Lone Star Democracy Builders Association

The Blogosphere: Insiders versus Outsiders gave me the first hint that there was something more going on with blogs than I could articulate. Here's the key observation:

The right blogosphere operates largely as part of the greater Republican message machine. Many of its bloggers are already part of that infrastructure, working as journalists for conservative publications, writing books and lecturing. Independent bloggers on the right hail from all walks of life, but the leading voices are either part of the political machine itself, like Mike Krempasky of RedState, or closely connected to the conservative media and think tank infrastructure, like Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin and the PowerLine bloggers. [...] As Garance Franke-Ruta writes in the April issue of The American Prospect, the right-wing blogosphere has also recently become useful to long-established political operatives such as Morton Blackwell, mentor to iconic GOP campaign strategists Karl Rove and Lee Atwater.

The article by Franke-Ruta is called Blogged Down, and it scares me silly. The Right is basically using the blogs in its camp to attack the mainstream media, and they're succeeding. They're also operating Internet Activist schools that train young conservatives on how to blog effectively, including presenting themselves as just average folks instead of conservative activists.

If there's one thing I've learned from our ongoing examination of how the Right works, it's that we shouldn't ignore tools they find useful. But since we don't want to be them, how are we using these tools differently?

You can read the Franke-Ruta for one example: the takedown of Jeff Gannon/Jeff Guckert, the bogus reporter who got press access to the White House. Franke-Ruta says this is an example of how the left blogosphere goes after conservative activists, whereas the right targets the independent press. I have my own reservations about how independent the press is, but I take his point.

Ted on Crooked Timber suggests that:

I suspect that, to the extent that this is helpful, it’s more about creating a community of activists than it is about the blogs in and of themselves. I strongly suspect that a person who starts and maintains a political blog is likely to end up significantly more involved as an activist (volunteering, donating, making calls and emails to politicians and media) than the same person would be if he hadn’t started one.

(His post was triggered by Focus on the Family encouraging its members to start socially conservative blogs. Again I say, if they think it's useful, let's not ignore it.)

And then let's talk about blogging in Texas. As I mentioned in one of my posts yesterday, the Harris County Democratic Party has supported a group of bloggers to start Houston Democrats in an effort to make more information available about local events and action opportunities while energizing Party members.

Texas Tuesdays, the domain name for which seems to have gone bonk temporarily, was a successful group effort by a group of Texas bloggers to highlight and funnel campaign donations to Democratic candidates all over Texas for the 2004 election. This mirrors the success of some of the large national blogs like DailyKos in raising funds for candidates across the country.

Finally, I've been noticing lately that Texas candidates for office, including Chris Bell, are arranging phone conferences with "prominent" political bloggers like Charles Kuffner and Amanda Marcotte while planning their runs. Mark Strama is hosting a discussion session with bloggers at Democracy for Texas about how blogging affects the work done by legislators. These folks believe that bloggers are a valuable constituency.

So if we want to get involved and share ideas, blogging is one way to get into the conversation.