As a pretty strong supporter of Sanders, I was more than aware of the way the blogs (including this one) ignored Bernie until they couldn’t, and then were absurdly patronizing once they HAD to actually write about him.
I was part of a group at DKOS of longstanding members who were happy when Caucus99 and the reddit Sanders sites became active.
And how sad it has become. Caucus99 has descended into posting articles from Peggy Noonan. The Reddit page is full of conspiracy nonsense.
The writer of the daily Sanders pieces has developed his own cite, and it is very good.
Here:
http://theprogressivewing.com/
Blogs were never very important to Sanders people who long ago left – if they were ever there – for Facebook groups.
Still, with one exception, the Sanders campaign hasn’t left a serious blog presence. Perhaps that is because places like The Nation stepped in early to fill the void, and there was really no need.
But is sad to see where some of the best people I know in blogsphere have landed.
“Longstanding members” of dKos should have left long ago. Or…gotten kicked off by the Little King for posting the truth about his site.
AG
Oh dear — the Sanders campaign hasn’t left a serious blog presence. Guess the campaign forgot to put that on its to-do-list.
Neither did the Dean, Kerry, and Hillary ’08 campaigns. Are we sure that blogs that preexisted the ’04 election (ie – dKos) haven’t been securing funding in some way from the Democratic party organizations and campaigns all along? (Eschaton is one of the few ones that was up and running by ’02 and has remained left-wing and not a site for intense electioneering that is still going. It’s also still running on practically primitive software (not sure when the comment response feature was added, but it was really late in the game. Long after many like me gave up reading the comments.) How many of those blogs tolerated authentic critiques of Obama after the ’08 election?
After a devastating loss, particularly when cheating contributed to it, has regrouping ever happened before? (Yeah, Hillary, but it took a hell of a lot of money, near 100% institutional support, and years in the planning to get that together and she still struggled to beat a 74 year old Democratic Socialist that had no name ID to her 100% name ID.) Gore (who did authentically win in ’00) was made to disappear as quickly as candidates that lost in landslide elections. Curious.
So far “The Progressive Wing” is duller than dishwater. Surprising because Lieper Destin provided worthy reads at dKos. But here’s the deal, political blogs not owned/managed by someone that is not able to devote more than 50% of his/her weekly workload have a short shelf life and never reach that critical mass of readers/contributors and attention from those willing and able to supply serious funding dollars.
CREW that has done good work over the years is now under the David Brock organization umbrella. Therefore, no longer trustworthy. “Common Dreams” has lost some large funding source(s). “The Daily Beast” is publishing lies about certain individuals supporting Trump when they are fully on record as absolutely not supporting Trump*, along with outing gay Olympic athletes in Rio through undercover sting type “journalism” (it was pulled after
complaints).
*Glenn Greenwald, April 29, 2016:
Your posting (merely a comment, not worthy of being considered a diary) is for shit.
fine.
I’d rec that except for your last sentence. Re-think it, please.
Some of us are unimpressed by Glenn Greenwald. I consider him one of those people who confuses mastery of political invective with having something important to say. YMMV.
One of the most amusing phenomena of the Obama years was how Glenn Greenwald suddenly became anathema to Democrats.
It seems he never got the message that you were only supposed to condemn murderous abuses of imperial power when the Other Guys were doing it.
You write:
I am sure that they were complicit in one way or another. Kos let transparently false posters remain…posting rooms I called them, groups of people churning out boilerplate centrist DemRat bullshit…and banished anyone who was making strong sense against the centrist Dem thing.
Tit for tat, one way or another. Under the table? Probably. Position in the so-called “progressive” DemRat revolving door? Bet on it.
There’s gold in them thar hills…
Bet on that as well.
AG
Thanks for the link.
some good people totally lost their minds over this primary. c99 is a sad place, although joe’s Evening Blues is a really excellent news roundup.
You do know the approach of Prof. Cass Sunstein, hired by the Obama Administration to convince the populace of policy proposals.
You inject conspiracy vonsense by the opposition groups to diffuse their arguments. The professor has written abundantly about his thesis and even earned some modest bucks doing it. The readers can’t determine reality from fiction … just like smoke and mirrors.
It seems for quite some time that Samantha Power has been her husband’s master student.
By taking the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 apart, the State Department can now direct misinformation to a domestic audience.
When I did early drive-bys at several “higher tier blogs”, I noticed a preference for HRC from the beginning. I think many young Bernie supporters were communicating in other ways and not as likely to read progressive blogs, whose average age is probably 40. Older Bernie supporters were “frozen out” and coped in other ways. Some Bernie supporters may not have had time to spend on blogs, since they were probably working 2 jobs to stay afloat in this economy. These conditions may help to explain why there was and is no serious Sanders blog presence. The funny thing about all this is that since Sanders was basically ignored or villified on some of these blogs, his supporters won’t be reading them and will not likely be influenced by them to support HRC.
There was a song by Dead Kennedys that I really liked back when I was a student activist – this dates me considerably – called “Do the Slag” that seems apt about now. That song was really more aimed at the punk scene of the mid-1980s (which was essentially imploding) where we’ll just say I endured too many conversations about who was more punk than whom. It got dumb. As did the conversation in the activist circles of the time – the sectarianism is bad now, but really is about the same as it was then. For those who don’t give a fuck about which tribe is purer and who simply want to get stuff done, it is enormously frustrating. No blogs in my day, but saw enough ‘zines come and go. Also saw enough people just get frustrated and walk after a while. Eventually I became one of them.
My own blog presence has been quite limited this past year and is about to get extremely limited again (gotta pay those bills), but I did periodically make statements – probably to no avail – that turning off the Sanders supporters was not going to do HRC any favors. Given her opponents (I’m including the third party candidates), it may end up not mattering much in November. That’s just dumb luck though. I’d rather reach out to potential allies and make them truly welcome and maybe try a little listening. In the process it is wise to assure those younger and perhaps less jaded that the real process of political activism and politics is messy. It’s full of compromise and dealing with half truths and damn lies. But if you patiently wade your way through, you get stuff done.
The only significant activist work that I still feel proud of was associated with an anti-Apartheid organization that was truly a coalition of Democratic student activists, anarchopunks, Bolshies (that’s where I would have fit in), members of our campus MEChA organization, our Black Student Union, etc. It was a motley group, but we were able to set aside ideological differences, agree on some tactics, and occasionally ended a semester with something to show for it. Never could get the admin to divest holdings in companies with stock in South Africa, but did actually prevent a neo-nazi from broadcasting from the campus facilities. Those sorts of political alignments of necessity don’t last, but some good can come of it. Compromise and cooperation. A good dose of moderation. Then again, I’m pretty jaded.
The Facebook presence for the Bernie Sanders supporters may not be much better. The one I was on in my local community went south once it became obvious that Bernie Sanders was not going to be the nominee. Personally, I was surprised at how well he did – someone even remotely close to my ideological views should never have gone that far or had much if any influence on a party platform. And yet, there is something really cool that can be built upon if those of us who supported the campaign keep our cool and start looking at the next several electoral cycles – up and down the ballot.
Been doing that for half a century. Had enough. I’m throwing in the towel. Maybe my grandson’s will take up arms like my great-grandfather did when the Italian legislature reneged on Garibaldi’s promises. Of course, that didn’t do him much good. He would up here so his family could continue being serfs. How true his favorite expression “Stupid Americans!”
Well, the problems aren’t going anywhere. probably taking every one some time to figure out what is most constructive, also see what Sanders is doing. thanks for link, very neat logo