We’re going to read a lot in the coming days about how Jim Webb’s victory in the Senate primary is, in fact, a victory for bloggers. But that’s wrong or, at best, a vast oversimplification.
Taking that on its face, that sentiment would dictate that many voters were swayed by what they read on blogs. I have an extraordinarily difficult time believing that very many of yesterday’s 155,513 voters have ever read a Virginia political blog in their lives. Our collective readership among Virginia Democrats is perhaps as much as 5% of that. (In fact, I’d argue that pro-Webb blogs may well have helped Miller.)
This line of thought may, instead, be referring to the secondary effects — the memes established and spread by bloggers were picked up by the media and by activists, which helped create a Webb victory. (We saw some of this in Tim Kaine’s 2005 victory.) I didn’t witness the blog-based emergence of any thought viruses that managed to infect the media or a large number of activists, though that may say more about how closely I followed the race than about whether it happened. I’ll allow that it’s possible that we bloggers created or spread concepts that favored Webb, but I don’t know of real mind-bombs that would permit any bloggers to crow about our power.
That said, Webb’s victory is a victory for some people who are, in fact, bloggers. Those two individuals are my friends Lowell Feld and Josh Chernila, of Raising Kaine. While they each are best known as bloggers, they are about to be better known as citizen activists.
I first heard about Webb as a potential candidate in late October. Before I knew it, both Lowell and Josh had seen the wisdom of a Webb candidacy; within weeks they’d figured out how to convince the man to run, got together with him, and successfully made their pitch. Having met him, they were both more energized than ever. Their Draft James Webb movement was born by December. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The fact that Josh and Lowell are bloggers is interesting, but it’s not particularly relevant. What’s important is that they’re political activists who saw a good man who they knew would make a good candidate, and they did the extraordinary legwork to persuade him to enter the public arena. The fact that they’re bloggers gave them some credibility, and certainly some experience. But that’s not why Webb ran, and that’s not why he won.
We bloggers deserve no particular credit for Jim Webb’s defeat of Harris Miller in yesterday’s primary. But two bloggers in particular, Josh Chernila and Lowell Feld, deserve a great deal of credit. They’ve shown that blogging is generally just a lot of talking — to effect real change, you’ve got to do something.
I think it’s possible that some of Webb’s unexpected success in heavily-wired Northern Virginia could be from word-of-mouth spread from people who followed the campaign online, but I don’t think anyone will ever be able to say for sure. If true, it would be another example of how you need to build from online participation to offline action to have an effect.
I would disagree about the relevance of Josh and Lowell being bloggers, though. The blog is a tool, certainly, rather than being sufficient on its own, but without the megaphone and the large network of having an established blog, I doubt that activism and legwork alone would have done the trick.
It has indeed created an “echo chamber” for the left in some ways.
And I have to offer my unusual caveat that I know nothing about Northern Virginia politics or, for that matter, Northern Virginia.
I did not know the guys @ Raising Kaine where so critical in getting Webb to run . . . I do not know why I did not put two and two together.
I was pretty convince that the echo chamber effect was happening with the blogs, especially when I canvassed, because out in the real world so many strong Ds where saying that they were Miller supporters.
But what I think happened is that those strong Ds (reliable and frequent Democratic voters, but not activists) support was thin, based mainly on the sheer volume of material and TV adds.
So, when they came in to contact with activists (where a healthy percent read blogs or know someone who does) the strong Ds where easily swayed into Webb’s column by the activists and their strong support of Webb. My theory is that Miller did best in places where the Dem organization is weakest (less activists to sway voters to Webb)
Is this true? Can anyone give me feedback on this?
I personally saw this effect happen many times in my precinct, in my family, my girlfriend’s family, and my circle of friends . . .
So anyway, the blogs did have an important affect, though an indirect direct affect, if you know what I mean?
I had the exact same experience. I spent weeks believing that Webb was way, way ahead of Miller (like, 80/20) until I actually started talking to people F2F — that ratio was flipped on its head.
I could definitely see blogs having become the standard communications medium for activists and, consequently, fired-up Webb supporters going forth and spreading the word. Although I didn’t actually encounter much of that, though, again. that may say more about how closely I followed the race than about whether it happened.
I like my little theory, its nice and tidy. who knows if it is true.
Also, concerning the primary, we can not disregard the old fashion national MSM. Their coverage of the race (articles, not WP endorsements), their coverage was pretty much: “this really authentic ex-Reagan aid, war hero guy is going to run against Allen. Oh yeah, a side note, theres some other guy he has to beat before he does that, though.”
