I am trying to compile a list of local liberal bloggers from around the country - blogs that have at least 20-30% local content or focus, ideally more, toward mutual self-help and advice on local development.
So I am seeking your help.
My own focus and, arguably life, have been very provincial. I come from Maryland, a rather blue state and socially my own network from my life-long home is very "blue" - very blue-state Yankee. While I don't eat crabs, I am ashamed that I don't, but it's seafood allergy, which in MD makes me permanently a non-candidate for public office. A few of the diaries I have written have expressed a cold, borderline hostile sensibility towards Red State America, up to the willingness to acquiesce or even delight in a hypothetical secession of the more conservative states from our country.
While I am proud to have liberal social values and proud to have had nothing to do with the election (selection?) or reelection of Team Red to the White House, while I am not really much of a drinker, paraphrasing Faulkner I must have been "drunk" [metaphorically] when I wrote some of the more bitter, partisan things I have written here at DKos. A little even temperament goes a long way.
It was a blue-state Yankee, the VERY Yankee Howard Dean, who championed the 50-state solution that led to the tearing of Republican garments and the gnashing of their owners' teeth. The new victories were not all in Red states but many were. Those victories did not come because of hard-headed narrow-mindedness like mine. So to those I may have offended in my more severe screeds, I exclaim mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
For my blog Crablaw Maryland Weekly which focuses largely on Maryland issues, I am putting together a proposed 50-state+ blogroll of moderate-to-liberal individual, group and community blogs. Ultimately, I would expect to link these blogs up by a common piece of JavaScript for each participating blog to install, so that we can get to know each other better. Not necessarily so that folks in Arkansas can drink deep about our local Maryland fights over school funding or transit infrastructure, but so that we can understand each others' communities, mindsets and blogging cultures better, cross-pollinate more. That way, morons like myself will be a little less provincial and strident, and may even cease being morons altogther (though don't hold your breath...:-))
It's my hope and belief that this idea will further the mission of Daily Kos: the development of Democratic and, by extension, moderate-to-liberal political community. To the extent that what I am proposing here does not support Daily Kos' goals, I would ask DKos management/admin to counsel and guide me on how to conform myself to "house rules." But I think this supports DKos' goals.
I am hoping to get one each in the categories of individual blog, group blog (like MyDD, for example) and community blog like DKos for each state plus DC and Puerto Rico. (MyDD and DKos run off of the same Scoop engine, but I think it's fair to categorize them differently.) That's 156 entries (153 additional since I have in mind 3 for Maryland my Maryland already...) Since 156 is a large number to handle, I would think of breaking the group down by the three categories into lists of 52, which is a bit more manageable, each such list being put into a simple, attractive blog-friendly JavaScript "deck" of 52 links, called the "Full Blue Deck," to be installed into their HTML by the blogs who want to participate for fun and profit (well, fun at least...) I am not a black-belt in JavaScript but am haltingly competent; Blue tech allies among us could certainly make it great. These lists could also link back either to this diary, edited to include the full set of all 3 decks, or to some host site or page somewhere else to list all of the "cards" of all of the "decks."
If desired, we could ultimately turn the "deck" idea into a bigger draw, with more of an emphasis on who is the Ace of Hearts and what Red blog gets nominated to serve time as the designated "joker," etc. Or turn it into a Tarot card gag. Not everything has to be serious; just because Bob Johnson has no sense of humor doesn't mean we all have to be glum every damn day....
To keep the traffic manageable and orderly, I would be grateful for Kossacks who are interested to nominate local blogs for consideration in the following manner: in your header, please put the state/jurisdiction 2-letter abbreviation and the category of blog, e.g. "AZ Group", "DC Community", etc. (Subject to any guidance or directive from admin, of course.) For larger states, there may well be intense debates about local liberal-to-moderate blogging life.
My own preference is for blogs that
- handle the whole state (easier in Maryland than e.g. in Florida);
- post regularly and robustly, ideally daily or more with strong content;
- track both substantive policy issues and horse-race politics from a Democratic viewpoint and at least inches left of the policy 50-yard line on most issues, with broad allowance for local realities, no matter what damnYankees like me think about it;
- are owned, run and staffed by people who REALLY know their state;
- are independent of any other organization; and
- do a good job of making their state's peculiarities more known to out-of-state readers.
I don't claim to have a full idea on how to develop this further, but I think it's a winner. Let me now throw it out to the Kossack readership: what bloggers track local political life well in your state? Who will be part of the "52-card" winning full blue deck of blogs for the coming 2 years? Thanks very much in advance for playing!