That’s what Max Sawicky calls “the internet left”, by which he means the constellation of liberal blogs clustered around Eschaton, Kos, MyDD FireDogLake and such. For some reason it provoked some controversy, but be honest, it is a fair if rude characterisation.
If you want to know why, come over to Wis[s]e Words….
Eugene Robinson writing in the NYT gives it to Edwards by a blog-length:
[…]
So what do the Web sites HillaryClinton.com, BarackObama.com and JohnEdwards.com tell us about their namesakes? At first glance, they seem to confirm what we think we already know. Clinton’s site evokes a super-competent juggernaut, with every base covered and every hair in place. Obama’s is very much a work in progress. And Edwards’s Web site suggests the patience, attention to detail and willingness to take risks that you would expect from a trial lawyer who rose from nothing to become a self-made millionaire.
Clinton and Obama are first-name candidates on their sites — “Hillary” says this, “Barack” says that. Edwards is more formal — he’s “John Edwards” or “Senator Edwards,” if you please. Perhaps that’s a necessary reminder, since he’s not, technically speaking, a senator anymore.
As for overall tone and scope, it’s hard to evaluate Obama’s campaign cyber-HQ because it’s so clearly a provisional, placeholding site with not much but a couple of videos (the announcement; a biography) and a big button you can click to become a contributor. There’s a link to his Senate reelection Web site— he would have to run in 2010 — and if you find the link and click through, you get a fuller picture of the man.
The Clinton and Edwards sites, as one might expect, are largely about the business of getting elected. Clinton’s home page tells you how to “Join Team Hillary” or become a “HillRaiser” of campaign funds. Edwards likewise prominently advises how to join his team, but his home page also focuses on some issues — he’s against global warming, we learn, and opposes an escalation of the war in Iraq.
The real difference is depth and ambition. Both Clinton and Obama (he on his Senate campaign Web site) say they want to have a dialogue with the American people about how best to solve the nation’s problems. But Edwards has already started his conversation with the nation. His Web site is an exercise in social networking that includes not only a blog, where surfers can post their thoughts, but also cyber-diaries written by Edwards’s family members.
“The soft rain of last night has left the field behind the house dewy with a low fog. Maybe the gossamer meadow is the reason I feel contemplative this morning,” begins a recent entry by Elizabeth Edwards. Her diary posts generally draw more comments than her husband’s.
Somehow, it’s hard to imagine Hillary Clinton waxing about any gossamer meadow.
Edwards’s Web site is less YouTube than MySpace. It tries to take advantage of the Internet’s great paradox — that a technology so devoid of human contact can nevertheless create a sense of intimacy and connection.
So, Mama’s playing it safe, Obama’s not quite ready and Edwards is up to something interesting. In the “Second Life” sense, at least. We’ll see about the real world.
I’m hoping (though it’s a hope based on not much actual foundation) that Obama and Clinton are being encouraged to stand as stalking horses for Clark/Edwards, on the principle that they’ll keep the likes of Fox and the Right’s other swiftboating squads busy while the real candidates do an end run round the opposition. Let’s face it , Clinton or Obama won’t get through the primaries, because the voters just don’t trust them.
This is the most deliberately, wilfully and blindly incompetent administration ever: they’re almost proud of it, incompetence is a strategy for them – remember Grover Norquist‘s famous axiom about ‘drowning the government in a bathtub’? The Republicans refined that concept slightly and now they’ve almost but not quite waterboarded the government to death. The American public seems desperate for some saviour to rush in, free the captive and arrest the torturers, someone who knows the difference between right and wrong and knows what do do about it . Even more imporatant, that someone has to be someone the public trusts.
I can’t see how the DLC can hope Hillary will be the candidate even though her adverts are all over the blogs like a rash: no-one trusts her, everybody hates her, even her own side. If she’s depending on the loyalty of the sisterhood and female votes to carry her through, well she’s shit out of luck. Republican women hate her (and paradoxically enough, the whole ‘stand by your man’ schtick post-Lewinsky made them hate her all the more) and Democratic women don’t seem to be much moire enamoured, what with her support for the war and carefully triangulated non-positions on choice and reproductive freedoms.
As for Obama – other than oodles of charisma and photegeneity, what has he got? If elected he’d be another Tony Blair : a one term politician with little experience in national or international politics and with bugger-all managerial experience. And we all know how that turned out. Obama talks a good fight, he looks good, but can you see him running the country yet? 2 elections down the road when he has some solid experience under his belt, yes. Now, no – and I’ve yet to mention the regrettably ever-present possibility of a far-right assassin, something that goes for Hillary too.
Damn it. I hate it that the most viable ‘liberal’ candidates (and I use the scare quotes deliberately, because neither Edwards nor Clark fit my definition of liberal) candidates will be, yet again, white, wealthy middle class men.
But unless some deus ex machina in the shape of the perfect Dem candidate comes along, that’s what’ll happen.
