Steve Newton writes in the Beating Castle Someday thread:
First, what is the proper use of the blogosphere in statewide politics. Dean, Ron Paul, Obama, and even Hillary made successful use of the blogs, primarily to sign up supporters and raise funds on a nationwide scale. But when you shrink the scale to DE I don’t think there are actually enough people on the blogosphere for them to operate that way.
Example: there were about seventy or eighty people involved in the Ron Paul meet-ups. Once that fad passed, so did they. They weren’t converts to the blogs, they were people sucked in by a particular candidate/cause, who gave money and stuck around while it was novel. Within the state I don’t think–even on the liberal Democrat side, where the blogs arguably have the most effect anywhere in the spectrum–we’ve reached the point where bloggers can be effective fundraisers.
The thing is that while the money race gets a lot of attention and publicity, looking at on-line political activism as just blogging (or commenting) or fundraising fails to recognize there are other (sometimes more) valuable aspects of the successful political sites and that is their social networking aspects. Bringing together a large and disparate group of people, giving them a basic mission, letting them make decisions on goals and how to get there and providing tools for them to execute was what made DFA a lot of fun to be a part of and is what Obama’s campaign has made work at almost every level. (DFA was hugely inspirational too — lots of activists and candidates got really launched here.) In fact, I think that Obama has been so good at this that you do see folks discussing his campaign as a bottom-up run organization, when that is awfully far from the truth.
Some of the best work that local blogs (including some in Delaware) do is to help leverage internet tools for candidates, keep up a narrative of action and state of play in local races (think Lieberman vs Lamont on a large scale), and help open up local political committees. Some of the best blogging I’ve ever seen has been helping aspirants understand committee rules and how to change them (or beat them) so that these committees get opened up to grassroots participants. More great blogging comes from folks who do the work to become experts in a local issue and keep documenting progress on that issue, and – more importantly – how the powers that be are trying to bamboozle the rest of us and how to push back on that.
Places like Dkos and Firedoglake and Americablog can raise funds for candidates because they’ve established communities where taking some action to support a larger goal is now the norm. Even those funds are realistically leverage funds – raise $150K from the netroots for a Congressional race and suddenly the traditional funders have a reason to take a second look. These sites are as good at, if not better, at getting folks to participate in more targeted Crashing the Gates-type behavior — calling legislators, signing petitions, reading progressive books, critiquing the media, exchanging ideas on strategies to change something. And this other work is, I think, just as potent as raising fistfuls of cash. The Bluewater Wind example locally is, I think an example of Crashing the Gates — pushing through the Delaware Way and the entrenched interests of Delmarva Power is a real victory for Tommywonk, this site, all of the other local blogs who kept the subject foremost in our minds and, especially, for every single reader here who called and wrote their legislators about this issue. My rep and Senator certainly heard from folks and know exactly where the impetus came from. I’ve heard a city councilman misrepresent the intent of the petition on city sidewalk maintenance and blame the fact that they were dealing with this issue on the “blogs”. That tells me that we should be doing way more of this.
Delaware is a small and politically insular place, so it seems to me that the greatest impact a blog like this one could have is in working out and executing more Crashing the Gates strategies. Work that helps more grassroots candidates open up and join the committees and groups that govern some of the political process would be remarkable and noticed. More issue-oriented blogging and calls to action, especially allied with other groups and blogs would continue to shake up the rules — like kavips call to influence the gubernatorial debate rules. Helping progressive candidates get out messages and to work specific issues is another. Those candidates, though, need to interact with the community they are looking for help from. Understanding the issues that are important to that candidate and overall campaign strategies – and doing that here – helps to establish the kinds of connections that help readers and bloggers feel invested. Straying away from progressive Dem issues, Steve’s own blog is an excellent exercise in libertarian ideas and candidate visibility.
Most crashing the gates exercises are successes of organizing, and let’s face it, fundraising is largely an organizing activity too. But a candidate who wants that kind of help from us will pretty definitively let us know that. In the meantime, we keep working on piercing alot of that insularity that may make it easier for a grassroots candidate to take a place at the table.
Make no mistake though, I do think that what we do here and in other blogs in the state what others is pretty excellent and this post is in no way a critique of the current level of effort. In any event, I’m just using Steve’s comment to think through our place in the world.
Between Steve’s comment and listening to some of the events at Netroots Nation, I’ve been in a meta mood today…can’t wait to hear what you all think!