I’d like to do a little project here. I don’t know how many members here are supporters of Russ Feingold for the Presidency of the United States, but my guess is that he has more support than any other likely candidates. He certainly has my support. I’d like everyone to read this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel piece. Here’s the intro:
When Gallup polled Democratic voters this month on the party’s 2008 hopefuls, it didn’t even offer Russ Feingold as a choice.
But in one corner of the Democratic universe – the readers of liberal Web logs – the Wisconsin senator has emerged as a political favorite.
In an online poll last month on the nation’s most widely read liberal blog (DailyKos.com), Feingold led the Democratic presidential field, picked by 30% of the 11,000-plus people who visited the Web site and voted.
“He definitely is the most popular Democrat among the ‘netroots,’ ” said liberal blogger Chris Bowers, referring to activists in the party who engage in online politics.
And here is another snippet:
“They’re pulling Democrats to the left,” said Patrick Ruffini, a onetime conservative blogger who now heads up Internet campaign efforts for the Republican National Committee.
GOP spokeswoman Anne Marie Hauser said:
“It’s not surprising that Russ Feingold is a popular figure in a far-left subsection of the online community. But after Howard Dean’s blogosphere popularity turned into catastrophic collapse, the question remains whether Democrats can translate blogger support into broad appeal to win elections.”
Darr, of George Washington University, said that if “you think of these blogs as little online tribes of like-minded people . . . they can feed off each other. So I think the blog activity is going to drive each party more toward its ideological extreme.”
It might be true that the left-wing blogosphere is ideologically extreme. I don’t like the adjective ‘extreme’ but we are extremely well informed. So, let’s explain why we support Russ Feingold. We may not all think he is the best choice to be the Democratic nominee, but I bet virtually all of us admire his efforts.
What is it about Russ that we see and admire and why would we like to pull the party towards Russ’s way of thinking.
Put your thoughts in the comments section and then we’ll send it along to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and see if they’ll report on it.
