Netroots Rising - history and analysis of the blogosphere

We agree with Jon Henke that "there will always be a place for the amateur blogger who can get good information and write with a unique voice."  And we believe that once people get a taste of activist, netroots democracy it will be difficult - if not impossible - to convince them to return to mass media passivity.  For candidates, the challenge will be to harness the power of the netroots or lose to those candidates who do.  Either way, as the Washington Post concluded following the Yearlykos Kos convention in early August 2007, "Like it or not, the [netroots] appear to be here to stay".

So conclude Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox in their new book (published June 30) Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics  I will tell you now that I think anyone interested in understanding the netroots would be well advised to read this book.  
Let me start by noting that I do NOT appear in the book, although I was a witness to much of what is reported in the book, having myself been (a) involved (albeit at a relatively insignificant level) in the Dean campaign; (b) been quite active in the Webb campaign;  (c) been an active participant at Daily Kos since January of 2004; (d) been a participant at Raising Kaine (including serving as a front pager and an editor); and having read and posted at a variety of other blogs.  That experience is why I can say that the book, while not an exhaustive examination of the rise and history of political blogging, is exceedingly accurate as far as my own knowledge and experience extends.  Let me also add that this book provided a broad context for understanding the nature of the role of blogs and blogging over the past several election cycles.  The authors not only draw on their own direct experience (which is extensive, with involvement in a variety of campaigns from local to presidential), but were able to get the cooperation of a large number of other participants, including political candidates and professionals, as well as some Republican bloggers.   They also provide a larger context by referring to contemporaneous news coverage where appropriate.

It says something of the importance of this book that the introduction was written by Markos ("Kos") Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of perhaps the most widely read (and influential) of the Democratic blogs.  While the entire introduction is important, I want to quote the ending, because it does provide an appropriate introduction:

    Yet in spite of their successes, Nate and Lowell are but two in a progressive arm that numbers hundreds of thousands to millions of committed activists, all working for a new generation of leadership to shake up moribund party establishments everywhere from Washington, D. C., to state capitals and city halls.
    The story isn't that certain leaders have emerged to shake up the word, but that in this new progressive movement, anyone can be a a leaders and shake up the world.
    And this book will prove that.

The book has a preface and introduction (as well as extensive acknowledgments) that follow the forward by Kos.  There are then 9 chapters, entitled as follows:
1. Doing Everything Wrong
2. Howard Dean and the Killer Ds
3. Activists Build a Movement, Insiders Kill It
4. Taking on DeLay, Inc.
5. What a Difference a Year Makes
6. Drafting an American Hero
7. Win One, Lose One
8. Combat Boots vs Cowboy Boots
9. What's Next for the Netroots?

The first chapter begins with the election of 2002, specifically the Sanchez for Governor campaign in Texas, in which Wilcox played a role.  It describes some of the innovative approaches used in that campaign, of which the authors write after its failure

But for all of its desire to innovate, the people who ran the Sanchez campaign resolutely refused to open communications channels that would engage voters in a new dialogue.

The second chapter provides a detailed introduction to two campaigns, that of Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and that of Richard Morrison against Tom DeLay in TX-22 in the redistricted election of 2004.  While there is significant background on the development of the Dean campaign in general, the focus in this chapter is on Texas, where Morrison was also running, because Wilcox was living and working there.  The chapter ends with a teaser:

By late 2003, it seemed that almost anything was possible.  Heading into the first caucus of the 2004 election year with strong leads in the polls and in fundraising, the Deaniacs were feeling confidant that Iowa would be the first stop on the way to the White House.  Little did they know.

Chapter three is an extensive examination of the Clark phenomenon, including a detailed examination of the roles of John Hlinko and others in drafting the general to run.  Several months after Hlinko had begun one of two major efforts to Draft Clark to run, Lowell Feld saw the general on television and was drawn into the effort, which gives him the perspective and connections to write about that campaign in detail.  It also gave him experience that became relevant in his later efforts to draft Jim Webb to run for the Senate. We are introduced to many other people in this movement as well, such as Susan Putney, who personally delivered to the General the first 1,000 letters urging him to run.  This chapter also provides a superb description of the tensions that arose between the the netroots activists who began the effort and the political professionals who came on board after the General decided to run, and who sought a traditional top-down approach to political campaigns.  The authors argue that as a reslt of this campaign

at least some members of each side, both netroots and dop down, learned valuable lessons for future campaigns.

This gives a sense of the detail of each chapter.  To avoid recapitulating the entire book and thereby making this too lengthy, let me offer briefer summaries of the remaining chapters. Chapter 5 examines the efforts to bring down Tom Delay, with the focus of course being on the campaign Richard Morrison, but including details of things like the Sixty Minutes report, and the impact upon the presidential effort of John Kerry.  This is followed by the role played by netroots efforts the succeeding year, both in the near miss of Paul Hackett against Jean Schmidt for the seat in Ohio vacated by Rob Portman, and in the election of Tim Kaine as Governor of Virginia.  We get an introduction to the scope of the developing Virginia Democratic blogosphere, as well as more on the continuing saga of Tom Delay in Texas.  And the authors argue that the interplay between netroots and grassroots activists and the actions taking by politicians in Washington have an interplay not dissimilar to how the journalism of Bernstein and Woodward functioned in Watergate, as well as laying the groundwork for the Webb campaign, which in Chapter 6 is covered through the June primary.  Chapter 7 broadens the geography to cover the involvement of the netroots in the successful Senate campaign of Jon Tester, and in the mixed bag of the Ned Lamont campaign against Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, winning the Democratic primary but losing in the general when Lieberman was able to draw the support of most of the Republicans while running on a independent line.  And Chapter 8 covers the general election campaign of the Webb-Allen race in great detail, while Chapter 9 offers the conclusions of the authors.  

