One reason why a lot of Democratic Party insiders have a lot of contempt for bloggers is that we are sitting in front of our computers getting fat rather than getting out where it becomes a public affair. It’s all very well to phone and mail legislatures (and you should), but you need to be out there where people can see you.
Yes, I know people are still shy about being associated with the circus, but visibility matters. It’s a lot harder for the talking heads to pretend that Bush is still popular and people don’t mind the destruction of the Constitution if they’re being deafened by protests.
And 2007 is not 1968. The public isn’t freaked out by hippies anymore, it’s freaked out by losing a major American city, and being known as a nation of torturers, and having our money sucked away by an illegal war and assorted con-men in expensive suits.
Thom Hartmann often points out that neither of the Roosevelts ran as progressives, and Lyndon Johnson certainly didn’t run on civil rights. When progressives came to FDR with their program he let them know that he was convinced, but he needed one more thing: “Make me.”
They did it because we made them. It wasn’t done just by people sitting at home and writing.
Avedon is right. Blogging is a great way to write away your frustrations about politics, but in itself it has a limited capability to change things for the better. Blogs are good at getting you informed about things not covered much in the mainstream media or helping likeminded people discover each other, not to mention help people realise that they’re not alone. But becoming aware and informed is only the first stage of becoming political active. After that, you need to act. Unfortunately, blogging is seductive and you do get the feeling of having achieved something from just having written about something, so it’s easy to keep blogging instead of taking that next step.
For the rightwing this doesn’t matter, as to them blogs are just another part of the noise machine, but us lefties have to be aware that blogs are just one tool we need to use if we want to change things.