blogosphere

In the last few days, a number of critiques and profiles were published commenting on new/old infrastructure, the campaign(s), and where we're at as a movement. All are worth the time for those looking to get a better birds eye view of the current political landscape.

• Rolling Stone eviscerates the disasterous "No on Prop 8" campaign. In reading the piece, one gets the overwhelming sense that the No on 8 folks ran the equivalent of John Kerry's Presidential campaign to the field and fundraising savvy Bush-like campaign helmed by the Mormans.
• On Tech President, Clinton internet strategist Peter Daou discusses the Revolution of the Online Commentariat, in which he dissects radical changes that occur in politics when information is put (more) equally in the hands of million.
• While the Obama Transition Team continues to innovate, Micah Sifry wonders if the Obama for America team - who met in Chicago this past weekend to devise the future of the movement - is regressing and killing the very openness and grasroots energy that made the campaign so successful.
• Last week, the Alliance of Youth Movements met in New York. Bizarrely, almost no one I spoke to had ever heard of the conference or the groups involved. There are definitely a lot of groups out there claiming to speak for and/or organize youth. Sometime this year we're going to have to build some stronger connections between groups that attend these kinds of conferences and, say, groups that received money from major progressive donors this last election cycle. In any case, some of the conference panels were live streamed and archived. You can view them all here. (I have not yet done so, though the topics look interesting).
• The Washington Post profiles the American Constitution Society. Created to counteract the conservative Federalist Society, ACS is becoming a powerhouse for producing lefty legal thinkers. I'll have to check my copy of Youth to Power when I get home, but I'm pretty sure that David Halperin, the ED of Campus Progress, had a hand in setting up ACS back in the day.
• The New York Times notes that teenagers are getting hit hard by the economic downturn, limiting their opportunities to raise money for school and develop skills to help them in the workplace.

Update: Jesse Singal from Campus Progress writes in to tell me that they will be shutting down the old CP community blogs and that PushBack Blog Network (PBN) will be a slightly edited, technologically superior version. Makes sense. More when PBN officially launches in the next few weeks.
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Campus Progress just launched PushBack, a new blog community dedicated to giving Millennials a voice in politics. The idea seems to be that the mass media chronically gets the youth vote/activism story wrong and they oftentimes fundamentally misunderstand the habits and trends of Millennials. Pushback will, well, pushback against those narratives through a new blog network run by and for Millennials.

I'm entirely in agreement that the mass media narratives about Millennials need to be challenged vigorously and corrected at every turn. I'd say that's a good portion of what this site has been about these past years, and I certainly welcome the company. At the moment, though, it's not entirely clear to me yet how Pushback is different from the community blogs at Campus Progress. Many of the same names are blogging and the content is far broader than a rapid-response vehicle might suggest.

But the site looks great and the content is interesting so far. I've added them to my RSS feed and to the "Breaking News" feed. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Students at the University of Maryland, College Park are coming out strong for blogosphere favorite Donna Edwards, who is running against Democratic incumbent Al Wynn:

November 12, 2007 (COLLEGE PARK, MD) Students at the University of Maryland, College Park are organizing along with activists, families and other community members from all over Prince George's and Montgomery County to support Donna Edwards in her bid to beat DINO Congressman Al Wynn (MD-4). Edwards is running a strong campaign to unseat Wynn, who consistently sides with Republicans on key votes such as authorizing the war in Iraq, the 2005 bankruptcy bill, Dick Cheney's energy bill, repealing the estate tax, and other pieces of radically conservative legislation.

Wynn is backed by the same Prince George's County political machine that has produced an array of corrupt and out-of-touch politicians in local and state government. He is also helped by hundreds of thousands in oil, nuclear energy, Walmart and telecommunications PAC money.

This is good to see.

Edwards is a blogosphere favorite. Blue Majority - the Act Blue page supported by Daily Kos, Open Left, MyDD and Swing State Project - has raised almost $40,000 for Edwards on the site, and Edwards has raised almost a quarter of a million total on ActBlue. Most bloggers see Wynn's seat as a prime pickup opportunity to replace an extremely conservative Democrat with a progressive fighter. Edwards' chances are good, as she came close to beating Wynn in 2006.

I think this is solid decision on the part of Maryland youth. Hopefully these students will be able to add real value to Edward's campaign, and, by turning out the youth vote for a more progressive representative, and earn young voters and local youth organizers some cred in the blogosphere.

You can read more here at the Free State Politics blog.

Does anyone know if there is an organization in Maryland equivalent to the Bus Project or Forward Montana? I've never heard about Maryland having a solid youth infrastructure, but it is very close to DC (Wynn's district is adjacent to DC, actually) . . . I wonder if any DC groups will throw some resources in to GOTVing young voters in the district.

Regardless, this is definitely something to follow.

A number of people have gotten in touch with me about my recent post on the Maine College Democrats (pretty much all of whom told me I was off base in at least some part of my critique), so I think a follow-up is in order.

