So, Your Humble Blogger was over on The Blogging of the President: 2004, and noticed a note by Tom Manatos, Advisor to Nancy Pelosi on “online and youth outreach”. Mr. Manatos says that “Blogs have shown a new path,” and that “it's important to unite what bloggers are doing on the web and offline with what we are doing in the House and Senate.”
Now, Gentle Reader, you may have noticed that I blog. I may not know exactly why I blog, but blog I do. I also read blogs, for my sins: Daily Kos, Body and Soul, Nathan Newman, occasionally Eschaton, the aforementioned BOP, and lots of others (check the blogroll at any of the sites, you’ll see all the same blogs, of which I’ve looked at a dozen or so interchangeable ones). I also read Altercation, and some other blogs that don’t have comment communities, which are therefore different animals entirely. I also frequent Clutch Hits, which is a baseball blog of sorts.
Anyway, I go through phases where I nearly believe in the internet community as a real community, with the possibility of really organizing it for real action. Not today.
Lots of people have studied and written about the tendency in on-line communication to be negative, both in tone and in content. That is the universe I perceive as well. I’m not talking about flame wars, and trolls, and so on, although that is an issue as well. I’m talking about the difficulty even I have found in writing positive notes about things I like and respect. It’s ever so much easier to write hatchet jobs than puff pieces; if you blog every day, there’s a pretty powerful pull to easy.
Take a look, if you like at the blog of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, at the Blog of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and at the blog of the Democratic National Committee. They aren’t bad, but ... what there would make a person glad to be a Democrat? What there would make a person want to run for local office as a Democrat? What there would lead a person inclined to cynicism (and these days isn’t everyone?) to think that in fact, most of the Democratic elected officials are public servants who try like hell to govern well?
This isn’t meant as a critique of the Democrat blogs. It’s about the nature of the online communities. Not that I’m agin‘ ’em altogether, it’s just that you have to deal with them as they are, and what they are is (among other things) a breeding ground for griping. Griping is important; this year, griping will be an important part of Democratic victories. But griping can’t work for Democrats in the long run. Any time a person is convinced that politicians are all dishonest, all on the take, or all in the pockets of the lobbyists, the Democrats lose.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
Interesting thoughts. I think the negative focus may be more a feature of political blogs per se than of blogs in general, though; in various sf-related online communities, there’s at least as much playfulness and praise and celebration of personal triumphs as there is negativism. Or so it seems to me.
…Also, I think that some of the Democratic negativism isn’t just a feature of the online world; it seems to me that the primary message of the Democratic party this year is “Stop Bush, at all costs!” And with that as the message, it seems fairly natural that the focus will be on complaints rather than on positive things. My cynical impression is that the goal (and I’m talking about the mainstream media presentation here, not just the online world) doesn’t seem to be to convince voters that Kerry (or Edwards) would be a superb President; it seems to be to convince voters that anyone would be preferable to Bush, and that Kerry (or Edwards) has enough support to beat Bush. But I could be wrong.
I think that it’s easy to fall in to the ‘Anybody but Bush’ campaign, which may well win the White House this Fall, but won’t build the Party. At the moment, put the frustrations of the Democratic Party’s constituents into the Medium of the Cheap Shot, and you will cheapen the Party and its constituents.