It’s always amusing to see how the mainstream media covers the blogosphere. Perry Bacon Jr. of Time writes about a new creature on Capitol Hill: the Internet outreach specialist. I know these guys (and so far, in my experience, they are all guys). They send me a steady stream of email all day long. Most of it is vaguely spamlike, but some of it is very useful. I’m often pleased to get advanced notice that Sens. Byrd or Feingold are about to take to the floor to excoriate the Bush administration, or that John Conyers is releasing another damning press release. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Washington politicians make an effort to buddy up to the bigger blogs in order to curry favor and deflect criticism. Frankly, even though it’s flattering, I don’t give a damn unless I see them doing what I want. Bacon recounts the amusing efforts of Nancy Pelosi to get in good at Daily Kos. In case you missed it, she attempted to take credit for getting tough with Republicans at the very time that the Dems were leaving Feingold high and dry on the censor issue. It didn’t go well.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is one of the many Washington politicians trying to the adapt to the world of blogs. Last month, she went on the liberal blog Daily Kos to tell readers about her resolution calling for congressional investigations into GOP lawmakers’ connections with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The liberal blogs love politicians like Pelosi who are feisty and aggressive, so the visit to Daily Kos, which gets more than 500,000 a visitors day, seemed likely to win her new fans.
But blogs also prefer their guests to engage in conversations. So when Pelosi posted on Daily Kos and then didn’t respond to any of the hundreds of comments users made in response — instead returning to her day job of leading the 201 Democrats in House — one Daily Kos user accused her of “hit and run diaries,” while another griped: “Daily Kos is not your personal press release piggybank.” The next day, she returned to the blog to try to explain herself. “I don’t have the kind of schedule that allows me to respond to every comment,” Pelosi wrote, “but I will a delegate a staffer on my future posts to answer your questions.”
She never responded to my irritated post in that thread. It’s not surprising that politicians have a little difficulty adjusting to interaction with the blogosphere. We are not an audience that responds to empty platitudes and we can’t be spun. You don’t come to Daily Kos to tell us that “The Gloves are Off” at the same time that the place is in an uproar about Democratic silence over the utter destruction of our fourth amendment rights. I mean, that is really dumb. And the Pelosis of the world are starting to learn.
The politicians hope that by developing a close relationship with like-minded blogs, the bloggers will feel more like part of the team and will temper their criticism. But even friendly blogs aren’t easy to satisfy — as Pelosi found out after her Daily Kos encounter. Democratic aides complain that Matt Stoller, a blogger for mydd.com, another popular liberal site, never seems satisfied Democrats are being tough enough. “I don’t think we’re well-liked necessarily,” Stoller said. Bloggers often complain, moreover, about being spoon-fed information they could just as easily get on a senator’s website.
This is almost comical. Anonymous staffers are complaining about Stoller being hard to satisfy. They should try satisfying me. They haven’t come close in five years. The last thing I saw that really impressed me was the defection of Jim Jeffords in 2001 (although the successful defeat of Bush’s social security plan and the blocking of John Bolton’s nomination satisfied me).
The Democrats are just starting to get it. The left-wing blogosphere is made up of little people. We aren’t CEO’s. We generally are not in the highest tax brackets, although we are not poor. We have no vested interest in an enormous military budget or a huge military footprint in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. We want policies that put people first, not corporate access to markets and windfall profits. We want health care and quality education for all Americans. We’re not radical. We’re just far to the left of DLC Democrats that are most concerned about protecting the status quo, attracting a decent share of corporate donations, and maintaining our gargantuan military budget and status as the sole global superpower. We want sensible policies based on scientific inquiry and informed compromise. We want the government to assure that we have clean air and water and safe food and medicine. And we have the potential to fund candidates that are willing to respond to our wishes, rather than respond to their traditional masters.
The Democrats are either going to really embrace a more progressive platform, or they are going to find the left-wing blogosphere is just as dogged a critic of the Democrats in power as we were of the Republicans. They’ll find us organizing to run and fund primary challengers that pledge to forego corporate donations, PAC’s and bundling. Right now, they think we are useful, but kind of a nuisance. They want to befriend us, but they are wary. The most important thing is, they need to realize that we are not out of the mainstream of the general public on the issues. If you don’t believe us, look at the polls on issue after issue. What we are, is out of the mainstream of the contrived political debate that is dramatically shifted to the right and narrowed by the ridiculously conservative presentation of the news by the networks, cable news, and major editorial boards in this country. We know that we need to pay for progressive politics or we won’t get progressive politics. But before we open our wallets, we need to see politicians that are standing up for us and pushing the types of policies that most Americans say they support.
Russ Feingold understands this. Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, do not. People-powered politics is not just about electing Democrats. It’s about electing a different kind of Democrat. And we know that Washington D.C. is not ready to make that change.
In the future, Democrats will not authorize unnecessary wars, pass bankruptcy bills, and watch quietly while Quaker groups are spied on and the NSA strips us of our constitutional rights. If they do, they’ll find themselves just as unpopular in the blogosphere tomorrow as George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman are today. They say we are hard to satisfy. How do they know? They haven’t even tried.