15 thoughts on “Why the progressive blog movement failed”
First, neither Clark, Dean or Hillary is a Progressive. John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is a right wing Democratic think tank. Hillary spoke at one of their meetings the other day and said that there, “should be a robust public debate about the NSA and it’s intelligence gathering programs.” Duh. Hillary did not say that the Patriot Act, which she supported, should be repealed. Nor did she apologize for supporting and then voting for Bush’s illegal war In Iraq. Secondly, “left wingers” do NOT have an “ideology.” The Left has a philosophy. When is the last time any philosopher was elected to policitcal office? Socrates? He ended up being labeled an enemy of the state and drinking poison. Once the Progressives are capable of recognizing who is and who is not one of them, they may stand a chance of electing one of their own to office. Until that time the Progressives will continue to whine about being sold down the river by some faux-leftist or other. Like Hillary. Or Pelosi. Or Obama.
I think he mostly got it right, except the Tea Party. The Tea Party are like Maoist cultural revolutionaries, spewing the doctrine of the day and capable of turning 180 degrees in a nanosecond if their command tells them to. The Tea Party is powerful not because they believe anything, but because it can instantly raise millions in a nanosecond for its preferred candidates. So even a real crazy is credible if they have 10 million to get out their message. The tea party has no power save that of money.
After netroots spent itself on the great blog wars of 2008, the real action moved outside of blogosphere. First the solidarity movements in Wisconsin and Ohio, and then Occupy, none of which owed anything to bloggers except that some bloggers got interested in them. Now the action has moved to protests, against foreclosure, against fracking, against the NSA, against TPP and so on. Blogs are minor players in all that.
Never make the mistake of discounting blogs. They not only move story lines forward, but they also make news. Wikileaks. The 1% would like us to believe that blogs are irrelevant because the 1% hates a free press. General Alexander, NSA, made that fact perfectly clear last week when he said that the powers that be should find some legal way to stop the press (blogs) from publishing anymore of Snowden’s material. Today’s blogs are the same as the pamphleteering of the past. A valuable asset for the 99%.
I guess I view things completely differently. I don’t think the progressive blog movement failed because Lieberman managed to win reelection in 2006, because left blogistan accepted Pelosi’s decision not to push defunding the Iraq War, or the Obama campaign in the 2008 primaries, it’s because progressive blogs never really had enough of an audience to be influential. Yes, politicians showed up to kiss bloggers’ asses at the first Yearly Kos. But that’s just because political blogging seemed to be a rising power and it looked like it might develop into real influence. So politicians all wanted to be sure to get on the blogwagon to take advantage of that rising power.
But the power just was never there. When blogging was new and sexy, people overestimated how much it could accomplish (just like they do for many new things). And political bloggers themselves–including people like Ian Welsh–were also sucked into the prevailing wisdom that there was a serious progressive movement eminating from blogs. That perception generated serious attention from the MSM and mainstream politicians, which fed the delusions of grandeur of the bloggers themselves.
Then it didn’t pan out. the MSM coopted the bloggers it wanted and left the rest behind. Politicians realized that there was no real cost to not kow-towing to bloggers after all, and the political blog bubble burst. The influence was never really there, at least not beyond the influence generated from the perception of influence. So once that perception was seriously questioned, all the influence went away revealing how impotent political blogs really were all along.
What I think you’re ignoring is that blogs are good at two things: Rising hell when something needs to be stopped, and raising lots of cash for progressive candidates. So we had lots of candidates (remember Chris Carney?) eager to present themselves as progressive, because it was an easy way to get around DCCC gatekeepers. But because we only have small, geographically scattered contributors, once elected, it was no big risk to ignore us.
Here’s why Obama invited bloggers to meet him at the White House in his first term: Our “stopping” power. And that’s why the bloggers who went fell into the trap, wanting to be “nice” and “fair.” Major strategic error, completely ruined the power dynamic. Why was it big news when I told off Axelrod? Because he thought they’d already neutered us.
Rising hell when something needs to be stopped, and raising lots of cash for progressive candidates
is that really still true? Or did that only used to be true because of the blog bubble?
The audiences for independent blogs (that is blogs not sponsored by a MSM publication like Slate, the WaPo, or the NYT) are really small when compared to the audience of “real” publications. When blogging was new and exciting, the media showered more attention on blogs, which drove audiences up and increased blogger’s capacity to raise hell (raising hell only works if people pay attention to you in the first place) and to raise lots of money (whether you’re relying on lots of small donors or a few big donors who need to find your site to give big). Once the novelty wore off, those superpowers faded, along with the attention. It never was anything more than the novelty of a new exciting media.
