I teach AP US Government. On the listserv of teachers of AP Gov, there was a recent mention of Netroots, more of an inquiry in light of the fact that someone had read a news piece. As a participant, I offered to provide some information. I received strong encouragement to do so. What is below the fold is what I just posted to the list.
I know it is at best a partial picture, anecdotal and incomplete. But I hope it gives some sense both the the growing influece of netroots, of the larger progressive blogging movemenbt (dailykos, mydd, and other sites), and at how it is beginning to affect our political processes.
I will be happy to listen to criticisms and suggestions for additional information to be passed on. This was all I could squeeze in right now.
Netroots -- general and specific
As I noted in a previous message, I was a participant in the recently completed Yearlykos convention. I have been an active participant in electronic communications for several years, in various listservs and bulletin boards on educational issues at least as far back as 2000. In what is now known as blogging I began my participation on the Dean blog in the summer of 2003, and began my participation at http://www.dailykos.com - which is the most widely read political blog (and is clearly Democratic in its politics, with a leaning towards the progressive/liberal perspective) in December of 2003. From that my participation electronically has spread. A fair number of the diaries I post at dailykos make it to the recommend box which keeps them visible for a while (there are several hundred diaries a day, and unless recommended scroll out of view after a while). I also have the ability to "front-page" at several other liberal blogs, www.myleftwing.org ad www.raisingkaine.com -- the latter is an example of the influence of netroots, to which I promise to return.
First, some general comments about Netroots. The term usually means bottom up efforts at political organizing and support, although there are individual bloggers and blogs that are clearly influential and whose endorsement can mean quite a bit more. This is far more the case on the left of the political spectrum, as blogs on the right tend not to get as involved at this level - they are neither as involved in particular campaigns nor in fundraising. In a sense the blogs on the left have developed some of the influence that TalkRadio has had on the right, although no single blogger has the reach of someone like Limbaugh or Hannity.
Much of the support for the Dean campaign was developed electronically, starting with using Meetups as a way of coming together. The Dean campaign did have a website with a blog, and with links for a lot of grassroots organizations that were not officially connected with nor coordinated with the campaign (important given FEC rules about in-kind contributions). As an example, I was national co-chair of an effort to organize educators for Dean and we got hundreds signed up, something potentially useful had the campaign not imploded in Iowa. Both Mydd and dailykos were founded by people actively supporting Dean (although both existed well before Dean showed any interest in running for President), but neither was specifically Dean site -- in the case of dailykos we used to have serious wars between Clark and Dean supporters.
Let me digress to Wes Clark for a moment. In a sense he was drafted into running for president because of an active effort by bloggers to recruit him into running. No doubt there were major figures (including perhaps the Clintons) who were encouraging him to get into the race, perhaps as a means of blocking Dean. But the early enthusiasm came from what we can call the netroots, people active electronically who used their skills and connections to build support for the candidacy.
Many people are aware of how Dean was able to use the internet as a means of raising money, a sufficient amount that enabled him to opt out of matching funds, which forced Kerry to do likewise, and which had Kerry not done he would have been clobbered by the Bush money effort (also opted out) and the 5-week delay between the conventions. That is one part of how the netroots have had an effect. Another is on issues -- the ability to quickly respond to attacks and charges with factual information. Many who are politically involved electronically have expertise in certain areas, and almost all of us know how to search for information. One thing that has been surprising is how often ordinary bloggers are able to come up with information that seems to elude the regular media organization, but which should be part of their coverage. Here I note as a side bar that the exposure of "Jeff Gannon" the White House "correspondent" for a right wing organization to whom Scott McClelland regularly turned was really Jim Guckert, who advertised his services electronically as a gay escort including pictures of full frontal nudity), and who seems to have had remarkable access to the White House. This was the result of a group of people spread around the country who coordinated their efforts, and who have continued their efforts on other subjects as E Pluribus Media. In a similar light we should note the rapid response of Conservative bloggers to the documents presented on 60 Minutes about Bush's military service (although I remind people that one part of the followup with the former secretary was that while she didn't type THOSE documents she did type similar documents covering the same subject matter).
In the past few years people organizing and coming together electronically have had an influence on the electoral process. Many in the so-called main-stream media have attempted to dismiss the actions claiming there have been no successes. Might I remind people that Barack Obama was a distinct underdog in the IL primary for Senate until his cause was adopted by the blogging community, at dailykos to be sure, but with local bloggers in IL as well. And while Paul Hackett lost the special election in OH-2, he came far closer than anyone had predicted, precisely because of his willingness to engage the blogging community. He is an example of a politician who has come onto the websites (in this dailykos) to "live-blog" -- to post and interchange with the blogging community in real-time. That not only generates money, it generates enthusiasm and sometimes on the ground physical support.