I would bet that the people who actually turned out to vote were very newspaper/magazine literate.
Yet again, I think you’re dead right Waldo. I sort of felt the same way after the Kaine campaign. Talking is good to get people fired up, but heads down action is what it takes to win elections. When bloggers realize they can use the web to organize action, instead of just talking, they will have a real impact on elections.
I disagree somewhat. I do think that bloggers often overestimate their influence. But blogs are a tool of communication. How many people, after all, read letters to the editor? Some would say not many people do. But I don’t know a campaign that isn’t happy when one of their volunteers lands a letter on the local newspaper’s letters page.
Likewise, when a newspaper editorial board endorses a candidate, his or her campaign is happy. When the editorial board endorses an opponent, he or she will say endorsements don’t matter.
Everything matters. The endorsements. The letters, the blogs, the phone banks, the lit drops, the door-to-door canvassing. Talking to your neighbor matters. It’s not any one thing that carries an election. It’s doing everything and covering your bases. And that now includes blogging.
I tend to agree. I also see a couple of other correlations, the first is that yes blog readership among primary voters was very low, but, anecdotally, blog readership among the “party activist” is very large (>50% read once a week?). So the pro-Webb and anti-Miller talking points were at least in the head of most activist.
With the above in mind, the campaign was very effective at getting it’s message and talking points out to those who were doing the face to face GOTV.
Another indirect effect may be morale. Again with the above in mind, one, did all of the Webb hype encouraged Webb volunteer/staff/candidate to work harder and longer, increasing the total “output” per person and total number of volunteers, but two, did the Webb hype (the images and comparisons of over 100 Webb supporters showing up to a rally and only a dozen Miller supporters showing up to a similar rally in the same city, Miller showing up at events and being tremendously out numbered, etc.) bring morale down and decrease the overall “output” of each volunteer/staff/candidate of the Miller campaign?
I also counter that the extreme anti-Miller posts perhaps did turn a few people off but these negatives were dramatically over shadowed by the Miller campaign’s own extreme negativity.
“This line of thought may, instead, be referring to the secondary effects — the memes established and spread by bloggers were picked up by the media and by activists, which helped create a Webb victory”
Waldo –
That’s exactly what the line of thought was. In fact, if undecided voters had read the blogs, you’d probably be right. They’d probably be turned off eventually by the attacks on Miller.
Undecided voters didn’t read the blogs, but internet savvy activists DID. The type of peopel who aren’t likely to be turned off by heated debate, but who primary voters look to for guidance in these contests.
Waldo:
A. Thank you. It’s immensely gratifying to be involved in the Webb “Revolution”. Lowell posted an exhaustive thank you over at RK. We’re not used to receiving praise. Quite the contrary, on a daily basis we’re more accustomed to being called everything from “socialists”, to “communists”, to “traitors”, to “cowards”, to “slimeballs”. Jim Webb got called much worse during this primary. Today we get to call him a “Winner”, but we’ve been saying that all along.
B. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think the blogs helped create, coordinate, and excite momentum for Webb, especially in NoVA. Webb won the election, but won the blog war before it started. It was like a civil war battle where one side might have had a ton of cavalry but no riflemen. I mean, Miller never won a strawpoll, he was a speedbump at shadplanking. Webb turned out people at EVERY event across Virginia, every time overwhelming Miller’s presence and very often surmounting Allen’s. The blogs did a lot, but I think sustaining enthusiasm was one of the biggest and best contributions we made.
Major kudos go out to you, VABelle, Wackjob, Vivian Paige, and Not Gretchen Bulova for staying out of the fight and serving to keep things clean. I can’t imagine how bloody this could have gotten if people hadn’t decided early to play referee.
Beside being personally gratified (flattered) by the accolades for, I think waldo hits the nail on the head with this piece. If there’s really a story here, it’s not just that blogs encouraged turnout (Webb and the campaign deserve the credit there), it’s that blogs encouraged and energized volunteers turn out.
i think it was the military folks who remembered Webb fondly who put him over the top
Bloggers have not yet figured out what their role should be in primary contests.
In the general, you can foam and froth and bash your opponent, getting out the message to undecideds who stumble across the post, as well as motivating volunteers to volunteer more.
In primaries, you motivate supporters at the cost of turning off passers-by and alienating bloggers who support the other guy. We saw this happen in the 5th district primary, but no where near as bad as what we saw on RaisingKaine in the past