I've been thinking a lot about whether or not the Virginia progressive political blogs were effective in 2009, and I keep coming to the concept that we were "pushing rope." I'll explain more fully in a bit, but first a brief timeline of 2003-2008.2003/2004: Rise of the national blogosphere, fueled by anger/rage at George W. Bush and specifically the Iraq War. Two netroots-fueled presidential candidates, Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, emerge from that, but both ultimately lose. Clark fails to harness the "wild and raging river" of the activists, while Dean gets swamped by it. The result: John Kerry, who goes on and loses to Bush.
2005: By almost all accounts (including Tim Kaine himself), the Virginia progressive blogosphere is highly effective in helping to elect Kaine governor of Virginia. The Virginia progressive blogosphere also helps elect candidates like David Englin (in his primary against 5 other Democrats). On the other hand, the progressive blogs aren't able to boost Leslie Byrne and Creigh Deeds to victory, although both come close. Meanwhile, the national blogosphere pours resources into the Paul Hackett special election in Ohio and nearly pulls a major upset, but pays almost no attention - except for negative attention to Kaine, who they generally don't like - to Virginia.
2006: The national progressive netroots is instrumental in helping Ned Lamont win his primary over Joe Lieberman, but then watches quasi-helplessly as Lieberman defeats Lamont in the general election. In Virginia, the Draft James Webb movement starts on Raising Kaine, turns into an actual campaign, and eventually is victorious in large part thanks to what Webb called his "ragtag army" of 10,000-15,000 progressive grassroots/netroots activists. Among other highlights of that campaign is the breaking of the "macaca" video story on NLS. In addition, the blogs play a major role in laying down a positive "hero" narrative for Webb (both in the primary and in the general) and a "villain" narrative for both Harris Miller (in the primary) and George Allen (in the general). The national progressive blogosphere also provides a great deal of assistance to Jim Webb, both in the primary and general elections. "Netroots Rising," in other words.
2007: In Virginia, the progressive blogosphere works to promote Democratic candidates for House of Delegates and State Senate. However, major rifts develop with Tim Kaine over a wide variety of issues, ranging from his repeal of the estate tax to his support for Dominion Power's agenda to his backing of the "abuser fees" and "regional authorities" in the "transportation monstrosity" (which he signed into law), to his opposition to competitive bidding and a tunnel in the Metro to Dulles project, to his opposition to stem cell research, to his...on and on we go. In the end, Democrats pick up 4 seats each in the House of Delegates and State Senate, but there's a widespread feeling that we could have done a lot better if we had gotten the policies and messaging right.
2008: A good year overall for the Virginia progressive blogosphere, particularly for Raising Kaine/RK, which becomes "Obama Central" and also strongly supports the candidacy of Tom Perriello, both of whom go on to dramatic victories. On the other hand, the progressive blogosphere loses a major battle in the Leslie Byrne-Gerry Connolly primary, and is not able to generate enthusiasm for Judy Feder, who loses badly to Frank Wolf. The progressive blogosphere also promotes Glenn Nye to an extent (I believe I had the first blog posts on him, very early on before anyone had heard about him), and although he wins the election, that has turned out to be a source of significant grief to progressive activists, with Nye voting "no" on major progressive agenda items like "cap and trade" and health care reform. Ugh.
Now, on to 2009. This past winter and spring, the Virginia progressive blogosphere found itself bitterly and deeply divided in the Democratic primary between Brian Moran (endorsed by numerous progressive bloggers, including much of the New Dominion Project crew, Vivian Paige, Eileen Levandoski, etc.), Terry McAuliffe (endorsed by NLS, the three "Draft Webb" co-founders, Dan Sullivan, etc.), and Creigh Deeds (endorsed by Waldo Jaquith, Alan Zimmerman, Ken Bernstein, etc.). The net result? Basically, the blogs neutralized each other, while the battle on the blogosphere mirrored the larger battle of the campaigns, as Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe pounded each other, while Creigh Deeds mainly stayed on the "high road"/out of the way and ultimately cruised to victory, despite probably only having the support of 20% (max) of Virginia progressive blogs by readership numbers. In the end, the most conservative (by far) of the three Democratic primary candidates won. The same thing happened in the LG race, by the way, as the top choices of 90% of Virginia progressive bloggers' (Mike Signer and Jon Bowerbank) lost to their last choice (Jody Wagner). Meanwhile, as one strongly pro-Moran netroots activist said to me, "Terry was able to create a tie, which was a win for him...if Moran had had all the VA bloggers behind him, then he could've gotten national bloggers to come in." But that didn't happen, and the rest is history.