The raising hell part is very important. Feeding buried facts is just as important. Without the blogs the NSA story would have died long ago because the 1% press didn’t want it covered for obvious reasons.
Ian is right and yet Snuzy is more acute in assessing our numbers. That is why I keep harping on the power of spoiling in a narrowly divided electorate.
Why do you suppose Obama backed off on Social Security cuts in last year’s SOTU? Blogs pushed hard to stop it.
Also, blogs raise about $10M a year.
IMHO Ian is always worth reading. He has been uncharacteristically prolific in the past week or so, and it’s worth your trouble to keep going after this article.
I’ll admit to being suckered in. I even registered Dem for the first time ever when O was nominated. My moment of disillusionment came early: Barry’s vote in favor of telecom immunity, July, 2008, after he pledged to filibuster the bill. (Hillary vote no.) After his election the hits came hot and heavy. It was totally and undeniably obvious that we’d been had, and Barry’s continued support in “progressive” blogs showed the blogosphere had joined the charade. And they didn’t even get invited to the beltway cocktail parties or a ride on Air Force 1. Cheap date.
You really think “Obama backed off on Social Security cuts in last year’s SOTU? Blogs pushed hard to stop it.
Continued: …You really think “Obama backed off on Social Security cuts in last year’s SOTU…” because “…Blogs pushed hard to stop it?” As my good buddy Bill Buckley would have said, post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
$10M ? Unless very, very narrowly targeted, that’s a pittance to change a broad, national, well financed agenda. But if it’s narrowly targeted, it doesn’t challenge a broad, national agenda. It’s all degenerated into inchoate, internecine squabbling. Why? No core ideology. Hell, we couldn’t put our nitpicking aside long enough to support Occupy.
Winners: KOS, Matty, Ezra, Josh and a few others who have cashed in. Whither Glennzilla? Losers: the rest of us.
Rising hell when something needs to be stopped, and raising lots of cash for progressive candidates
is that really still true? Or did that only used to be true because of the blog bubble?
It’s really true. At least in some ways.
Spocko’s campaign, originally directed at a rightwing radio station in San Francisco, has had huge knock on effects going right up to guys like Don Imus and Rush Limbaugh. And ask Larry SUmmers about how little effect bloggers have.
Yes they were never as powerful as they could be, but the blogs still have potential to screw things up for candidates and talking heads.
I think the greatest contribution of the progressive blogs was to give a sounding board to lots of average, well-meaning citizens who looked at the phoney run-up to war in 2002-3, the taking away of liberties via the “Patriot Act” – and giving such people a forum in which to ask “am I the only one who feels something is horribly amiss?”, and finding common ground with many other decent people who felt the same way.
I also think the progressive blogs played a key role in finally reversing Republican gains in 2006, and tilting some power back to the Democrats.
That was the high point. Politically, it was also the beginning of the end, because it became clear soon thereafter that the Dems regarded us only as an ATM, and that they cared nothing for a more progressive viewpoint.
Unlike the Tea Party, which is a right wing billionaires creation, nobody bankrolls progressives. And since money nearly totally dominates elections, that goes a long way to explain why very few progressives get elected.
But progressive blogs go into issues other than politics, which is also a very useful function. When you see that neither major wing of the corporate Uniparty has any intention of considering anything other than a “grow forever Corporate capitalist economy”, then the resilience information and views expressed on many other sites, which I would count as progressive, are very welcome.
Progressive viewpoints are not necessarily all political. Exchanging views on what you can do to step out of this ‘bound for collapse’ world is a very useful thing, and I believe represents a significant hope – not a total failure.
Oh, I think the internet and blogs have really changed the game. Mainstream media has been co-opted for a long while. Alternate voices, not just the same old conservative sound box, made some buttholes pucker at the Corporate Uniparty. Why do you think the powers that be are going all out to ‘control’ the internet, to ‘own’ the internet, to surveil everything on the internet? If we are the failures some would like us to be Bernie Sanders wouldn’t still be in the Senate, Grayson wouldn’t be back in the House and Elizabeth Warren probably wouldn’t even have her old academic job. Nobody said taking a country back from the greedy hands of the Plutocrats would be easy. Remember, they’ve been planning and undermining democracy for 100 years. Fuck failure. We only fail if we let ourselves be convinced that we’ve failed.
