"Netroots Rising" - An Overview

I'm not sure if it's possible to fit in six years of cavaets and biases that deserve to be properly understood in any review of a book portraying the rise of online activism from a blogger who's been some small part of that trend.

I could point out my own view that, while I think the irreversible trend toward online activism is the single most important thing to understand about the way modern politics is waged, it often gets vastly overstated and wildly misunderstood by both candidates, activists, and the media that is supposedly charged with translating such trends to the mainstream of society. Getting online politics in the proper perspective, I suspect, will be the most important challenge for campaigns after 2008. With Obama blowing the ceiling off of expectations for various elements - from fundraising to the number of Facebook friends - how downballot candidates translate the necessity of and importance of and the ability to replicate any of these will be critical toward seeing a future where Democrats either fail to capitalize on the true competitive advantage before them ... or move toward building that elusive "permanent majority" that tempts many of us who work to elect more people who share a good chunk of our worldview.

I could point out my own involvement with both the author and many of the names covered in this book. Not the least of which is one of the authors, himself. Like several other bloggers who were part of the 2002 freshman class, I met Nate first while he was working for Richard Morrison. I've since had more than a few dealings with him - both good and bad - to either help candidates or sort out any disagreements. As with the current class makeup of Texas bloggers, there exists a combination of respect and disagreement that sometimes travel side by side. At the end of the day, we all have our own way of working to advocate for candidates we believe in. That tends to make a complete absence of respect an impossibility. But there also exists too many personalities that, like many other partisans, prefer to be around voices that agree at the expense of learning how to process information that isn't always in agreement. And as anyone who knows me might hint at, I tend to be that contrarian. As one who proudly affirms a well-worn view of the Democratic Party as a big tent, my own views are sometimes guilty of allowing others the opportunity to write their own narrative of me. That makes for a rather tenuous relationship with much of the existing Texas blogosphere. But given my own views and beliefs, it also serves as a reminder that I'd be wise to reject doing the same of them. There are bloggers mentioned in this book that I respect, there are those I have little tolerance for, and there are several residing somewhere in between.

That aside, there's the matter of a book. And I'll offer a few minor notes from the majority of it that I've read so far and save some further thoughts once the book is completed.

1. As if I needed to affirm any street cred for contrarianism, here's this: While the book is problematic in how it treats the rise of the blogosphere in political campaigns, it deserves to be read and appreciated for the first-hand history it reports. I'm not sure that's back-of-the-jacket material, but that's about where I stand on this book. There's a useful telling of history contained in it. That's the value of it that I see. But there's also some key problems. Names of bloggers are shoe-horned in as if to meet a quota or to "Leave No Fellow Blogger Behind." I think it's overdone in the writing and I say that as one who's name is shoehorned in.

By the way, tried to explain my lack of enthusiasm for being mentioned in a book to an office full of coworkers who were all-too-easily impressed with this fact. I'd love to just write that off as some Dilbertian example of being surrounded by morons, but the example probably speaks, in part, to the value that society has in seeing their name in print. So it's not that I'm merely surrounded at the office by morons (they're actually quite smart and I need their help for too many projects to visciously attack them in such a manner) ... it's that we're all morons to some degree. Don't get me started on the merits of 80s headbanger music lest I prove my own point.

A key point along these lines is seeing the name Glen Maxey in this book. Honestly, his name doesn't deserve mentioning in any book about blogosphere politics unless there's something to be gained by kissing his ring (note the subtlety here). In every example, Maxey is offered as the surprised Dutch Uncle of Dean Nation, Texas Chapter over the newfangled internet phenomenon in his capacity as Texas organizer for Dean's 2004 campaign.

So, I think the narrative of the story loses out a bit as a retelling of history as a result.

2. One point of strenuous agreement with Nate in particular, is that I believe the true understanding of the blogosphere begins and ends with realizing that it encompasses the millions of readers rather than the more elite understanding of it as bloggers and developers. Alone, we bloggers only give voice to a cause or an idea. But it's the readers who make it happen. It's that point that apparently serves as a strong area of disagreement between myself and the bulk of the current Texas blogosphere. And it's perhaps the most ironic given the advocacy for bottom-up politics that the very prophets will argue for a top-down understanding of their own existence. If there's an achillee's heel of the blogosphere, I think this is it.

3. I think too much is made in the book of a narrative that connects Richard Morrison to Jim Webb. Granted, I think they're both great stories that deserve to be told. But they fail to match up as adequate parallels as I read through the book. Morrison's campaign was far less of an internet phenomenon than Webb's, though Morrison certainly benefited some from putting together a national network that would love nothing more than to stick it to Tom DeLay. It also deserves to be pointed out that Morrison's campaign could be viewed as unable to track what online success it had with a real-world showing on Election Day, where his improvement was marginally better than the 2002 nominee's showing. I suspect there's a far better tale that could have been told of this campaign, but wasn't.

