Bloggers, politicians, and noise machines

Courtney Martin of feministing has an interesting Op/Ed in the CS Monitor about the messy relationship between bloggers and politicians.

Here are my thoughts on how Democrats and the netroots can move forward together.

The Edwards campaign made a big mistake by putting star political bloggers on the payroll. Obviously, campaigns should hire good people to run their blogs. However, the recent scandal should teach campaigns to keep larger-than-life personalities off their staffs. In the future, official campaign bloggers should be savvy and disciplined political operatives who can build relationships with independent bloggers.

Democrats need outspoken surrogates to counter the right wing noise machine. Republicans already have an entrenched and well-funded conservative media. They don't need bloggers because they've got the Ann Coulters, Michelle Malkins, Jonah Goldbergs, and Rush Limbaughs of the world.

These right wing pundits aren't journalists. They are political surrogates who are supported by a lavish infrastructure. Conservatives fund media outlets, think tanks, fellowships, book deals, and countless other perks to keep these partisan pundits in the game. They cultivate right wing blowhards because they need people to say things that are too radical for politicians to say on their own behalf. The big players in the right wing noise machine are effective precisely because they are perceived as being independent from campaigns, politicians, and the regular media.

Democrats are behind on infrastructure. That's why the blogosphere represents such an incredible opportunity for progressives. We're building something much better, faster, and more authentic than anything the right has to offer.

During the Viriginia senate race, a Webb campaign staffer shot the infamous George Allen "Macaca" video--but it was independent bloggers who picked it up and distributed it to millions. Webb had a campaign blog, but the real action on Macaca-gate was extra-mural. Instead of trying to make the Webb blog a destination for progressive blog readers, the Webb camp cultivated relationships with outside bloggers who could operate independently.

The Webb campaign showed how Democrats can harness the power of the netroots without co-opting bloggers or taking on responsibility for every supporter's paper trail.

Comments

[michael schmidt]

Gee, everyone in the blogosphere should read this post.

[Bruce/Crablaw]

I think you hit the bull's-eye.

I do expect some prominent liberal (and conservative) bloggers to get active in independent committee work - not just through great organizations like Act Blue, etc., but also through independent committees which the campaigns cannot by law control and, therefore, from which they cannot suffer much if any "taint" from any dirty &*@$#^@% hippie atheist apostate heretic infidels. Bloggers with baggage who want to work for Obama, say, can form a pro-Obama (or whoever) independent committee and raise/spent independently. Not at first, but as things heat up, that would not surprise me. Maybe easier if they make it a slate committees, that's easier to prove independence.

[Eric Jaffa]

Other bloggers have had different experiences with joining campaigns.

Jesse Taylor, the previous owner of Pandagon, left to work on Ted Strickland's campaign with little controversy.

[Uncle Kvetch]

However, the recent scandal should teach campaigns to keep larger-than-life personalities off their staffs. In the future, official campaign bloggers should be savvy and disciplined political operatives who can build relationships with independent bloggers.

Amen. It's possible to simultaneously believe that (1) Amanda was the victim of a straight-up smear job, and (2) her hiring wasn't a very smart move to begin with. She is a polemicist, and a damn good one at that. But I don't think that's what they were looking for.

Jesse Taylor, the previous owner of Pandagon, left to work on Ted Strickland's campaign with little controversy.

Good point, Eric. But that was 2-3 years ago already, no? My sense is that blogging (and bloggers) didn't have nearly the same prominence at the time. Who knows what might have happened if Jesse had continued blogging and then signed on to Edward's campaign today?

And Jesse (who I thought was a brilliant and very funny writer), while certainly acerbic, didn't push the gender & religion buttons with anything like Amanda's ferocity.

[Summerisle]

I think it all comes back to Gramsci's theory of Hegemony.

Bloggers work under the radar screen but when they come up against the forces that have a hegemonic power in the cultural part of society, i.e. the media establishment, they have all the powers of that structure used against them.

It's a different thing than just having insane conservative bloggers facing off against left wing bloggers, it's having the entire dominant system, that wants to maintain its position, come down on top of you to wipe you out.

I agree that having a sort of under the radar relationship with the mainstream media is probably the best way forward. I see blogs as being a continuation of the alternative media movement that started with print journalism and alternative weeklies, then spread to some magazines, then onto the net, some years ago.

Hackneyed Jello Biafra quote: "Don't hate the media, become the media".

[fiat lux]

It's possible to simultaneously believe that (1) Amanda was the victim of a straight-up smear job, and (2) her hiring wasn't a very smart move to begin with.

Yep.

[Tyler DiPietro]

There is one way in which the blogosphere is already an untapped wellspring of political strategy. Namely, it already operates as a sort of meme-lab where buzz-phrases and arguments gain traction based upon appeal and effectiveness. That, in my mind, is the primary way that politicians should be using the blogopshere. It's an open-source model of political advertising, like Wikipedia to information or GNU/Linux to an operating system.

