I can't find any discussion of the new Massachussetts health care plan--a bipartisan effort that deserves consideration and scrutiny. It would be churlish to complain about an ordinary progressive blog that failed to address health care in a substantive way--but DailyKos receives an average of 500,000 daily visits and offers myriad opportunities for those visitors to contribute ideas. If all those people overlook the Massachussets health care plan, then I infer a lack of interest in health policy. In contrast, there is enormous interest in Scooter Libby, Condi's admission that thousands of tactical mistakes were made, Tom DeLay's resignation, etc., etc. Again, this may work in '06, but '08 is not far away.Although I don't know if Peter would agree, I'd like to link up his thoughts about Kos-style politics and the claims of the big political blogs on the left with my earlier impetuous rant against the big blogs in the comments here:
I see plenty of other great blogs that don't get the recognition they deserve. I also see blogs that cornered the market long ago and don't necessarily do any better quality work than any of these largely unrecognized blogs...Peter, of course, has a more level head and uses a more academic style while blogging. He's also a good bit more polite than I am.
Then I see claims made by big bloggers about how revolutionary blogging is, how it's the great democratic solution to consolidation and monopolization in the traditional media.
I then want to vomit.
The point, however, is that lefty political blogs, perhaps due precisely to their relative success in rallying the disgruntled left, may end up suffering from their own hubris.
I thought Markos was great on the Colbert Report, and he makes for a good traditional media representative of lefty blogging. The message, however, is about a new form of political influence, often placed in the context of the right shifting politics to form over content (through talk radio, blogging, etc.). Content of policy proposals and actual policy-making is a different story. From a politically pragmatic point of view, we should be careful not to confuse the two as one and the same thing, even if we admire the seemingly more participatory and critical forms of political influence in blogs and even if we see form and content as ultimately intertwined. Thus, especially with the large political blogs, at some point - as Peter suggests - there must be concrete policy proposals emerging from this new format rather than increasingly public blog figures like Markos spreading the message about the medium. This, of course, means that lefty political blogging needs to grow up and integrate its voice into more substantive policy proposals and existing forms of policy-making.
2 comments:
Hi Helmut,
"I thought Markos was great on the Colbert Report, and he makes for a good traditional media representative of lefty blogging."
I really have to disagree with you on this point. And my reasons are as shallow as shallow can be, so I won't go into all of them here. But I didn't think he was a good traditional rep at all. Just one of the first big bloggers on the scene who's built a huge audience, so the MSM has latched onto him.
"This, of course, means that lefty political blogging needs to grow up..."
It's very exciting to realize we are all witnessing this as it happens. It may not be happening as fast as we'd like it to, but it's happening nonetheless. It'll all look very different ten years from now and we'll be able to look back in amazement of how we were involved from the start. (Not *me* exactly, but you know what I mean.)
Really? I thought he was pretty good. But I also had in mind the guy from the previous night (or my previous viewing) - the Harvard prof who had written the book, "Manliness." Not much of a man.
Markos has an easy way about him on TV - but it's the first time I had seen him in person. I know he's the one the MSM latches onto, and that there are likely much better bloggers for the task. I live in DC, and a high-level congressional staffer asked me the other day if I knew about "the 'Daily Kos' blog." It's an anecdotal sign, at least, that policymakers are paying a bit of attention. But I see it more and more in DC. When asked, I'll direct the policy people to various blogs, depending on the policy issues they work with. But this is precisely why I think it's good that we move less towards infatuation with the medium and more towards what it can do not only in terms of getting the right people elected (it's proving that), but also in terms of formulating interesting and novel progressive policy ideas.
The "grow up" comment is overly cavalier on my part. If you've been reading Phron, you know I'm terribly grown up (yet, I play a grown-up in non-virtual life!). But I do like the idea of continuing to influence local and state elections and critiquing policy and politics at the federal and global level, and organization, to articulating serious policy proposals. The rightwing blogs can't do that. I think we can. And now is the time that progressive blogs are receiving some more mainstream attention. I don't spend much time on Daily Kos, but I appreciate what Markos is doing, even if it seems contrary to progressive bloggers self-portrayal as an alternative to traditional media.
Even if we're the smaller bloggers, and even if I rail about blog consolidation/monopolization, comments and so on do at times filter up to broader attention. I agree - there's real promise there.
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