The political weblog -- the early days

In four years, this will all be standard stuff. But it's interesting that this election cycle, it is the underdog campaigns that seem to be jumping all over the weblogging medium. Kucinich just announced his weblog. Deanhas his. Hart still blogs despite being out of the race. Heck, even Jerry Springer is in on the blogging bandwagon.

There may be more out there. What's interesting is that none of the "frontrunner" campaigns are employing weblogs. I get the sense none of the big name consultants running those campaigns consider blogs to be anything more than hacker playthings, not worthy of serious consideration.

I spoke with Terry McAuliffe on Friday (more on that later). One thing that struck me was his embrace of the medium. The Democratic Party gets the weblog, and the power it has in nurturing and growing the party's grassroot. Among things he promised was blogger interviews of top party officials (paging Liberal Oasis!). In other words, just as the party sends out its top elected officials to make the cable news rounds and editorial boards, so too will they send them out for blogging interviews.

Of course, we must translate a promise into practice, and there's much work left to do. But the framework is there. The understanding is there.

Blogging will allow the party's grassroots to connect with the party and its top representatives in a way never before possible. The party is starting to get it. And, not to be shy about it, $15,000 in two weeks had a lot to do with it.

It's all very early. It's all very rough. At this point, the "official" political weblog remains the exclusive domain of the underfunded or underappreciated candidate. It won't stay that way for long.

Posted June 23, 2003 02:59 AM | Comments (19)