Sifry said. "But they cannot generate interest in a candidacy out of thin air. If people aren't paying attention to a particular race... tech and blogging can't change that."
What might have an impact, he said, is the kind of interaction with voters being practiced by Democrat Pete Ashdown in his race against Utah's Hatch. Sifry said Ashdown is "inviting voters to help draft policy ideas with him on a wiki, where he is an active participant."
That is the kind of "real lateral conversation" that modern voters want, Sifry said. They don't want candidates who use the Web "to either talk at voters or to get voters to do things for them. Until candidates get off their top-down pedestal, I don't think many voters are going to be very impressed by the mere fact that they have a blog or some blogger endorsements."
Posted by Danny at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)
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