(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)
The blogosphere has gained influence exponentially since its inception. This has confounded the mainstream media, which has seen blogs like Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo surpass readership of so-called ‘papers of record’ such as the New York Times. Perhaps it’s due to the threat they pose to their business that they continue to this day to brand us as nothing more than a bunch of angry, leftist, anti-war bloggers who are the liberal equivalent of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, or other conservative bombthrowers. The fact is, though, that the top liberal blogs are hardly a bunch of treehugging, pot-smoking hippies (okay, some of you may be). Our lack of any sort of cohesive ideological goal – aside from withdrawing from Iraq as timely as possible – has worked to our benefit (whereas our party is mercilessly panned by the media and the right wing for being a party without ideas, even though most of the policies that affect our everyday lives are a direct result of Democratic measures.
In this piece at The Nation (and cross-posted at Huffington Post), former Kerry staffer Ari Melber writes a brilliant piece explaining the inner workings of the blogosphere by examining the seemingly ideological contradiction of being critical of Joe Lieberman’s Democratic loyalties while supporting a former Reagan appointee, Jim Webb, as the Virginia candidate for Senate.
As progressive bloggers focus on ousting Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman from office for his alleged disloyalty to Democrats, in Virginia, another candidate who embodied the Republican cause has infiltrated the Democratic Party. But ironically, the bloggers support this former Reagan official.
Jim Webb, a Vietnam combat veteran who served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, is not only the new darling of the national netroots in his challenge to Republican incumbent George Allen; he was recruited to run for office by Internet activists. Webb, an iconoclastic, progun, prochoice, antiwar, libertarian, economic populist from a rural military family, recently declared his membership in the Democratic Party. In a summer campaign season punctuated by talk of purges and ideological purity, online enthusiasm for Webb’s candidacy tells a different story about blog activism, raising fundamental questions about the netroots’ emerging electoral strategy.
In the current frame that the MSM sets the blogosphere within, this would confound them. After all, Lieberman has never been a part of the Republican Party (officially), while Webb served in the administration of Ronald Reagan, someone who garners little love from the left, and by association, the blogosphere. Even this claim could be disputed, though. If one examines their economic policy, one can argue that Webb’s economic populism is more in line with traditional Democratic Party values than Lieberman’s corporate-friendly agenda that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) espouses. On foreign policy, Lieberman is a neoconservative through and through, as evidenced by his co-chairmanship on the resurrected Committee on the Present Danger; Webb argues for withdrawing from Iraq and having a more focused foreign policy. The media will never see past that, though; they only see things in terms of parties and see that Lieberman votes 90 percent of the time with the Democratic Party (a highly, if inaccurate, subjective measure, to be sure), while Webb was a Republican in the conservative ascent to power during the Reagan years.
The GOP obviously thinks that framing the blogosphere as the far left, on par with MoveOn.org and other easily-referenced ‘radical liberals’ will work:
After Webb entered the race, he shot up the list for total netroots donors through ActBlue.com (ranking fifth at this writing). The Webb campaign clearly appreciated Feld’s initiative and results–he was hired this month as netroots coordinator. Virginia Republicans counter that Webb’s relationship with the netroots is a liability. Allen Campaign spokesman Bill Bozin told me, “Liberal blogs like Daily Kos are in the same extreme category as MoveOn.org. They’re completely out of the American mainstream, and if Jim Webb wants to continue cozying up to the far left, our campaign welcomes it.” (The Allen campaign recently hired an e-campaign manager, Philip Guthrie, to lead its Internet outreach.)
Head over to Raising Kaine, the Virginia blog prominently referenced by Melber, along with the site’s founder, Kossack, and person most responsible for drafting Webb, Lowell Feld, and you won’t see too much ‘out of touch’ people there. The blogosphere is filled with people who are acutely aware of their surroundings and what it takes to win races. It’s not the same old paradigm, where a Democratic candidate absorbs the shots from the other side and is largely defanged. Remember Steve Jarding’s badass response to the Allen campaign when they tried to make flag burning and other irrelevant issues important? Indeed, it’s not about ideology; it’s about reforming the Democratic Party into a combative force that will stand up to the GOP and their right-wing lackeys when they spout one of their many falsehoods and half-truths.
Even supposed Democrats don’t even know what to think of the blogosphere. They look at the issue in the same light as the GOP, unable to understand that the blogs are utilizing a new political model.