As if all that wasn't depressing enough, there was the general election, and here's where the "pushing rope" metaphor really comes in handy. With the most conservative (by far) Democrat as the nominee, the level of enthusiasm among progressive activists generally, and "lefty" bloggers specifically, was not particularly high. Still, there was a good deal of animosity towards Bob McDonnell to keep many of us going. Just as an example, in October, we posted 91 diaries on Blue Virginia about the governor's race (plus many more on the LG, AG, and House of Delegates races). Out of those 91 diaries, I count only 8 that were critical of Creigh, and one of those was by Alan Zimmerman, one of Creigh's most outspoken and diehard supporters! The point is, we sucked it up despite our (deep) unhappiness with Deeds and tried our best. However, it was like "pushing on rope" in the sense that our efforts didn't seem to produce any results. Why is that? Here are a few hypotheses on my part.
1. For a lot of reasons, Democrats weren't enthused/engaged this year, as they were in 2003-2008.
2. In large part, I think #1 resulted from the fact that - unlike in 2003 through 2008 - there was no "enemy" for people to focus on, to get angry about, etc. Specifically, George W. Bush is out of the White House, Republicans are out of Congress, and Democrats - to the extent they have any energy for politics at all - are focused on the health care debate and other national issues, particularly the economy. That doesn't leave much energy for a Virginia governor's race, particularly one with no progressive candidates on the ballot (and one candidate - Creigh Deeds - specifically running away from being called an "Obama Democrat," from the popular "public option," from "Cap and Trade" legislation, etc.).
3. With Bush out of the White House and the United States apparently on the way out of Iraq, the energy that fueled the explosive rise of the left-o-sphere in 2003-2008 is now gone, practically ancient history. Instead, most of the anger is now on the right side of the blogosphere, with cries of "socialism" and "communism" that may be completely unhinged, yet are apparently resonating among many right-wing activists.
4. Without the forces that propelled the progressive netroots to "rise" in 2003-2008, it still can be a potentially significant force on issues that arouse passion (e.g., on the health care reform fight). But where that passion is missing, such as in the Virginia governor's race, there's no "rocket fuel," "wild and raging river," or any other metaphor you care to use. The net result? Ineffectiveness.
5. I'd also note that the "Daou Triangle" concept - that you need the old media, new media, and political establishment all pulling in the same direction to gain any traction - held true in Virginia during 2009. For a brief moment, perhaps, "The Thesis" got that Daou Triangle going, but it didn't last, and that was pretty much all there was this year.
6. The blogosphere is only one part of the equation, of course. With an utterly inept Deeds campaign leading the way, there's not much the blogs could have done. Essentially, and starkly unlike 2003-2008, we had little-to-no material to work with this year. Again, the "pushing rope" image springs to mind.
7. In the end, given the inept Deeds campaign, combined with the lack of enthusiasm by progressive activists and non-activist Democrats for a ticket comprised of three bland moderate-to-conservative Democrats, it's not surprising that the Virginia progressive netroots wasn't particularly effective in the general election. Personally, I did what I could, spent hundreds of hours (for no money, except for a couple of blog ads, just as I made zero money in the Democratic gubernatorial primary) trying to help Deeds/Wagner/Shannon and also the House of Delegates candidates, but basically ended up with "this lousy t-shirt" and nothing much more to show for it in the end.
OK, now that I've completely depressed myself, I'll let the rest of you weigh in/pile on. Have fun (or, more likely, not)!
