Last week, I was on MSNBC discussing the 'lefty' blogosphere's angry reaction to the Lieberman debacle. To MSNBC's credit, I wasn't the only blogger they had on to review this issue, Jane Hamsher and Ari Melber also made appearances (you can see all three of us at the bottom of the post. Jane is the cute one.)
The basic media mantra and modus operandi is to treat the 'bloggers' as some subset of civilization, living on the fringes of society, trading secret virtual handshakes - no matter how much the facts disapprove this belief, it persists, strongly.
In fact, I regret part of my appearance because while it is hard to be perfect in live t.v. and I always have a moment after when I realize what I should have said, this time I should have said one of the following things, and been a little clearer about it.
"Bloggers are people, people are bloggers."
Cumulatively in this past election, how many tens of millions of people read blogs, commented blogs or wrote a political blog post? Twenty million? More? And now with mainstream media outlets completely ceasing to be published traditionally, like the Christian Science Monitor, where is the line between journalism and citizen commentary? It's pretty much gone.
Bloggers are just people who make their voices heard virtually by taking advantage of technology. Good blogs and posts and thinking rise up the food chain of the recommended lists, bad ones sink fast (see my Daily Kos account for examples of how to disappear on a popular national blog virtually instantly.
So when idiots on the Hill crow about the bloggers not having any people what they are really saying is that the people don't have any power and since we have the votes, ultimately, we win.
"People have always bitched about Washington DC and politicians, it's just now you can hear us."
I spend the summers north of Boston in the town of Gloucester, every morning in small restaurants like Two Sisters and George's, copies of the Globe in hand, people complain about Washington and the morons who run the place.
These people are not bloggers.
But they too see the lunacy of Lieberman situation.
"The guy campaigned for the other guy, f--- him. He should be thrown out on his ass and that's that."
I heard someone say those words, that's what real people think of the situation, real Democrats. It has nothing to do with being able to cross post and embed a video, it has everything to do with right and wrong. Washington remains the land of the gray and real people don't like it.
The technology that brings millions of people who want more, expect better, think bigger causes anxiety for those who want to hold the power for themselves on their terms -- but history shows us one thing, technology and advancement can be fended off for short periods of time, but once out of the box and plugged in, it never goes back to the way it was.
The title card on my intro should read "Voter Backlash?" instead of "Blogger Backlash?"
"Money talks, anyone know how much Barack raised online?"
Bloggers and online folks bristle when politicians treat the progressive community online as an ATM - we're so much more than that, some cry, we have ideas, vision, strategies, morals.
Well, I beg to differ because let me explain the glory of the $500 million that Obama raised online. Or the $1 million that online activists have raised for Jim Martin in Georgia.
Money talks my friends and the golden rule is whoever has the gold, makes the rules.
We should celebrate the ability the online community has to raise money and target the money, we just have to be disciplined in how and where we raise it. The challenge online is so many people are willing to give $50 here and $50 there.
If you are mad about Lieberman, don't give the DSCC any money, not one penny. Not one penny to Harry Reid or Chris Dodd, ever, ever again. Not one penny.
The big unions or lobbying groups don't keep their power by giving money to those that let them down, they tear apart those who fail them, financially.
Here are the three appearances:
p.s hat tip to Lisa for giving us all the call.