Webb and Lieberman are different in many ways, but it is their positions on the war that captivate people. Joe Eyer, the political director for Lieberman’s 2004 presidential campaign, says it “defies logic” for bloggers to tout a former Republican like Webb while savaging Lieberman’s Democratic credentials, and he believes the only explanation is the war. “[Bloggers say] they are bringing different perspectives to the table, but Webb proves there is a litmus test for their support,” he said. The punditocracy has also been castigated antiwar “litmus tests.” For example, the centrist Progressive Policy Institute’s Marshall Wittmann, a recovering Republican himself, recently derided top bloggers as “McGovernites with modems” who have “only one issue, the war.”
Perhaps they’d do best to check out the bimonthly straw polls over at Daily Kos. Mark Warner, someone who has an undecidedly unpleasant non-position on Iraq, is polling far ahead of John Kerry, who co-sponsored the resolution with Russ Feingold to leave Iraq within a year. It’s true that Feingold is at the top of the list, but it’s largely on the basis of other attributes: willingness to censure Bush over warrantless wiretapping, taking a principled stand against the Patriot Act, taking on campaign finance reform, and so on. Additionally, just because John Edwards has a similar position hasn’t vaulted him anywhere close to the 38% Feingold has garnered (although some think that the revamped primary schedule will help him greatly).
It is undeniable to say that Iraq isn’t a consequential issue in the blogosphere (or the rest of the country) – it is the biggest issue by far. However, Melber makes a point that the blogosphere is not one-dimensional:
Yet if netroots activists have a litmus test on the war, it is not rigorously applied. The netroots hold very favorable views of several incumbents and potential presidential candidates who either were for the war or still support it, according to a recent MyDD survey. Besides, antiwar candidates hold a view that is overwhelmingly supported not only on the left but across mainstream public opinion. A majority of Americans believe that it was a mistake to invade Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction and promote democracy and that the United States should end the occupation soon. That position may be politically potent, but popularity is not a litmus test.
[…]
The diverging paths of Jim Webb and Joe Lieberman suggest a netroots strategy that is driven as much by political pragmatism as ideological purity, where the Iraq War is critical but not paramount, and joining the party late is far more acceptable than leaving early. It also proves that if netroots Democrats care about one thing more than aggressive partisanship, it’s winning.
That is all one needs to know about the blogosphere. We may have our individual pet issues, and we definitely don’t agree on everything – just examine the highly flammable debates on the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah – but after being out of power for 6 years and watching the Republican Party do everything but literally destroy America, we want to win. There is no time for ideological purity tests; that can come if we ever consolidate our majorities to such a point in the future.
Even the mainstream media is beginning to learn for themselves that we aren’t that wild-eyed. It should have been evident after Yearly Kos, but they are slow learners. However, they seem to be understanding what the blogosphere is about, if this MSNBC article is any indication:
Those who see the Lieberman-Lamont contest as a liberal inquisition or a battle for the soul of the Democratic party tend to forget one thing: that outside of this particular race, the left-wing blogosphere this election cycle has often been more concerned about winning races against Republicans than battling over ideology — which perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given that Democrats don’t control either chamber of Congress and haven’t won the last two presidential elections.
“There’s more pragmatism among the bloggers than they get credit for,” says Chuck Todd, editor-in-chief of The Hotline, a nonpartisan political newsletter.
[…]
Case in point: the much-hyped Senate race in Pennsylvania, where liberals have embraced Democrat Bob Casey, despite his conservative views on abortion and gun rights. The reason why is because Casey has a very good chance of defeating an archenemy to liberals, conservative Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. “Like it or not, Casey has the clearest path to victory of any Dem Senate challenger this cycle,” wrote liberal blogger and founder of the Daily Kos blog, Markos Moulitsas, after Casey came out in support of then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. “We need this seat.”
Or take the Virginia’s Senate race, where Moulitsas and other liberal bloggers supported the Democratic primary campaign of former Reagan Navy Secretary James Webb. While Webb has vocally opposed the Iraq war (and used his military credentials to bolster his argument), he’s also a former Republican who backed President Bush and U.S. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., in 2000 — hardly your typical Democrat. But bloggers, and also the Democratic establishment, saw Webb as the best chance to defeat the incumbent Allen in the fall.
And then there is Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, widely regarded as the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, whose re-election campaign is running a television ad that features President Bush praising him. The left hasn’t laid a finger on the Nebraska Democrat.
Kudos to Alex Isenstadt, who wrote this article. If the mainstream media can comprehend what we are about, the old frame of the blogosphere as a bunch of people on the fringe will dissipate rapidly. Perhaps they realized after the vicious smackdown that The New Republic deserved when it tried to discredit Kos, Jerome Armstrong, and the entire blogosphere, that we are a force to be reckoned with. Whatever the impetus may be, it’s a welcome one. Because once they open their eyes, it’s not so hard to see why we are largely supportive of Jim Webb but so disdainful of Joe Lieberman.