First, neither Clark, Dean or Hillary is a Progressive. John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is a right wing Democratic think tank. Hillary spoke at one of their meetings the other day and said that there, “should be a robust public debate about the NSA and it’s intelligence gathering programs.” Duh. Hillary did not say that the Patriot Act, which she supported, should be repealed. Nor did she apologize for supporting and then voting for Bush’s illegal war In Iraq. Secondly, “left wingers” do NOT have an “ideology.” The Left has a philosophy. When is the last time any philosopher was elected to policitcal office? Socrates? He ended up being labeled an enemy of the state and drinking poison. Once the Progressives are capable of recognizing who is and who is not one of them, they may stand a chance of electing one of their own to office. Until that time the Progressives will continue to whine about being sold down the river by some faux-leftist or other. Like Hillary. Or Pelosi. Or Obama.
I think he mostly got it right, except the Tea Party. The Tea Party are like Maoist cultural revolutionaries, spewing the doctrine of the day and capable of turning 180 degrees in a nanosecond if their command tells them to. The Tea Party is powerful not because they believe anything, but because it can instantly raise millions in a nanosecond for its preferred candidates. So even a real crazy is credible if they have 10 million to get out their message. The tea party has no power save that of money.
After netroots spent itself on the great blog wars of 2008, the real action moved outside of blogosphere. First the solidarity movements in Wisconsin and Ohio, and then Occupy, none of which owed anything to bloggers except that some bloggers got interested in them. Now the action has moved to protests, against foreclosure, against fracking, against the NSA, against TPP and so on. Blogs are minor players in all that.
Never make the mistake of discounting blogs. They not only move story lines forward, but they also make news. Wikileaks. The 1% would like us to believe that blogs are irrelevant because the 1% hates a free press. General Alexander, NSA, made that fact perfectly clear last week when he said that the powers that be should find some legal way to stop the press (blogs) from publishing anymore of Snowden’s material. Today’s blogs are the same as the pamphleteering of the past. A valuable asset for the 99%.
I guess I view things completely differently. I don’t think the progressive blog movement failed because Lieberman managed to win reelection in 2006, because left blogistan accepted Pelosi’s decision not to push defunding the Iraq War, or the Obama campaign in the 2008 primaries, it’s because progressive blogs never really had enough of an audience to be influential. Yes, politicians showed up to kiss bloggers’ asses at the first Yearly Kos. But that’s just because political blogging seemed to be a rising power and it looked like it might develop into real influence. So politicians all wanted to be sure to get on the blogwagon to take advantage of that rising power.
But the power just was never there. When blogging was new and sexy, people overestimated how much it could accomplish (just like they do for many new things). And political bloggers themselves–including people like Ian Welsh–were also sucked into the prevailing wisdom that there was a serious progressive movement eminating from blogs. That perception generated serious attention from the MSM and mainstream politicians, which fed the delusions of grandeur of the bloggers themselves.
Then it didn’t pan out. the MSM coopted the bloggers it wanted and left the rest behind. Politicians realized that there was no real cost to not kow-towing to bloggers after all, and the political blog bubble burst. The influence was never really there, at least not beyond the influence generated from the perception of influence. So once that perception was seriously questioned, all the influence went away revealing how impotent political blogs really were all along.
What I think you’re ignoring is that blogs are good at two things: Rising hell when something needs to be stopped, and raising lots of cash for progressive candidates. So we had lots of candidates (remember Chris Carney?) eager to present themselves as progressive, because it was an easy way to get around DCCC gatekeepers. But because we only have small, geographically scattered contributors, once elected, it was no big risk to ignore us.
Here’s why Obama invited bloggers to meet him at the White House in his first term: Our “stopping” power. And that’s why the bloggers who went fell into the trap, wanting to be “nice” and “fair.” Major strategic error, completely ruined the power dynamic. Why was it big news when I told off Axelrod? Because he thought they’d already neutered us.
Rising hell when something needs to be stopped, and raising lots of cash for progressive candidates
is that really still true? Or did that only used to be true because of the blog bubble?
The audiences for independent blogs (that is blogs not sponsored by a MSM publication like Slate, the WaPo, or the NYT) are really small when compared to the audience of “real” publications. When blogging was new and exciting, the media showered more attention on blogs, which drove audiences up and increased blogger’s capacity to raise hell (raising hell only works if people pay attention to you in the first place) and to raise lots of money (whether you’re relying on lots of small donors or a few big donors who need to find your site to give big). Once the novelty wore off, those superpowers faded, along with the attention. It never was anything more than the novelty of a new exciting media.