On the Video:

It's been made clear to me that this video was intended for use solely at the Maine College Democrats fall convention, and it was used as an introduction to a speech by Congressman Allen (aka white dude in the video). As such, most of my critiques were off base. It's a high-quality video, intended purely as red meat to a small and highly motivated audience. It wasn't meant to convince anyone of anything, and was the right message for its targeted audience. It was great work by the person who put it together - I should hope to see material of that quality consistently from all progressive youth organizations throughout the 2008 cycle and beyond.

On the Blogopshere

It's been made clear to me that my final paragraph seemed to come out of nowhere and make little sense. That sucks - it was a rushed post in many respects and in hindsight it would have come out very differently (or not at all). So here's some more (hopefully coherent) thoughts.

The fact that MyDD, America Blog and SenateGuru 2008 all gave props to the Maine CDA video is a good thing on the whole. It is too infrequent that young organizers get credit in the blogosphere for their good work, and in so much as the quality of this video was so high, it deserves some praise.

So why did I write what I did?

My post was an overreaction to the fact that I hold fairly low (and well known) opinions about CDA and its work. Part of that is the fault of the DNC, part is the fault of those in the leadership of the organization (and to be honest, I'm not sure how much blame to assign to each). College Democrats of America is an underfunded and opaque organization of questionable effectiveness. The fact that they are underfunded is the fault of both the DNC who controls the CDA budget and the state parties who poach funding earmarked for youth outreach and spend it on other projects. That the organization is opaque is both the fault of the leadership and the DNC press office, which keeps a tight lid on things. It's questionable effectiveness comes from a combination of all of these things.

Writing about youth organizing should be a mix of carrot and stick, just like it is for our candidates and our institutions; groups should be praised when they do good, and critiqued when they do bad. When NARAL endorsed pro-choice Republicans over Anti-choice Democrats, the blogosphere didn't sit back and applaud NARAL for promoting pro-choice values. Instead, it was quick to point out the flaws of its strategy in achieving its long term goals. The blogosphere should turn the same critical eye to the work of youth organizations.

I often find it frustrating that within the blogosphere (and all media, really) youth organizing frequently gets boiled down to "college" (even though only 1/5 of 18 - 29 year olds currently attend a college or university). There are many more youth organizations out there than those that work on campuses, and much of the work in turning out more young voters in recent years has focused off campus as much as (if not more than) on. Our understanding of "youth activism" (our = the blogosphere and the media) needs to expand beyond what happens on college campuses just as much as it needs to move beyond the apathy narrative.

I confess, that it also irked me that so much praise (front page coverage on MyDD, America Blog and SenateGuru 2008 is nothing to sneeze at, and many organizations would love to have such coverage) went to something that at the end of the day was really so small - a promotional video meant to be viewed by only a handful of college students in one of the least populated states in the country.

That said, this was clearly the wrong time for me to pick this particular fight. My beef with CDA and the blogosphere's coverage of youth organizing are all separate issues, and I did a disservice to them all when I hurriedly conflated them in my posting. I'm mindful of the benefits of establishing a positive feedback loop between the blogs and youth organizers. CDA did a good job here and I shouldn't begrudge them some deserved praise.

I'm slowly coming back into the real world. I should be back to my normal schedule in the next day or two. Thanks so much to everyone who guest blogged for me. I've been reading the posts and they were fantastic. Here's my latest piece for MyDD. Also, a big welcome to Annie, our new intern.

Last weekend, I wrote about how the progressive youth movement – its organizations and its individual members – were disconnected from the progressive blogosphere. I got some pushback in the comments and elsewhere about that, with criticism generally raising two questions:

• Why do youth groups need to engage the blogosphere?
• How could existing youth org blogs change to make most effective use of the medium?

There’s no one answer to the first question. Not all youth orgs need to engage the blogs, and for different youth orgs, it would make sense to engage different types of blogs for different reasons. As Matt noted in the comments to my post last year, the blogosphere isn’t any one thing, and lumping all blogs in together and saying that “youth orgs need to know what’s going on” isn’t all that helpful. Reading the Daily Kos every day isn’t going to make our youth organizations or their members any more effective than they already are. There are many types of blogs written for a variety of purposes by a diverse range of people. Some of these will be helpful for youth orgs, some won’t.

The Young Democrats, for example, have chapters all over the country. Typically their work (canvassing and GOTVing young voters) is supportive of local candidacies, and often they work on local issues that can be aided by help from the broader progressive community in that area. It would make sense for local chapters to have their own blog (and in fairness, many of them do) that covered YDA Chapter X’s involvement in their local politics. It would make sense for that blog to be in dialogue with local blogs about local issues. There are partnerships to be formed there, local media narratives to change/establish, volunteers to be recruited, etc. And it’s a relationship that could go both ways, benefiting the local blogs, local progressives, and young progressives equally. Such a relationship would also help de-“ghettoize” youth politics, which is frequently siloed away from the activities of the "adults."