[Alon Levy]

Tyler, you're only partially right. The blogosphere has a tendency to engage in preaching to the choir, so the arguments that gain the most traction are often those that appeal to the base the most rather than those that convince the undecideds or the other side. It's possible to use the blogosphere as a rhetoric lab, but only if one is careful enough to restrict attention to those places where people with opposing views interact.

[James E. Powell]

The big players in the right wing noise machine are effective precisely because they are perceived as being independent from campaigns, politicians, and the regular media.

Is there anything that can be done to dispel the illusion of independence?

[Alon Levy]

No.

[Tyler DiPietro]

Alon, to a certain extent the Republican noise machine operates on that same principle. Right wingers proved to be extremely adept at making their rhetoric part of mainstream discourse. "Liberal" because a dirty word, associated almost at the hop with "socialism", "softness on crime", "welfare queens", "bleeding hearts", "tax and spend", etc. All of those were first tested in the talk-radio circuit and disseminated by the think tanks, but they gradually became effective rhetorical devices for communicating with the general public. It's the old Goebellian principle that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

The right wing noise machine works primarily by preaching to the choir. If the goal is ideological propagation, it's liberals who are too hung up about "engaging" their critics. If you know you're right, don't waste time debating people with irreconcilable differences. Just assert your beliefs as loudly and entertainingly and frequently as you can. Repeat until what your saying seems like a commonplace. (I'm not talking about enlightenment, I'm talking about memetic propagation strategies.)

Preaching to the converted actually works. You get them fired up, lo and behold,they tithe and come back next week! They even sign their kids up for your Sunday school.

Sure, you can hire missionaries to minister to true outsiders, but each missionary in the field is supported by dozens of tithing converts who show up every week to hear the choir and the sermon.

[Chris O.]

It is really really obvious that the Edwards people did not do their research before making those hirings. I wasn't a big SS reader before all this, but I did read Pandagon, and anyone who didn't at least consider the prospect of this happening did not look much into the blog of the person they were hiring. In the short term it will definitely put a freeze on hiring bloggers who have said such controversial things, i.e. just about all of them. In the longer term, maybe Courtney's right about there being less controversy about every little thing said, though with the nature and state of our media, I'm not so optimistic about that.

[cfrost]

The big players in the right wing noise machine are effective precisely because they are perceived as being independent from campaigns, politicians, and the regular media.

Is there anything that can be done to dispel the illusion of independence?

Posted by: James E. Powell | February 17, 2007 at 06:01 PM

No.

Posted by: Alon Levy | February 17, 2007 at 06:59 PM

I think, I hope, Anon is wrong. There are certainly extensive, hard-wired connections between the right wing noise machine (to give it an acronym - RWNM) and the “legitimate” right wing infrastructure. A dozen different RWNM media outlets don’t come up with exactly the same batshit crazy spin on Wednesday morning for something that happened Monday afternoon without there having been a lot of explicit coordination on Tuesday. There is no doubt that Ailes Communications (Fox, Limbaugh), the Murdoch press, the think tanks, and the rest of the RWNM exchange emails and phone calls with each other and directly with the White House, Republican National Committee, assorted GOP campaign committees, GOP congressional staffers, etc., all day every day with the object of marketing whatever fascist claptrap de jour.

Some blogger(s) needs to take up the cause of ferreting out the means and methods of internal RWNM/government/GOP communication. Unlike the regular media which can’t, or won’t, for fear of losing access or because of actual complicity, the blogosphere has nothing to lose. A network that extensive cannot exist without leaving traces that can be discovered and revealed. A big pile of shit makes a big stink, and the blogosphere can reveal what exactly it is that’s drawing all the flies.

[cfrost]

Make that Alon not Anon. Sorry Alon, didn't mean to cast you into anonymity.

[cfrost]

Preaching to the converted actually works.

The important thing is to get the converted to go to church. I'm running across people all the time who don't read the blogs. Get the word out that the blogosphere is fun, entertaining, and, anymore, an essential auxiliary to the regular press.

[Amanda Marcotte]

I'd like to add to everything that Lindsay said that the chance of changing someone's mind across the ideological fence is tiny. But the choir is probably more willing to listen to your arguments---few people on the left are in exact lockstep with each other, so arguing and presenting your case to the left is actually productive in the persuasion sense.

[RickD]

Perhaps not that important, but I'm going to disagree with the people who think that the Edwards campaign "didn't do their research" before hiring Amanda and Melissa. For one thing, Elizabeth Edwards has gotten the reputation of a person who pays attention to blogs. And secondly, it's not like the two people in question are low profile at all.

I think that the Edwards campaign didn't expect the storm that hit. Based on previous campaign work done by Jesse Taylor and Jerome Armstrong, I don't think you can really fault them for thinking that these hires would be uncontroversial. Indeed, when I saw Donohue claim that the two were anti-Catholic bigots, I had to scratch my head at how they would be specifically anti-Catholic. I still think you have to really twist your head a lot to view Melissa's record as anti-Catholic, but it's true Amanda picked her fight with the Catholic Church some time ago.

I think the lesson learned here is not that bloggers cannot work for campaigns, even strident bloggers. But probably some bloggers will be more effective working outside campaigns.