Which is better, New US Left or Old US Left? Bit of a pointless question, in light of the fact that what America considers ‘left’ is, by international standards, pretty right-wing and at best gradualist in tendency. So the spirited yet essentially empty discussion going on over at the News Blog re a blogspat between Max Sawickyand Steve Gilliard is being conducted somewhat in the manner of two bald men fighting over a comb.
The argument goes like this (and I’m paraphrasing madly): Max said the New Internet Left is just a money sucker for the Democrats, and Steve replied that Marxism is boring, Marx is irrelevant and the Old Left were a bunch of a hippie nutters who were dangerous with it, who set back the left’s cause for generations, and who should just shut up and let the New Blogging Vanguard get on with it.
But both fail to lift their eyes above the American horizon, both fail to notice that the Left is an international phenomenon and neither acknowledge that the use of modern technology as a tool for political organisation is not confined to middle-class reformist Americans. (I get the impression that in their heart of hearts they think the ‘free’ market will sort it all out if only the Dems can get elected. Then things can go on as normal and they won’t have to change their comfortable lifestyles at all. Change the system? Why… that’s crazy revolutionary talk!)
Both Gilliard and Sawicki seem to have internalised the reformist view that US voters just need to get rid of Bush, fiddle round the edges a bit and everything’ll be fine and dandy and politics can go on as usual.
It’s most amusing to watch the reception of Joe Klein – “… not so much a political writer as a bad theater critic” – the Slate columnist and alleged liberal is getting as he sheds his designer bathrobe and dips his carefully-manicured toes into the choppy waters of the blog sea, via the safety of Time/CNN’s new astroblog, Swampland.
(Btw did you notice Ana-Marie Cox is now Time Washington Editor? And they call it serious journalism? Wahahahahaha.)
Myself, I’m amazed by Klein’s chutzpah: after having spent the past few years basking in journalistic comfort onshore, idly cursing the swimmers, he seems to have expected a sedate Hamptons water-polo match in which position and seniority would give him innate advantage.
Surely blogging would be a doddle for such a fine figure of a pundit and anonymous novelist as Klein, if so many provincial neanderthals were doing it, wouldn’t it?
Of course, having no editor to save his skin or tone down his vainglorious self-certainty and belligerence he floundered badly straight away – hysterically accusing the blogging left of being illiberal, anti-American and hoping for US defeat and in the process lying, saying that he’d never supported the Iraq war when his own words said otherwise.
Oh dear. He didn’t want to do that…
Understandably he’s getting an ass-whupping from the real bloggers:
Late yesterday I was mulling why exactly Klein feels the need to presuppose the worst motives on the part of unnamed liberals and Democrats — whom he regularly accuses of rooting for America to “lose” — when Klein went ahead and unwittingly revealed a possible answer in his new post. It’s vanity.
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To look into the mirror and see a brave and heroic pundit staring back, of course, you need to flatter yourself into believing that you’re challenging entrenched ideas and the people who hold them in some way, even if you aren’t. This impression can be created in several ways. One is to simply dream up a whole class of people, claim they hold “extreme” opinions based on nothing at all, and set yourself up as a lonely warrior against them — preferably while standing shoulder to shoulder with other lonely heroes of moderation like John McCain and Joe Lieberman. That’s David Broder’s preferred approach. Another way is to dream up a whole series of nefarious but nonexistent motives driving colleagues’ opinions, so that you can deprive those colleagues of credit for those opinions, and position yourself as, again, braver and more heroic than they are — even though you agree with them. That is Klein’s approach — and I submit that at bottom it’s all about vanity.
Klein issued a challenge in his post that has already been deftly parried by Boo Man. So here’s a challenge for Klein: Back up your arguments with facts and evidence. Produce one example of someone whose comments betray the fact that they’re tacitly rooting for American failure. Quote this person. Explain why this person’s quotes should be interpreted that way. If you manage to get that far, then maybe consider finding a second example, and even a third. That doesn’t sound all that hard, does it?
One might think that a journalist who has had the very basis of his reporting skill challenged in such a very public way might be a little shame-faced that his lack of professionalism had been so devastingly exposed. Not Klein.
But why is this little blogospheric kerfuffle of any importance at all in the larger political media picture?
There appears to be yet another evolutionary change happening with political blogs as the big news corporations switch their loss-making paper operations online and the group and community blogs become, in their turn, more corporate. The online operations of the media conglomerates are now being recast, falsely, as group or community blogs themselves, a direct marketing challenge to the likes of Kos and Atrios – the use of folksy names like Swampland is one way of fooling visitors that what they are reading is the voice of the average American.
This is not just about Joe Klein spouting his outdated and overexposed mouth off, entertaining though that is. This is about TimeWarner using its online presence to take on the liberal blogs – ‘We, the corporate establishment are patriots; you, the liberal bloggers, are unwashed hippies” – using Klein as its willing proxy.