Let me see if I can explain about Yearlykos, since most of the press coverage really doesn't get it, and in some case (Ryan Lizza in The New Republic comes to mind immediately) what has been written is so wrong in so many ways. First, dailykos as a website was founded by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, of Greek background who had an early childhood in the turmoil of El Salvador, who is a US military veteran, who now has several degrees and has been a political consultant, but now focuses on his blog and the book he co-authored with Jerome Armstrong, "Crashing the Gate". Jerome is his former business partner and also the founder of Mydd, the godfather of liberal blogsites. Dailykos is now 4 years old, and has over 90,000 registered members (my number is 4,334). Early on Markos made the decision not only to allow comments, but to provide a diary provision which enable members to post their own pieces and receive comments on them. These can be recommended by readers which keeps them visible, and Markos and others he designate can move some diaries to the main front-page (I have had this happen a couple of times). It is this decision that built the vibrancy of the community, because it allowed far broader participation. There were people who had particular expertise or insight to offer to the broader community: Jerome a Paris on energy, Bonddad and Stirling Newberry on economics, Darksyde on Science, and some guy named teacherken on education. There were occasional local gatherings of people who participated -- the first in the DC area was organized by a teacher named Maura in VA, and we have had two regional ones on the Saturday before Memorial Day the past two years organized by Carnacki. I have driven to W Va and met with other participants to hear RenaRF and her husband and their friends perform in a bar. We might encounter one another at other events -- Drinking Liberally get-togethers (which in DC often include major speakers). Democracy for America (offshoot of the Dean campaign an run by his brother Jim) events, or even regular party events. In some cases we knew people's real names (I have not been anonymous) and in other cases we didn't.
We began to get noticed by politicians, and not just for money. I was one of several educational bloggers contacted on behalf of Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa, who had an organization devoted to helping Democrats get (re-)elected as governors, and for which he thought education was an important issue. it started with a conference call, broadened into an exchange of blog posts, both at HeartlandPac.org (his site) and at dailykos, led to a face to face meeting to discuss education, and has grown into a relationship of mutual respect, even though I am not endorsing him (or anyone else) for president at this point. As a result, I was able to get him to participate in a panel I ran about education at Yearlykos.
Markos has little to do with Yearlykos except lend his name and give it his blessing. As is typical of the netroots, it started with a group of bloggers contacting one another and wondering how they could bring a large group of us together to meet one another. Similar offline contacts had led to more than few off-shoots of dailykos -- let me list some of these. There is Streetprophets organized by PastorDan, for those progressives who want to explore the nexus of spiritual issues and political issues; there is BoomanTribune and its secondary offshoot European Tribune; there is MyLeftWing organized by the energetic and inimitable MaryScot O'Connor; and there is TheNextHurrah, whose various gifted bloggers (emptywheel, Kagro X; DHin MI, etc.) have explored in depth issues such as impeachment, the outing of Valerie Plame, the risks posed by avian flu, and so on.
As it happens the key person in advancing the idea of Yearlykos was a teacher, Gina Cooper, from TN. She and her husband relocated to N California, she gave up more than 18 months of her life and helped move this forward. NONE of those who put this together were paid, they were all volunteers -- GIna, Nolan Treadway, Fabooj, Pontificator, and so many others. They thought big -- and got a hotel convention center that was not too expensive, arranged for reduced rate airfares, got sponsors to help keep the costs down, got people to organize panel discussions, and got major politicians to sign on. We were at the Riviera in Las Vegas from Thursday through Sunday. Although many volunteers were arriving several days earlier. We were prepared for up to 1,500 attendees. We had over 1,000 bloggers, and 150 accredited press (some of whom were blog-press), including many from major publications. At different times I spoke with Dan Balz of the Washington Post, Roger Simon (I think Bloomberg), Ron Brownstein (LA Times). Jeff Zeleny (Chicago Tribune, whose story on Vilsack and me was nationally syndicated), Ana Marie Cox of Time (formerly known as the blogger Wonkette), a woman from Le Monde (remember, we did have Jerome from Paris), Byron York of National Review, Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard, and Garance Franke-Ruta of American Prospect. There were many other journalists there -- Adam Nagourney and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and Dan Froomkin of Washington Post Online come to mind.
One reason they were there is that many mainstream politicians bought into it. Early on Mark Warner, who is now being advised in part by Jerome Armstrong, agreed to come and speak. Then Harry Reid agreed to give the keynote on Saturday night since we were in his state. Barbara Boxer came and spoke. Wes Clark participated in the Science Panel, Bill Richardson in the Energy Panel, and Tom Vilsack in the Education panel as noted. Rep Brad Miller and Nancy Pelosi were supposed to participate on Friday but had to cancel due to the votes in the House. And many candidates for office, especially for the House, showed up. One candidate is a specific example of Netroots. NyBri had been one of the participants in the E Pluribus Media effort. That led him to decide that he needed to be more active, and now Brian Keeler is running for the New York State Senate. We have other members of our dailykos community who were bloggers before they decided to run for office or for leadership in political organizations. Another example of this is Chris Bowers of Mydd who was just elected to the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee from his neighborhood in Pennsylvania. We also just saw a major involvement of netroots people at the Texas State Democratic convention, so that while they did not take control, they will now be able to exert much more influence on the direction of the state party.