The raising hell part is very important. Feeding buried facts is just as important. Without the blogs the NSA story would have died long ago because the 1% press didn’t want it covered for obvious reasons.
Ian is right and yet Snuzy is more acute in assessing our numbers. That is why I keep harping on the power of spoiling in a narrowly divided electorate.
Why do you suppose Obama backed off on Social Security cuts in last year’s SOTU? Blogs pushed hard to stop it.
Also, blogs raise about $10M a year.
IMHO Ian is always worth reading. He has been uncharacteristically prolific in the past week or so, and it’s worth your trouble to keep going after this article.
I’ll admit to being suckered in. I even registered Dem for the first time ever when O was nominated. My moment of disillusionment came early: Barry’s vote in favor of telecom immunity, July, 2008, after he pledged to filibuster the bill. (Hillary vote no.) After his election the hits came hot and heavy. It was totally and undeniably obvious that we’d been had, and Barry’s continued support in “progressive” blogs showed the blogosphere had joined the charade. And they didn’t even get invited to the beltway cocktail parties or a ride on Air Force 1. Cheap date.
You really think “Obama backed off on Social Security cuts in last year’s SOTU? Blogs pushed hard to stop it.
Continued: …You really think “Obama backed off on Social Security cuts in last year’s SOTU…” because “…Blogs pushed hard to stop it?” As my good buddy Bill Buckley would have said, post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
$10M ? Unless very, very narrowly targeted, that’s a pittance to change a broad, national, well financed agenda. But if it’s narrowly targeted, it doesn’t challenge a broad, national agenda. It’s all degenerated into inchoate, internecine squabbling. Why? No core ideology. Hell, we couldn’t put our nitpicking aside long enough to support Occupy.
Winners: KOS, Matty, Ezra, Josh and a few others who have cashed in. Whither Glennzilla? Losers: the rest of us.
Rising hell when something needs to be stopped, and raising lots of cash for progressive candidates
is that really still true? Or did that only used to be true because of the blog bubble?
It’s really true. At least in some ways.
Spocko’s campaign, originally directed at a rightwing radio station in San Francisco, has had huge knock on effects going right up to guys like Don Imus and Rush Limbaugh. And ask Larry SUmmers about how little effect bloggers have.
Yes they were never as powerful as they could be, but the blogs still have potential to screw things up for candidates and talking heads.
I think the greatest contribution of the progressive blogs was to give a sounding board to lots of average, well-meaning citizens who looked at the phoney run-up to war in 2002-3, the taking away of liberties via the “Patriot Act” – and giving such people a forum in which to ask “am I the only one who feels something is horribly amiss?”, and finding common ground with many other decent people who felt the same way.
I also think the progressive blogs played a key role in finally reversing Republican gains in 2006, and tilting some power back to the Democrats.
That was the high point. Politically, it was also the beginning of the end, because it became clear soon thereafter that the Dems regarded us only as an ATM, and that they cared nothing for a more progressive viewpoint.
Unlike the Tea Party, which is a right wing billionaires creation, nobody bankrolls progressives. And since money nearly totally dominates elections, that goes a long way to explain why very few progressives get elected.
But progressive blogs go into issues other than politics, which is also a very useful function. When you see that neither major wing of the corporate Uniparty has any intention of considering anything other than a “grow forever Corporate capitalist economy”, then the resilience information and views expressed on many other sites, which I would count as progressive, are very welcome.
Progressive viewpoints are not necessarily all political. Exchanging views on what you can do to step out of this ‘bound for collapse’ world is a very useful thing, and I believe represents a significant hope – not a total failure.
Oh, I think the internet and blogs have really changed the game. Mainstream media has been co-opted for a long while. Alternate voices, not just the same old conservative sound box, made some buttholes pucker at the Corporate Uniparty. Why do you think the powers that be are going all out to ‘control’ the internet, to ‘own’ the internet, to surveil everything on the internet? If we are the failures some would like us to be Bernie Sanders wouldn’t still be in the Senate, Grayson wouldn’t be back in the House and Elizabeth Warren probably wouldn’t even have her old academic job. Nobody said taking a country back from the greedy hands of the Plutocrats would be easy. Remember, they’ve been planning and undermining democracy for 100 years. Fuck failure. We only fail if we let ourselves be convinced that we’ve failed.