Another organization, The Roosevelt Institution, for instance, probably won’t care so much about what YDA is doing or about local candidates. But they’re probably very interested in what policy bloggers are talking about. Reading Ezra Klein, Max Sawicky, Brad DeLong, etc. would be instructional for a lot of RI’s aspiring policy wonks. In this case, the benefits are educational - reading the blogs and creating a forum for discussion on the organization’s own blog serves to educate all members about the intricacies of various policy issues. It will also probably increase their familiarity with the D.C. policy world.

I’m not going to run through each type of organization and what might work best, but there are clearly benefits to be gained for youth organizations to selectively engage the blogosphere based on their goals. The second question – how can existing blogs change to better serve their members and utilize the medium – is the more interesting one to me.

My thanks to all the guest bloggers who have done a wonderful job covering for me this week. Here's my latest MyDD piece.

On Tuesday I attended the Campus Progress National Student Conference.  One of the panels I attended was "Starting an Online Revolution."  It was not a well-attended panel, perhaps because it was the end of the day, or perhaps because Millennials are so immersed in online media that most people felt their time was better spent elsewhere.  One thing that struck me, as I listened to the speakers and their student questioners, was that not a single person - panelist or student - mentioned the blogosphere.  

This wasn't entirely shocking.  According to the latest Blogads survey, 14-30 year olds make up just 16% of the blogosphere, and I've long noticed that most blogs run by youth organizations are disconnected both from each other and from the larger blogosphere.  Campus Progress and Young People For both operate their own internal blog communities, but the content on these blogs frequently runs days (sometimes weeks) behind the regular blogosphere chatter, and rarely responds to what the larger blogosphere is discussing or writes in any way that would indicate the users even read the major progressive blogs.  

In some respects, the lack of interest and effort is understandable.  More young people are politically engaged online through social networks than through blogs.  Students and other young organizers need to go where their peers gather, so much organizing takes place on those sites.  By working on and through social networks, youth organizers are building another branch of the netroots and bringing their fellow Millennials politics.  That is good, and nothing I'm writing here is meant to denigrate that or suggest that it is work that should not be done, or even made second horse to greater blogosphere participation.

On the other hand, the disadvantages are readily apparent.  Youth organizations are not adequately preparing their members for participation in the new political landscape.   There is a political literacy level that is not being met.  Local blogs are increasingly an important piece of progressive infrastructure, and if young organizers aren't reading the major blogs, I'm guessing they're even less likely to know about (let alone how to approach and partner with) local blogs that might be an information resource and outlet for their local activities.  These organizations are also losing the valuable echo chamber/media amplifier and (psychological, intellectual, monetary, volunteer) support network that blogs can provide.  

In short, the progressive youth movement is almost completely disconnected from the progressive blogosphere.  There is very little (it would be hyperbole to say "none") connective tissue between these two subsections of the netroots.

Locked behind the subscriber wall, The Nation reports on an unlikely coalition of student groups uniting under for the common purpose of ending the war in Iraq.

While radical groups have tempered their tone and tactics, mainstream progressive student organizations have become less cautious and more willing to engage in direct action--and all sides, for the first time in years, are eager to work together. "We've realized the war is more important [than our differences]," says Duhalde.

This definitely shines some light on those microgrants that Campus Progress is giving out. If this works out on more than a theoretical level, it could be huge. Imagine, the radical students not driving people away with outrageous tactics that overshadow the message. Imagine the college democrats shedding their image as resume padding wannabe politicos and doing more than issuing press releases with milquetoast messages.

The groups are releasing a manifesto on Monday - which I'm sure people here will be itching to read and deconstruct.

Also interesting reading this morning - Chris Bower at MyDD tried to find the reason that Barack gets lots of support at MyDD, while Edwards is running away with the Dkos straw polls. After digging into the demographic data of the two sites, his conclusion is pretty interesting - MyDD is a far younger community than Daily Kos. Bowers attributes this to the fact that a majority of MyDD writers are under 30, and notes the irony that the young'ns at MyDD are so much more pragmatic and serious than those at dKos. Makes perfect sense to me.

No posting from me for 2 weeks, and now 4 in one day. I guess I'm recharged after the madness of early November and a bad head cold.

I'm about to head out the door to drive down to DC for RootsCamp, but I had to small items two post before I go.

I posted this morning about the DailyKos Community's hostility toward young voters, so it's only fair that i now direct you to a post by Chris Bowers that glowingly reviews the current and future potential of the Millenial Generation to fueling the progressive movement. Nothing new to folks that have been reading us here, but a great piece none the less, and really nice to see it front paged on one of the bigger progressive blogs.

Finally, let me offer some constructive criticism once again to the College Democrats. Don't help your opponents get media coverage, and don't ever repeat their frame.

You probably heard that the College Republicans launched another outrageous stunt last week, offering a "white's only" scholarship at Boston University. The College Democrats responded with a press release.

So the College Republicans received national media attention and sparked debate among young voters and older voters alike. The College Democrats' responded, and got some national coverage. But for every news hit CDA got, they only gave the college republicans even more coverage.

We got whupped again by the more media savvy Republicans.