Yearlykos got far more coverage and publicity that might have been expected. Besides the already mentioned media coverage, there was live coverage by CSpan of some events, and streaming by Air America of most of the events. We are publishing an e-book of a number of key participants as a fundraiser (one of many done to keep the cost of attending reasonable).
What this process represents is a drawing back into political activity of a number of gifted and energetic people who had not been participating that much in the political processes, but who have now been moved -- out of anger and frustration or because they have been inspired by particular individuals - to try to make a difference politically. Their focus might be local,might be statewide, might be national. There have been previous recent successes. Thus a number of people who had been active in the Dean campaign got elected to the Tucson city council last fall, including for example an old acquaintance of mine named Nina Trasoff.
Those of us who came together in Las Vegas are already talking about doing it again next year. Many unable to make it this time are already planning to participate next year. For me I have had many followup emails from those who were there, and others who have read news stories or blog postings about the convention. I have formed many connections that are important, not only with other bloggers, but with media people, and with those running for office around the country. I am now helping with educational policy a number of candidates from Washington State and California to New York State and Pennsylvania.
And I have participated in another netroots effort worth describing. We have just had a Senate primary in Virginia, which Jim Webb won. His even being in the race is an example of the effect of netroots. Most name Virginia Democrats had declined to make a race against George Allen. Many had good reasons. Webb had been mentioned, but by Christmas had largely made up his mind not to get into the race. The only one getting in, Harris Miller, had lost a primary for Congress in 1984, had served as a local party official and done a lot of fundraising, and as a personally wealthy individual with good connections to high tech (he was President and chief lobbyist of ITAA, the Information Technology Association of America) it was believed he could raise enough money to be semi-competitive. But many of us did not think he could win, even though the race was clearly winnable: Allen had won the governor's race comfortably in 1993, but his opponent ran perhaps the worst state-wide campaign in recent Virginia history, and while he had defeated incumbent Chuck Robb in 2000 for the Senate, Chuck had not wanted to run again (the party had no one else), did not really campaign until the last 3 weeks, and was outspent 10 million to 6.6 million. While Allen had won by 4.3%, it was at the same time Bush carried the state by about 8%.
I was one of of number of people trying to persuade Webb to run, although my own part was minor - blogging about the layout of the race and sending him one email. Others actually visited him. Still he didn't get in and Miller did. Then the people associated with one Virginia blog www.raisingkaine.com took an an initiative. They set up a web site to get people to commit to supporting Webb and promising to contribute. They got something around 1,000 people to make that commitment. Finally, towards the end of February, Webb decided to come into the race.
I will not revisit all the details of the primary contest. Let's limit it to the fact that it got unnecessarily nasty. Miller dumped almost a million of his own money into the race, outspending Jim Webb by better than 3-1. And yet statewide he lost by around 7%. We had a much heavier turnout in Northern Virginia than in the rest of the state, with Webb carrying all the local jurisdictions, sometimes with as much as 70% of the vote. This is the most wired part of the state, the place with the heaviest concentration of bloggers. We not only blogged, we organized ourselves. At one event Webb talked about the revolutionary war battle of King's Mountain, where the over the mountain boys (including a number of his Scots-Irish ancestors about whom he writes in his book "Born Fighting") were told to be there own offices. We had some organization from headquarters, but a lot of the outreach activity was on our own. And we provided much of the manpower for phonebanking, for envelope stuffing, for handing out literature at Metro stops, and so on. At his victory party, Jim acknowledged the role that bloggers had played getting him into the race, and in helping him win it.
This is now a very long message. I have tried to give those of you on the AP Government list a sense of what netroots means. I have not tried to provide you with an analysis, but rather a description, perhaps far too anecdotal, but I know of no other way of communicating. The phenomenon is real, and my portrayal is of necessity incomplete. But it should give you a flavor of how politics might be changing.
There are those who don't like this phenomenon. Clearly there are long-time political operatives and consultants who don't like the fact that the netroots might be changing the influence they have on the process. Clearly there are media figures who do not feel comfortable with the role we play in the distribution of information which diminishes somewhat their role as the gatekeepers of political information.
But we are only part of the story. Other aspects of how things are changing include podcasting, which people like Wes Clark now recognize as an important way of communicating. Viral distribution by posting video on places like Youtube and sending out links makes visual information more readily available on a national basis. We do not know to what all this will lead, but as teachers of Government I think it incumbent upon us to attempt to understand what we can, because it will in some fashion change how our politics are done.
teacherken aka Kenneth Bernstein
Eleanor Roosevelt High School
Greenbelt MD
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