From zero to hybris in 10 seconds?

Is the liberal blogosphere really “changing the face of the Democratic party”? Or is it more of the same? How the “netroots” could do it better.

Political blogs have been around for quite some time now, and some of them have developed a considerable readership and influence, even if they still fall short of the established media (huffingtonpost.com or dailykos.com, the biggest liberal blogs, are still trailing the websites of traditional media like nytimes.com or cnn.com).

Big Ambitions
Some of the most prominent figures of the liberal Blogosphere have turned into political celebrities, publishing books, delivering soundbites for newspapers and even advising potential presidential hopefuls like Mark Warner. The first-ever gathering of the Dailykos-blogger community, YearlyKos in Las Vegas, welcomed a number of high-profile Democrats (Mark Warner, Harry Reid, Wes Clark, to name a few), a sign perceived both by the bloggers and the media as finally being taken seriously.

On the commercial for Dailykos-founder Markos Zuniga’s book “Crashing the Gates”, a crowd of people are ropepulling with a donkey, not being able to pull him anywhere. Zuniga walks by them and kicks the donkey in the butt. It is pretty descriptive for the self-declared goal of this section of the liberal blogosphere of making the Democratic party change direction ("Changing the face of the Democratic Party"). But it also shows the growing confidence of the liberal Internet community.

Everbody is a political strategist
These days, DailyKos.com looks more like a online forum for wannabe-politicians than a discussion platform. Every day, latest polls of various races throughout the country are published and donations for supported races are collected.

The level of self-reference is astounding. Almost every day another comment of a politician about the liberal blogosphere is published; and those races deemed important by the blog are described as if Dailykos itself would be on the ballot. One of today’s entries predicts DailyKos to be as relevant as the NYTimes in five years’ time.

The Smell of Sweat and Blood
Some of the races are dealt with in an especially agressive way. DailyKos’ current arch-enemy is Joe Lieberman, Gore’s runningmate in 2000, described as “Bush’s favorite republican” for his pro-war voting record in the Senate. His opponent in the Democratic primaries, Ned Lamont, a businessman virtually unknown only a few months ago, may score up to 40%, according to recent polls. He is strongly supported by DailyKos and other blogs.

In this very martial setting, Ned Lamont’s own politics is less relevant than the fact that he might unseat Joe Lieberman, the current anti-christ of the liberal blogosphere. And even though it’s (unquestionably) important to send a strong anti-war message to Democratic politicians, this point tends to be already overshadowed by the fact that DailyKos sees Conneticut’s Democratic primaries in August as a payback-day for everything they hate about the Democrats in Congress right now. But revenge is, I think, seldom a healthy political strategy.

Will the netroots grow up?
The uniting factor for this part of the blogging community is hate for the government and Anti-war sentiments, but other traditionally left points of concern (like minimum wage, health care, labor rights) receive little attention. The reason is that the self-declared “netroots” are not connected to social movements like labor unions, and both their proponents and their audience is – that’s what has been argued – white middle class, which is traditionally more concerned with the war-issue than with social issues.

But also, the style of Blogs – it’s speed, the little attention span for articles – doesn’t allow much more than a sometimes too simplistic scheme of good-vs.-bad-guys.

Some of the groups that were the new kids on the playground in the presidential election 2004, eg. MoveOn.org and Howard Dean’s Democrats for America (DFA, formerly Dean for America) have grown up: they learned from their initial shortcomings, established real (offline) chapters and poll their members on candidates and policies to support. Last week’s YearlyKos convention aimed in the same direction, even featuring not-so-sexy issues like energy independence.

The stars of the netroots like Zuniga or Jerome Armstrong from MyDD.com are right in many aspects of their political focus, and I appreciate the efforts to get their feet on the ground and work on establishing lasting structures, which many deem (rightly, I think) as the key to electoral success (and even more important for social change in the long term).

More influence for the influencial?
The netroots like to see themselves as rebels. In many ways, though, the liberal netroots have a lot in common with the big-boy league of politics. The fixation on the big electoral politics in contrast to group- and issue-building is one.

Another is the following: one of the big standard themes of the blogosphere is how the Democrats disregard the ordinary people and how they should listen much closer to what they (meaning: the netroots) want. But this is problematic. In many respects, the outspoken, educated, liberal, middle-class, white group is the one group most listened to by the Democratic party. For working families, unions, african-americans, latinos and latinas that’s different. In fact, the blogosphere’s white and middle class constituency is demanding more influence although they already are the most influencial group around.

The netroots already feel the seduction of power, but they haven't made their homework yet. This smells a bit like hybris to me. It would be good for the netroots to connect their important anti-war-issue and their organizing capabilities with the also very important social issues of the social movements (union, immigrant rights, etc). This could also be a healthy way of bringing the netroots back to a more reasonable and less over-the-top approach.