Daily Digest: 8/2/07

The Web on the Candidates -- Yearly Kos Edition

• Byron York at the National Review concludes that since YearlyKos is attracting the Democratic establishment, its "Kossack" minions (the "Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy") have therefore become an important wing of the Democratic establishment. "The turnout in Chicago shows that the Kossacks and colleagues from other activist websites have taken their place as the newest wing of the establishment in Democratic-party politic," York writes. "They’re not exactly the new bosses; it’s not as if the unions and interest groups have disappeared, but it is true that the netroots now rank alongside them. A candidate who wants to win can no longer ignore the netroots, even if he or she would like to." True enough. A huge movement has been built over the last two years, one that has grown faster than the Goldwater-inspired Republican movement of yesteryear, and now all of the candidates need to pay heed to the netroots.
• Jonthan Kaplan tells readers of the Hill about this Kos thing, explaining that "the three-day convention allows left-leaning political activists, policy entrepreneurs and citizen pundits who pay a $275 registration fee to strategize with Washington’s heavyweight pols and policy wonks and flaunt their power in front of the mainstream media." It's true; I'm currently watching a burly netroots blogger pump up his muscles in front of an unimpressed CNN exec... But seriously, it's really about the parties. "The party getting the lion’s share of the early attention as 'the place to be' is a Friday night bash sponsored by Time magazine." I admit it. All roads lead to the Swampland soiree. Sue me.
• Seven of the eight Democratic candidates will be at YearlyKos, signaling a major power shift in Democratic activism, writes Nikki Schwab of U.S. News & World Report. It's not about the candidates moving left, she argues, but it's instead "about the 'netroots' community that treats blogs, like the popular DailyKos, as an online hub for political discourse." Michael Cornfield elaborates: "If the DLC had a network of 2 million people they could reach on E-mail, [the candidates] would go back to the DLC," said Cornfield. We aren't seeing a rise in left-wing politics but instead in grassroots politics in general. "This is a lesson to the center and a real lesson to the Republican candidates," Cornfield says. "If you want to win elections in the digital age, you have to have a network; you have to have digital grass roots."
• Blogger Erik Ose brings the John Edwards campaign down to earth after reading Adam Nagourney's puff piece in the New York Times. Although Edwards' campaign was designed to be "Dean version 2.0 —bigger, smarter, and better at using the Internet to harvest money, volunteers and votes," the campaign hasn't managed "recreate Dean's magic." Edwards has fewer Facebook friends than Barack Obama and trails him in online fundraising, and Obama's homegrown My.BarackObama.com social network has been far more popular than Edwards' own site. "It may be that Team Edwards, despite their Dean campaign experience, aren’t doing anything groundbreaking with their Internet strategy," says Ose. Quite a counterpoint to the Nagourney/Trippi piece.
• "The YouTube debate snub is the symptom, not the disease," of the Republicans' failure to convey that 'the online community matters to them," Patrick Ruffini tells New York Times' Katherine Seelye. Meanwhile, following Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani's reluctance to participate, a debate is raging among conservatives about whether or not the YouTube debate is worthwhile. "If the G.O.P. candidates agree to this format, expect a series of cheap shots about all of the top-tier candidates," says conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt. But Michelle Malkin disagrees. "If they put a premium on getting their message across online, they wouldn’t have hesitated," she tells Seelye.
• Jason Rosenberg has been named the Online Director for the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver. Among other things, Rosenberg was previously Director of Online Video for EchoDitto and was Producer and Chief Operating Officer of PoliticsTV.com. His background in video and Web 2.0 strategies is a good indication that the convention could be a breakthrough event in online politics.

In Case You Missed It...

Yesterday Adam Nagourney -- longtime campaign reporter at the New York Times -- wrote a piece about Joe Trippi and the John Edwards campaign, and took as stab at attempting to explain the role of technology in the presidential campaigns. But Colin Delany was not amused. "Nagourney shows exactly how well he can channel a campaign’s spin uncritically and without context," Delany wrote. "What you won’t see: any discussion of social networking outreach, which the Edwards campaign embraced early on, or on the relative effectivess of Edwards’s videos compared with the Clinton Sopranos spoof and Bill Richardson’s job interview clips." And Nagourney didn't interview any sources outside of the campaign, "but the guy didn’t return his call — and apparently there was no one else in the entire world available to offer some perspective and perhaps a critique of the campaign’s strategy."