As I noted above, I was actively involved in the Webb campaign, including some contact with those involved in persuading Webb to run before our now junior senator finally decided to join the race:  I can remember sharing some data with Josh Chernila and Lee Diamond about why I thought Allen was vulnerable.  While unlike Josh and Lowell Feld, I did not become a part of the paid campaign staff, I was regularly in headquarters, and even while away for most of the month of July in regular telephonic contact with a number of people who were actively involved while the campaign seemed to be sputtering.  From my direct knowledge and close observation, the material on the Webb campaign is accurate and reasonably exhaustive.  The authors were able to get people from within the campaign, both netroots and political professionals, on the record.  From the latter group we have remarks and insights from consultant Steve Jarding, the major strategist;  Jessica Vanden Berg, the manager;  Adrienne Christian, deputy campaign manager; Kristen Denny Todd, communications director;  Steve D'Amico, who handled research; and even the candidate Jim Webb.  What makes this chapter particularly thorough is the material woven in from the public record and additional comments from across the Virginia blogosphere, most notably from Ben Tribbett of Not Larry Sabato, who played a role in the famous video of "Macaca" going viral, and of Jon Henke, eventually hired to try to do for the Allen campaign what the bloggers of Raising Kaine (especially Lowell Feld) had been doing for the Webb campaign.  We see the role of other aspects of netroots and grassroots organization, meeting Eric Byler and Annabel Park, whose video efforts and outreach to the Korean-American community were particularly important.  We also learn the importance of the role of key volunteers like Mary Detwiler and Barbara Kreykenbohm, who I can assure were absolutely key in integrating the hundreds of volunteers who passed through headquarters.  They, like many others who appear in the book, willingly shared key emails they had written, as one will see when examining the detail Biliography, which covers 10 pages of material, including publicly published items, blogs that were relevant in describing the various campaigns, and numerous personal communications.

I have already quoted the final paragraph of the book.  Let me quote one additional paragraph from that final chapter, because I think it provides some illumination to the perceptions of the authors at the time the book was written:

Despite the disillusionment and frustration with campaign politics, numerous campaign insiders and netroots activists who we interviewed while researching this book were unanimous in their view that something significant changed between 2000 and 2007 in the way Americans elected their leaders. Opinion differed with regard to exactly what that change constituted and what it portended, however. Political insiders believed that traditional grassroots activists and their technologically savvy, snarky, netroots cousins had transformed the way voters gathered information about issues and candidates, as well as they way they communicated with one another and with the candidates.  Also changed was the way contributors gave - and campaign collected - the money needed to run for office.  But how well integrated with the political system the netroots were, or could be, remained uncertain as of late 2007.

I would posit that the final sentence of the paragraph just quoted is still accurate - it is an issue that is still up in the air.  Clearly we can look back, especially at the Webb for Senate campaign, and see successes of the netroots:  $4.2 million - 50% - of Webb's funds were raised online and IM was used to communicate with the press.  Both the Dean and Clark campaigns successfully used Meet-Up to organize volunteers who had not previously been very active in campaigns.  we can also see people who have developed careers that span multiple campaigns.  For example, we see Tim Tagaris not only in the Paul Hackett campaign in 2005, but in the Ned Lamont campaign in 2006 (later he would lead the internet efforts of the Dodd for President campaign).  We see the role of national blogs and bloggers like Daily Kos (Markos), MYDD (Jerome) and other major names like Chris Bower and Matt Stoller.  We also are provided a good understanding of the role of local blogs and netroots efforts especially in Texas and Virginia.  Yet despite some important successes, it is also clear that the relationship between netroots and political professionals has not been completely resolved.  We can see this by observing how the Obama campaign is in many ways a traditional top-down structure (as contrasted with the Webb campaign which could not have succeeded without allowing a great deal of freedom at the lower level, which Webb himself encouraged in a famous set of remarks to staff and volunteer where he referenced the Battle of Kings Mountain in which 4 of his ancestors had fought).  The Obama campaign has demonstrated the ability of a campaign to do massive fundraising online, and certainly has demonstrated its willing to use things like social networking sites as an additional and important way of expanding a campaign's ability to expand its reach.  Here I should note that Markos and Jerome both argued in 2006 that such social networking sites were going to become increasingly important for campaign, and I remember them emphasizing this in their appearance at Politics & Prose in Washington, DC, the first stop on the tour for Crashing the Gates.

We may not YET know how the long-term will play out, although clearly the netroots is going to continue to play a role, especially in Democratic and progressive political endeavors.  It certainly helps to understand how we got to where we are now, even if we may feel frustrated that those of us active in the netroots do not always seem to have the impact on either politics or policy that we think should be our due.  It is quite helpful to review the history of how we got to where we are now, to understand the conflicts as they have played out over time, to learn from both our successes and our failures.  I can think of nothing better to assist with this process than to read this book.

Peace.

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