Why ?
Prompted by comments in this thread by OH-02, I am left wondering why ?
Why would kos and his merry gang focus energy, time and money on Lamont and CT rather than Ohio and DeWine ?
If by some miracle Lamont wins the primary, is the national blogosphere going to expend it's energy getting a Dem elected to a safe Dem seat in CT ? And what if Lieberman does jump and go indie ? Then we probably lose a safe Dem seat.
I'm left wondering why not go after DeWine in Ohio. We have a candidate as, if not more, progressive than Lamont, clearly supported by Armstrong against someone who really does support Bush and his agenda far more than Lieberman.
This for me highlights in bright lights the fundamental problem with amateurs devising election strategy.
The strategy of the big box blogs just doesn't make any sense.
First, as you well know, regardless of what bloggers say the netroots aren't going to rally around Brown -- he can't be trusted.
Second, a unified blogosphere focusing on Connecticut this summer is the best way to test new tactics for general elections this fall. The day after Portman resigned, the first big box post on OH-02 was focused on using the campaign to test new tactics. In the special election, there were two grassroots videos ("what a difference a day makes" and "keep your eye on the ball"). In the Connecticut race, there are new videos almost every day. The team approach the Ohio blogs demonstrated in the senate primary over the winter I believe has gone even further in Connecticut with linking expanding beyond words to multimedia.
Third, no matter what happens in November, Bush has another two years and needs have Democrats unite in treating him like a Lame Duck. Lamont may win or lose, but Lieberman is now billing himself as a "scathing critic" of Bush. While Lieberman has undermined Democratic message, Max Baucus is the Democrat who has done the most to undermine policy. Max is up in 2008 and is watching Connecticut like he watched this year's MT-Sen primary where the victor was outspent 2:1. The message is getting through to Beltway Democrats that they didn't earn a lifetime appointment and need to stand up and stand together, Lamont is making this clear as can be.
Fourth, the storyline of a grassroots supported proud Democrat taking on a big money DLC triangulator will also be one of the storylines in the 2008 presidential primary. The Connecticut and Montana senate primaries I believe were both proxy battles in the battle for 2008. While some people think that 2006 is too early to think about this, the DLC was founded in 1985 to get ready for 1988 -- blogs also need to stay a step ahead of the current uproar.
Most Importantly, if DeWine goes down via the blogs it won't be because the national blogs sent an extra $50K to Sherrod. Taking out DeWine will happen because of what all of the great work the Ohio bloggers and netroots are doing. At this point, it looks like you are going to need to do this in-spite of inspiration, which is tough to impossible. But you all invented a lot of this shit, so I'm sure you'll figure something out. I wouldn't be surprised if some great ideas spring from what is happening in Connecticut this summer.
I understand the motivations and the tactics, but the strategy for me is dumb - high risk, low reward. When there are races, perhaps not Ohio, where the reward is high but the risks low.
the message Lamont is sending is one about Iraq from this distance, not standing up as a united caucus.
As for Ohio - I suspect there will be little or no effort to defeat DeWine from the blogs unless something radical changes in the dynamic.
Ohio is a high risk, low reward state. Brown shit on progressive bloggers like nobody other than the DLC has ever tried. Supporting Brown is a sign that career politicians can do whatever they want to the netroots and will still get support because they aren't Republicans.
Connecticut is a low risk, high reward state. Everyone realizes it is next to impossible to knock off a sitting senator in a primary, but Lamont has already won when it comes to democracy before the first vote has been cast. He has already pulled the caucus closer together.
Lamont's campaign reminds me of Hackett's election night speech:
And there isn't enough horse power to translate one off races into a full blown November election - which to me means targeting. Are we going to expend our resources targeting Dems or GOPers ?
When Liberman returns to the Senate as either a dem or an indie, it's going to be one hell of a Pyrric victory for the net roots
there are far worse more vulnerable GOPers than Joe Liberman out there and they are getting a free pass while we have this pissing match in CT.
And it wasn't Brown who shit on the Ohio netroots it was Armstrong's plan - Brown just bought into it, not knowing any better and without any long range thinking at all.
If you had used the post to wonder why the blogs are focusing on CT instead of Montana or Nevada, I think you would have a vailid point.
Watch Nevada, I trust my instincts that this will go from a race that nobody in DC cares about into a top-tier race.
I'm not prepared to let any more people die in Iraq because of petty ante bullshit on a blog or at a Christmas Party. Brown's already paid for that. Either we're a team or we're not. For once I'd like to see us focused on the goal posts instead of stupid internal antics that no one but us cares about.
http://blog.oh02.com/
Great post, although I'd be careful about how one evaluates what works and what doesnt from a blogospheric perspective. The events in which the blogs had the most profound effect on the election have gotten much less play than what's been hyped, like the pointless election day war room, or the last minute fundraising efforts for money when it was already too late for the campaign to spend it. (Baker's law of political blogging: the closer one gets to election day, the less effect blogs have on the outcome.)
Relativity is in full effect. The blogs see effectiveness from the perspective of the blogs.... this post generated a lot of traffic.... this video was linked to a lot. We have no way of generating metrics of how that translates on the ground. Now I'm not trying to discount online videos, just pointing out that on the ground results is all that matters.
My own emphasis is on shifting the local political landscape, NOT the number one goal on many political blogs which seems to be hyping the blogosphere.
(What follows is a long rambling post of self agrandizement. Please forgive a tired warrior in his last days.)
As an example of what I'm talking about I'll write a little about the thing that I'm second most proud of: July 6th 2005 - Score Another Point for Schmidt. This post was long before the race was receiving much in the way of national attention, although Tim was already ramping up big time. (I just blogged about that synergy here.)