Webb's campaign is another that warrants far more attention that it likely will ever get. And I think this part of the book is a bit better in telling the story of the campaign. Webb's success goes far beyond the lone "macaca" moment that will live on forever and the details get fleshed out here. The connection to the Virginia and national blogosphere are (so far) told well, and the ability to show how it converts to real world campaigning is touched on. Yes, there are blogospheric names dropped along the way, but it strikes me as more central to the narrative.

Ultimately, I realize the book comes down to the personal experiences of each author and they stick to the material they know best. But a truer understanding of blog politics might have been derived by connecting the examples of Jim Webb and Paul Hackett (who gets some brief mention). It would also benefit from a better understanding of previous cycles. The book briefly touches on Jerry Brown's 1-800 number that kept him in the game for the 1992 campaign. But no mention is made of Steve Forbes' 1996 campaign or that of McCain's 2000 campaign - both of which are significant aspects of the rise of internet-based politics.

4. Unexpectedly, I found the non-Morrison parts of Nate's "Texas side of the story" much more compelling. It might just be due to my own blog going back to 2002, or that it approaches my own history of seeing the need to dive back into politics after the Florida recount. Whatever the cause, Nate offers a decent recap of the state of Texas Democrats after 2002. There are some minor quibbles that I can count in there, but I'm sure they only rank as quibbles because I know Nate and see a bit too much of his own prickly personality in there.

5. There's an uneven feel to the book as it strives to capture some fraction of the national trend in blog politics. Again, it just seems that examples are shoehorned in at the expense of creating a compelling story. The book doesn't quite measure up to either Trippi's or the Markos/Jerome effort to tell the national side of the story, but I don't think it sets out to try.

6. By way of example for #5, I think the Wes Clark experience is vastly overblown in this book ... and by countless others beyond this book. The only reason, I suspect that it survives, is that some key people were involved in the draft movement. If there's one thing you learn quickly about politics, it's that the people who show up tend to move up ... no matter how unjustified it may be. But ultimately, Wes Clark's example is one of yet another ego-driven candidate who gets lured by the promises of said key people (consultants and activists alike). It's one of the cruelest sports in the game of politics, leveraging the ego of a potential candidate into work for those doing the leveraging.

It should be pointed out, for example, that the same tack was taken with Gary Hart. Yet no mention here of his fleeting temptation with the 2004 race. Not enough "key people" doing the drafting there. So the story whithers on the vine. And what of all those abortive or hopeless campaigns that were supposed to chart a new course for internet politics? Pete Ashdown of Utah, for instance? Andrew Rasiej's longshot campaign for NYC Public Advocate? The internet-promising campaigns for DNC chair by Simon Rosenberg and Donnie Fowler?

There are some cautious lessons to take from each of those, yet they get lost in the march toward triumphalism. They also get lost on the march to tell stories about campaigns that make money. Again, the book is written by political consultants (an affliction I share with them). It's easy to gloss over the notion that getting paid sometimes takes precedence over learning the right lessons from the overall experience.

All of the examples I list two paragraphs up lost convincingly and probably never had a chance. Yet whenever someone advocating the use of the internet for campaigns, the examples never come up. Instead, candidates are told they can raise the same money Howard Dean raised. They're told they can leverage "Facebook politics" the way Barack Obama does. They can benefit from oversized coverage the way Jim Webb did for George Allen's "macaca" moment. And then, win or lose, the invoices are cut.

I think the lessons of internet politics deserve to get told (and argued over) and the successes and failures deserve to be meted out more thoroughly than we've seen yet. I serve as neither a triumphalist, nor as a naysayer. My own advice to any candidate about engaging the internet is to do it, but not to overdo it ... and certainly not to bet big that you're going to be an internet star. Like a good musician, you should play for the intrinsic value of what you're doing. If you have all the success in the world from it, enjoy the ride. But if you don't, it shouldn't take away from the endeavor.

So there's my overview. I'm not sure how many parts I'll approach as a followup, but I definitely want to dive a bit more into the course that the Texas blogosphere has taken up till now and maybe one that spells out another course. Whether it serves as an alternative course that exists side by side or one that should be used instead of the current course, I leave to the reader - the ultimate member of the blogosphere. There's also, I think, a story to be told of why the overall rise and use of internet politics has happened in the way that it has. So don't say you were warned that I've got a few more things to add to this. Look for a few piecemeal updates today and I'll try to expand on a few points made here.