Over at the New York Times's Campaign Stops blog, Ron Klain wonders about the influence that blogs hold over politics. Looking at the Democratic race, he sees that liberal blogger favorites like Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd all failed in their bids despite apparent widespread support within the blogosphere. Klain doesn't talk about it, but this applies to Republicans as well. Fred Thompson had tremendous support among conservative bloggers, but that failed to translate into meaningful votes in the primaries. And it's hard to find another candidate this campaign cycle who has more online support than Ron Paul, although he hasn't achieved much beyond single-digit support.
Our friend Captain Ed takes issue with Klain's assertion that blogs have had "impressive electoral success," arguing that "I see no evidence that the blogosphere has had 'impressive electoral success' anywhere" I would dissent somewhat with Ed's argument. The investigative work over at Little Green Footballs to expose the CBS Bush Army National Guard memos as fake was a huge breakthrough for the Bush campaign. Even locally, Daschle v. Thune, Sibby Online, and this blog (run, at that time, by Jon Lauck, Steve Sibson, and Jason Van Beek, respectively) had a tremendous influence on the Senate campaign and sometimes served as a gut-check for the Argus Leader's political reporting. Several national media outlets recognized the contributions of the Dakota Blog Alliance, including the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, and the Economist, and also generated support among conservative talk radio (Laura Ingram visited South Dakota in early October of 2004) and national blogs like Power Line and Instapundit. South Dakota bloggers drove stories like Tim Giago's third-party bid, Daschle's retreat on the balanced budget amendment, Daschle's flip on abortion, inconsistency on the Iraq War, "huggergate," "mansiongate," "pillowgate," and the eleventh-hour lawsuit against Thune. Political scientist Bill Richardson concluded that the "blogs' success in getting all the news out about Daschle's [lawsuit was] an obvious illustration" of blog influence, and proved "highly visible, effective and damaging to Daschle" (quoted in Jon's book, p. 210).
Ed, however, does make an excellent point about blogs being better with policy issues rather than campaigns. Pork, immigration, and other issues are great topics because blogs are about ideas, delving, as Ed put it, "into detail and utilizing rhetoric to motivate and to persuade." I think this is correct. Blogs are probably at their best when enlightening people about policy issues, and if a politician decides to promote policies promoted on blogs, then perhaps blogs may boost the candidate who chooses to champion them.
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