There’s no doubt about the power of blogs in politics, but there is a lot of skepticism about that power. The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney has this piece today about the powerful liberal blog DailyKos’ first annual convention, the YearlyKos, held in Las Vegas starting on the 8th and continuing through today. A who’s who of the Democratic party has showed up in force to woo the bloggers, including Mark Warner, Howard Dean (video of Dean’s speech here), Tom Vilsack, Barbara Boxer and others. LinkTV has video coverage of the event here, including video of a panel devoted to net neutrality featuring MyDD’s Matt Stoller (during which he said “villifying Mike McCurry is important” because “it’s corruption on our side.”).
Although the party leaders came to Las Vegas to win friends among the bloggers, they’re still not comfortable with the unpredictable sway that these scribblers hold.
If there is an emerging consensus among much of the Democratic Party establishment, it is that blogs are an important, potentially crucial emerging power in American politics, as reflected by the turnout of Democratic leaders here this weekend. What is less clear is how mainstream politicians like Mr. Warner — or the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who gave an address Saturday night — will grapple with an audience that has defined itself in part by its dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians.
In some respects, the political bloggers at YearlyKos are viewed as wealthy crazy relatives who need to be handled.
Steve Soto, who writes The Left Coaster blog, said that the Democratic leaders running the campaigns to win the House and Senate “are still treating the blogs and some of the advice from them about message and focus as unwanted solicitations from crazy relatives.”
Mr. Warner, in an interview, said: “Some consultants are still stuck in a 2004 mindset — they still think, ‘Is this just a new way to raise some money over the Internet?’ This community absolutely resents that. They absolutely see themselves as ideas, energy, and they want to be part of the debate.”
One thing is clear: this gathering of bloggers also drew widespread press coverage, with one writer suggesting the ratio of attendees to mainstream journalists was eight to one.
There are some that conform to type: thirtyish and pale, sloppily dressed and bleary-eyed. Those are the journalists. There are a lot of them. One organizer put the ratio of conference-goers to reporters at eight to one, which seemed high until I visited one workshop that managed to score drive-bys from the Chicago Tribune, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Salon, The New Republic and the American Prospect. At one point the room held more representatives from the New York Times (three) than workshop leaders (two).
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:42 AM|Comments(1)
Link TV has been posting video clips of Yearly Kos here: http://www.linktv.org/yearlykos/
Longer segments with better video controls are posted here: http://www.fora.tv/
You may need to register for an account for the searchbox to work properly on Fora TV. When I searched, I found this one: http://fora.tv/fora/search.php?s...p? searchid=489#
Posted by: breakingranks at June 11, 2006 9:10 PM
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