I had learned that for their first debate the Hackett campaign had made the boneheaded move of accepting the Schmidt campaigns terms of media coverage for the debate, which were that Fox News was given exclusive rights over recording the event. As soon as I learned about it I started hammering the college and the news agencies on this. (This means emails and phone calls, NOT blog posts.)
At first only Fox was going to show up, but on the day of the event another TV station camera crew had shown up. Fox News had scrambled from the exclusive rights charge because of the negative connotations of being in league with the Schmidt campaign and I was allowed to bring in my handy little IRiver mp3 recorder.
My recorder picked up this exchange between Schmidt and Hackett. The Hackett campaign was able to use that sound clip to raise thousands from pro-choice groups. But that isn't the most significant thing about that recording: Ann Driscoll noticed the much more moderate stance that Schmidt was striking on Abortion in the general. The right wing sight Free Republic picked up on Driscoll's comment and wanted proof, which I was happy to provide ;-) . Many Republicans were wary of Schmidt because of her support for Bob Tafts sales tax increase as a State Representative. Schmidt being a Rino on abortion made a lot of people worried about her wingnut bonifides.
Soon the Hackett campaign received a call from the southern Ohio extremist anti-tax group COAST asking if what they had heard about Schmidt and abortion was true. They provided the audio. COAST ended up spending $100,000 on a stay home radio buy before the election with the goal of letting Hackett win so that they could beat him again next election.
Hacketts strident pro-choice position was one of the major reasons why he got the support he did from people around the country. That direct quote was cited many times on blog posts. Luckily it was available to people. I take a certain amount of credit for that.
One little audio clip. Never talked about. Never considered significant from a tactical perspective. But it's what really counts in focused local blogging. Not hype...rainmaking. Being ready to take advantage of opportunities instead of waiting for the media to lay them down on your doorstep. Not just being trapped in the game of US vs THEM but being deft enough to use new media and technology to unify your forces and foster dissent within your enemy's. THAT to me is tactics.
(Note the similar tactics employed by the right against Busby in the CA-50.)
As for the thing that I'm most proud of, that would be privately encouraging Eric Minamyer to blog. Eric raised Hackett a quarter of a million dollars :-)
In the end nothing we did could make up for the lack of vision or support from the DCCC. We brought our A game... they didn't show up till the final minutes of the last quarter.
http://blog.oh02.com/
It is more than making noise, it's about making opportunities that effect votes on the ground.
The Debate audio and the Busby audio are classic examples. I keep trying to tell every campaign that will listen to RECORD EVERYTHING.
I don't go anywhere without my little voice recorder, and usually a camera.
Brigham's law of political blogging: it is at the beginning and end of campaigns that national blogs leverage the greatest influence.
I'm pretty sure I was the first blogger to write about the special because I felt that early interest was like yeast and the dough rising and all that.
The early interest in a special election is why some dude started a blog to follow it, and the late interest is what brought the dough for Hackett to have more points in radio and TV than Schmidt.
But the real work got done by you during the time between the initial interest and the final push. You all did the real work like you will be doing this year. It was the local blogs that created the communications infrastructure necessary for Hackett to become competitive in the eyes of those in DC.
Yes, but everyone learned a lot. I'll bet you dinner that you'll admit you were a helluva lot better blogger at the end of the special than at the beginning.
I don't see Sherrod gaining lots of blog money, but the intrinsic nature of the blogs isn't cash but communications. You don't need 10,000 out of staters to communicate in the senate race, you actually need less bloggers than you have.
Who knows, maybe the Ohio bloggers can turn this around in spite of Brown, in which case the national crowd could do what they do best and come in at the last minute.
Absolutely. It was reading that post that got me the idea to purchase the domain oh02.com. I was originally going to blog on my own Congressional district (the 3rd with Mike Turner). I'd been talking to people locally about the need for focused local blogging for months before that, but never from the perspective of the special election. That totally changed the dynamics. It was pure luck that my first event was also Paul Hackett's first public event.
Right now I'm trying to decide what to do about the 2nd. I'm hoping to get more local involvement since I can't devote the level of energy I did during the special.
True, but I don't think my blogging skills changed nearly as much as my profound appreciation for what still needs to be done. Our tools are so primative. There is so much pontential that we aren't leveraging. The big trap that I try to avoid is by overemphasizing the importance of the current state of blogging itself. We are making a difference, but as of yet our chords still do not ring true.
As for Brigham's law, we'll have to debate that another time. I see blogs as artillery and commons builders, not the front line soldiers. We alter the terrain and give people the weapons, but in the end it's not our job to charge the front lines.
http://blog.oh02.com/
in tool building mode. I don't see any attraction to blogging the Congressional races right now. So much of it would be trying to force them to go in ways that they are too scared to go. It's really a long term thankless task.
Right now I just feel a profound need for next generation tools. Things that allow more people to connect easier to the local things that they care about. Everything is interconnected and yet we view things through the 2 dimensional filter of the blogs. While it's great for wasting energy bashing each other it is very inneffective at promoting change. We raised a fortune for Hackett and what did it really matter. Giving money to television stations is not may recipe for change.
I want more, and I think that it's possible to build tools that can make that happen. Since I consider myself a rather skilled programmer why should I waste my time bashing Schmidt or Turner on a site that almost no one reads? Isn't there a more productive use of my time?
http://blog.oh02.com/
Hackett was the one lucky candidates who comes around once in a generation. I didn't realize Hackett was Hackett until well into the general, hell, Tim liked Vic.
You followed your instinct with OH-02, you might want to follow it for the 3rd.
I see blogs as recruiters and snipers. It is the people talking to their friends and neighbors who are on the front lines, but there is a role for blogs in blowing the whistle.
http://blog.oh02.com/
http://blog.oh02.com/