They’re slapping down any attempt at encroachment on one of their markets, of course; it’s a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value and dividends. What else can they do? They won’t be happy until until they own or control all the media outlets, it’s what conglomerates do, and liberal independent blogs are a direct challenge to corporate dominance of the news markets and public opinion.
“The largest media company in the world is the standard bearer of synergy and vertical integration in the modern digital age. The marriage between “old” media Time Warner and “new” media AOL in 2000 was heralded by many experts as a sign of a new era. The belief was that traditional media companies had to align themselves with online partners or risk the chance of finding their business model and methods obsolete. A weak ad market, subscriptions for new online users hitting a plateau, and a less than expected demand for broadband Internet service are just some of the reasons why AOL Time Warner never jumped started an overhaul of the entire media industry as first predicted. The company dropped AOL from its corporate name in 2003 in an effort to show Wall Street that it still valued its core assets. With such influential brands as CNN, Warner Brothers studio, Sports Illustrated and AOL Instant Messaging, a Time Warner property is never too far away from any consumer’s fingertips.”
Supposed journalists like Klein don’t see this at all: First Amendent? Democracy? Accountability? Phooey. Blogging is for them just an opportunity for further personal aggrandisement and for unencumbered-by-truth-or-editing, vainglorious ranting in which they can get back at all their percieved enemies. And get paid for it!
Klein has confused the immediacy of blogging and the fact that the posts scroll off the screen with the notion that what he’s written is gone, because he doesn’t see it any more: he thinks there’ll be no consequences from his lies: that was yesterday and besides he’s got TimeWarner at his back. He’d better think again.
Read more: Media ownership, Blogging, Media conglomerates, CNN, Time magazine, Time/Warner, Joe Klein
By challenging the useless idiots in primaries:
The Democratic Party is never going to change substantively and again become a reform party with a serious agenda until some of its blood is spilled in the same fashion. For years, incumbent Dems have distanced themselves from fundamental convictions, confident the party’s “base” wouldn’t do anything about it beyond whimpering. Until now, the cynicism was well founded. Galvanized by the war, disgusted with weak-spined party leaders, the rank-and-file may at last be ready to bite back.
The fuse was lit for Lieberman a few weeks ago, when MoveOn.org let it be known that the web-savvy organization will support a challenger if that’s what its Connecticut members decide to do. “Our first allegiance is to our members,” explains Tom Matzzie, MoveOn’s Washington director, “and they are just as frustrated with the Democrats as anybody else. So they’ve given us the charge to change the Dems, and we’re taking that very seriously.” Politicians and media learned to respect MoveOn in 2004, when it proved its ability to organize people and money.
The center-right senator, meanwhile, is practically taunting the party’s loyal voters with his extreme embrace of Bush and Bush’s misbegotten war. “What a colossal mistake it would be,” Lieberman lamented recently, “for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will.” Party leaders in DC–Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean–all took shots at him. Rumors started that Lieberman must be fishing for a job in Bush’s Cabinet.
A showdown in Connecticut–rank-and-file voters versus the big money bankrolling the party–would provide a fabulous test case, sure to attract maximum funding from Lieberman’s patrons in business and finance. The prospects for denying him the party nomination in the primary look encouraging, Matzzie says, citing private polling he won’t discuss. Voters are bitter about Iraq but also about Lieberman’s toadying to corporate interests. If the senator gets past the 2006 primary, he would still be deeply wounded and vulnerable for the general election. It’s too early to know whether a viable Democratic challenger will emerge, but the search is on. Lowell Weicker, the much admired former governor and senator, has proclaimed that if nobody else of stature will take on Lieberman, he will do it in the general election as an independent. Weicker, a maverick and liberal Republican, has the stature to pull it off, though a three-way race might backfire by splitting the anti-Lieberman vote.
Democratic leaders in Washington naturally discourage the talk of insurgency, warning it could endanger the party’s chance of regaining a majority in the House or Senate. Some progressives doubtless agree. But this is the same logic- -follow the leaders and keep your mouth shut–that has produced a long string of lame candidates with empty agendas, most recently John Kerry in 2004. The strategy of unity and weak substance led Democrats further to the right, further from their most loyal constituents. And they lost power across the board.
MoveOn doesn’t believe in kamikaze politics, Matzzie says, and won’t get into the race unless local members are committed and have a plausible challenger. “We have to make sure we can back up our swagger,” he says, “so it’s not just talk.” Other antiwar forces are less cautious than MoveOn, more willing to support long-shot candidates and at least deliver a message to the hawks. Progressive Democrats of America, with activists across the nation, is pushing antiwar resolutions in state party organizations and searching for viable peace candidates. In California activists are shopping for a primary challenger to Senator Dianne Feinstein (antiwar heroine Cindy Sheehan has been approached). A candidate was lined up to run against House minority leader Nancy Pelosi until Pelosi got religion and endorsed Representative John Murtha’s call for speedy withdrawal. In New York a little-known labor activist, Jonathan Tasini, plans to run against Senator Hillary Clinton.