What I Meant By My "10 Trends of Political Blogging"

At the O'Reilly Emerging Democracy Conference on February 9th, 2004, I spoke about 10 Trends of Political Blogging, but some of my points were not too clear -- so I wanted to explain them. (One thing I missed completely which I think will have a lot of impact this year is the gay marriage issue.) Alll my new comments are in italics.

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I think these are the issues that will matter this election year.

1. Political blogs are simply political. Regular-people-telling-the-truth-about-their-lives blogs are subversive and radical. [I love to read the politico-blogs but learn more about the way the country is going from the day-to-day blogs.]

2. The blog swarm giveth, the blog swarm taketh away. (What bloggers write about -- jump all over -- swarm all over -- put at the top of the charts -- these issues can define the discussion, not because they are necessarily more correct, more fascinating or more important -- but because they are so FAST AND FRESH.) [Let's watch and see how this affects the elections at key junctures.]
3. FDR: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Bush: "We have nothing so profitable as fear and fear itself." [Nothing has given this administration free reign like the terrorism and anti-patriotic memes. Making people fearful has allowed them to write blank checks and condemn anyone who disagrees with their policies as anti-American.]

4. Cheney is not, and never has been the Vice President. [See this link to a conversation between Imus and Andrea Mitchell. They were talking about Karen Hughes leaving as Bush's right-hand person and whether Mary Matalin might want to leave Cheney to work for Bush. Mitchell's comments make it clear the Mary would be crazy to leave the guy who's really running things -- Cheney -- to work for the mouthpiece guy -- Bush. When I said this, I meant Cheney has been behind everything and he's never been visible and the press has done a completely lousy job of uncovering what the heck he IS DOING. Cheney is all about power -- in the way corporate bigwigs are all about power and operate often with no regard for the welfare of others, the country or the environment. He's never been a politician, with some altruistic sense that he's serving the people. And I can't believe how the media have allowed him to remain untouchable and un-reported-upon.]

5. "It's the credit card economy, stupid." [I'm referring to two things here. 1. the indebted middle class and, 2. Bush's ballooning deficit. More people are in more debt than ever before and this will mean a lot of bankruptcy and a lot of shaky economic ground for the evaporating middle class. These people will be wild cards in the election. Also, Bush's deficit blindness and pretending not to notice what all that debt will do to the future of the country will cost him moderates and many Republicans, I think.]

6. There are no more Democrats. There are no more Republicans. [All the core constituencies of both parties are getting very shaken up. Unions are hardly leading the Democratic agenda these days. Fiscal conservatives seem to be out of step with top Republican initiatives. I think we're seeing a transformation of politics away from a binary model and I'm not at all sure where we are headed, but we may be looking at more than 2 parties and even then, the Dem and the Reps will not be who they were even two decades ago.]

7. We should kiss Europe's ass for reminding us who we are as a nation and who we must be and who we can not be. [The push-back from Germany, France and others in Europe about going into Iraq doesn't seem so crazy anymore.]

8. Remember the video of the LA Riots -- dads smashing store fronts, moms carrying away jumbo pack diapers. [This economy will not recover this year and this will make things very polarized this summer.]

9. The Diebold Riots will not be pretty. [If there's any sense that voting procedures are the least bit fishy, all hell will break loose.]

10. Blogs opened our hearts, our minds, our lives. Dean opened our hopes. Meetup opened our homes. Can you spell C-O-M-M-U-N-I-T-Y? There is no going back. [Blogs are letting us share the stories of our lives. When we start realizing that others are going through the same difficulties that we are -- average joe blogger guy not getting a job unrelated to his personal skills, but because there ARE no jobs -- not being able to pay their bills, not because they are personally lazy, but because many people are having trouble paying bills in this economy -- not being able to pay their taxes because wealthy people made out under the Bush plan and average joe and 100's of his friends are also getting screwed -- all of that adds up, taking any reasonable thinking person from the PERSONAL to the POLITICAL. Blogs let you stop and think, "Hey, wait a minute ... maybe this is bigger than me."]