Fierce Partisans
The Political Animal is somewhat, shall we say, dismayed that the blogosphere is actively disseminating talking points for either side, seeing as we're supposed to be so independent and stuff.
It's not surprising that the campaigns are reaching out to bloggers, of course, but as near as I can tell both sides are eating this up. Bloggers everywhere are basking in the illusion that they're sophisticated media operatives, actively collaborating to figure out the best spin for their guy. Emails are flying around from all parties pleading with fellow bloggers to stay on message.
This is insane. It's bad enough when the mainstream media spends too much time lazily regurgitating talking points, but doesn't the blogosphere supposedly pride itself on being fiercely independent, a small band of brave truthtellers immune to the spin and cant of professional politicos?
I'm afraid if anyone believed that last, they were the ones who were insane. Fiercely independent? Most bloggers are openly political and we always have been. We don't identify with the flaccid he said/she said psuedo objectivity of the mainstram media; we are a blatently partisan media and proud of it. I imagine that many of us took up blogging in the first place because of what we saw as a necessary counterbalance to the Mighty Wurlitzer of talk radio, cable news and think tank talking heads that the right has built up over the last 25 years.
We are in the midst of a close fought presidential campaign and I am a devoted liberal who wants to do everything I can to see Kerry elected and to keep the modern Republican party from holding too much power. I recognise that spinning the media (which is what this is all about)is part of that effort and I will happily do whatever tiny little thing I can do. I never held myself up as objective or "independent" in this sense and I'm proud to help the campaign spread its message. To me it's the same thing as volunteering to phone bank or walk the precinct.
I don't have any particularly strong belief that the blogosphere is meaningful to this effort (yet), but it certainly costs me nothing to try to spread the word about something I believe in. If I can provide a little inspiration to my fellow travelers, then I feel that I've made a small contribution to the cause.
Update:
Blogs will continue to offer personal views and independent analysis. But, after all the talking we've done over these past few months about Lakoff's framing and the right's information infrastructure, I thought it was obvious to everyone that one of the the things that must be done to cut through the white noise of contemporary media culture is repetition of key phrases, marketing penetration of message and speaking with one voice to hone our ideas and drum them into the public's psyche.
If Democratic partisans don't help with this, then the left blogosphere will be a nice little collection of individual iconoclasts who speak to each other while the right blogosphere becomes an internet message behemoth. No thanks.
I can write all I want about anything I want and I'll continue to do so. Honing the message goes both ways. But, in the final stretch of the most importan political campaign in my lifetime I don't think it's too much for us to try to help work the refs a little bit on behalf of our candidate.
And in the long term, we'd better get our shit together or the Republicans will own every last piece of political media while we're out here singing kumbaya. This is serious and Democrats had better get serious about it.