Things I am Thinking About: Yearly Kos Edition

by: Julia Rosen

Mon Aug 06, 2007 at 12:23:53 PM PDT

Topics covered below the jump: diversity, Paul Hogarth and Clinton, the media and local blogging.

• Diversity.  kid oakland did an amazing job with limited resources to bring 17 bloggers, including our own Matt Ortega to the convention.  This column in the WaPo does a good job at getting at some issues that we are struggling with coming out of the convention.  See also Jen's post on Open Left and Chris Bower's insightful piece today.  Bottom line, we need more action to increase the diversity in the blogosphere, with specific steps for outreach than has happened in the past.

  Here is an excerpt from the WaPo article, featuring our very own Jenifer Ferandez Ancona

  Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, who is part Latina, attended a panel on Friday called "The Changing Dynamics of Diversity in Progressive Politics," organized by Cheryl Contee, an African American woman. Ancona works for Vote Hope, a California-based activist group, and said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: "Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?"

  Everyone agrees it's a problem, yet no one is sure how to address it. Historically, the progressive movement has included a myriad of special-interest and single-issue groups, and the challenge has always been to find common ground. The same is true on the Internet, but with an added twist. The Internet, after all, is not a "push" medium like television, where information flows out, but a "pull" medium, where people are drawn in.



• Paul Hogarth's question for Clinton.  Paul has a recommended diary at Daily Kos right now on the question he asked of Clinton during the breakout session.  He was the only one to get an aggressive question and it was a good one.  It has sparked a great deal of controversy over what Clinton was trying to do with her time at the convention.  Ari Melber has an excellent overview of the convention at the Nation.

  Yet Clinton strained to mold her meeting back into a controlled event. She was the only candidate to use her staff as a buffer, tapping her Internet director, Peter Daou, to pick questions and bringing three other senior aides onstage, though none of them spoke. She filibustered most of the time, taking more than eleven minutes to answer the first question alone--a simple query about fixing the unpopular No Child Left Behind Act. That softball came from an official with the National Education Association, who either didn't know or didn't care that this scarce time was carved out for bloggers and activists without insider access, not for interest-group sponsors.

  Then Clinton only took five more questions. Iraq never came up. Instead, the issues were the Military Commissions Act, domestic spying, gays in the military, mass transit and, in the most revealing exchange, how a second Clinton Administration might break with the centrist legacy of the first. Paul Hogarth, a 29-year-old California blogger for BeyondChron, asked if Hillary would repeal NAFTA, welfare reform, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) or the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Clinton strongly defended DOMA--saying only that the provision hindering federal benefits should be axed. She conceded that NAFTA did not achieve all its aims but offered only "labor and environmental standards" and more "ongoing monitoring" of the effect on working people. She depicted welfare reform as a net gain and then ducked the Telecommunications Act altogether, telling attendees she was no expert and "you'll have to ask Al Gore" about it, since he oversaw the issue for the White House. Trying to pin one of her husband's controversial policies on Al Gore--the antiwar, green, tech-savvy hero of the blogosphere--at a netroots convention is probably the single most tone-deaf thing Clinton has done this year, but few attendees appeared to dwell on it.

  Hogarth was not impressed, saying her answers deserved a D grade. "People are really nostalgic about the Clinton years based upon who is President now," he said, yet "Bill Clinton got re-elected by completely betraying Democrats on everything they stand for."



• Journalists and bloggers.  Best headline of the day has to go to my uncle "Why Do We Suck? and Other Questions Political Journalists Asked Themselves at YearlyKos".  The Chronicle article on Hillary aside, the media coverage of the convention was rather good.  I know of a number of people that had conversations with very knowledgeable and interested journalists.  While we were a curiosity and they discovered we were not rabid sheep last year, they were much more engaged in figuring out how and why we were effective this year.


• Local blogging.  There were a number of great sessions on the unique struggles of state blogging.  It was an excellent opportunity to do a broader sharing of best practices that kid oakland has started with Blogs United.  Calitics is on the cutting edge in a number of regards, but we have a lot to learn from other folks.  We are behind in terms of regional diversity, engagement with politicians and frankly traffic.  There is a lot of work to be done, but I learned a lot at Yearly Kos and feel confident we will grow exponentially between now and the next convention.