On the left we sometimes think that the right must be animated with a single coherent vision. I suspect that a much more pragmatic approach is at work. The strategists realize that all they need is a coalition who can hang together (and thanks to winner take all election systems) get just over 50% of the votes. Thanks to a 2 party systems this simple majority can be achieved both with votes for and votes against (so negative slurs make a regular appearance). Thanks to fixing elections and disenfranchising groups of voters they have even managed to win with just under 50%. If democrats don’t win by more than a couple of percentage points they may well find that they lose on technicalities.

This coalition approach means giving people just enough to keep them headed to the polls and away from the other party. So we see the cynical offer of no condoms, no abortions and no gays as cheap buy for the rich whose own families don’t need to abide by any of those strictures. Similar bits are doled out until you cross 49%. And some subset of those may be Lakoff’s stern father masochists. But they don’t all need to be.

Other countries form their coalitions more publicly (as when parliaments do or don’t form governments).

When discussions, like this one, occur without this as a backdrop it feels like a false see saw pitting right against left and then being bemused when some new voice doesn’t drop neatly into those categories. But the problem with bloggers who aren’t of a single ideology is a pseudo-problem that flows from the caricature and leaves Lakoff insisting that the do have one that is ever more occult as other guests introduce counterexamples.

Chris’ habitual need to bumpersticker doesn’t help in this case.

fight the caricature… we have seen the coalition, and if need be, they will be us… – j

I was struck by the reference by KOS to his “libertarian Dem” posting and the 888 responses – clearly that does represent a search for principle, at least in view. And KOS does say something like “I’m sorting out my views in this area….” I just can’t imagine something like that being said by any of the “conservatives” and “Republicans” I’ve followed.

I suggest people who liked Ezra and Lakoff’s light sparring but don’t want to pore over Lakoff’s books, which are good but not as clear as they could be to just read this quick post by a Cognitive Science person: http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2006/02/what-framing-analysis-is.html

As the post says, everyone participating or watching politics has some kind of idea about the sausagemaking part of it, but being a skeptic or a cynic doesn’t = knowledge of frames. Nor, as this interview didn’t really touch on, is this vaguely Machiavellian-sounding thing imply really pragmatic or a dark morality. Non-political junkies associate all this stuff into some kinda broad bad thing at first, since we’re all used to being bombarded with sophisticated advertising techniques to get us to buy stupid things. So talk about framing for the layperson needs something of an ethical clear-up so it doesn’t get instantly linked to the dirty tricks of Rove and Republican wedge issue stuff. It’s already happened in a big way to the Democrats after 2004 with all those cynically minded stories about how ‘maybe they should ramp up the God-Talk?’, like that registers as sincere regardless of how religious a candidate before the debate.

Anyway, besides framing introduction stuff, this interview’s best info tidbits came when Ezra said the Net supports ‘muscular’ candidates – people who will stand up to the despair/lack of direction the electorate feels with Bush. Just like social/fiscal to liberal/conservative has long since been a terrible frame to gauge American politics, the intro of the idea that the left netroots are not radicals, just angry about the far right turn American politics has taken with relatively small electoral victories by Bush et al. is ridiculously important to get into the debate.

What exactly that means is still vague since this year Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy (which I love) is as far as the Democratic Party structure, which muscular progressive bloggers like to curse most as the DLC, is willing to go. There aren’t yet a lot of candidates who fit that bill, and people like Paul Hackett get interesting kinds of media buzz when they speak out. ‘Better than a Republican’ still dominates watercooler conversations who get their info from top-down media. It’s tough to break more than a few points of conventional wisdom at once.

Getting away from all that to these great comments, I think it’s easy to classify the political blogosphere. To say simply that the left, emblemized by DailyKos’ diary and comment structure, is bottom-up while the right’s is top-down a la Instapundit picking the chosen ones to receive more traffic is a great short answer.

More indepth, it’s exactly what Ezra said in the interview – the right, after it gave up McCain’s Net flash in 2000, came in hard for Bush, and since then have had to defend him, since otherwise they can’t tap into the huge money machine the Republicans have for supporters. On the left, Atrios and Kos made their money with ads, not Dem help, so they’re far less beholden to that machine. Meanwhile there are billions (Regnery, the foundations, etc.) waiting to be taken for earnest Republicans to either repeat talking points or make their own phrases saying the same thing in a pretence of independence. That can’t be stressed enough – it’s easy to be a career republican,, just be an unwavering supporter and try to push the debate to the right. David Neiwert of Orcinus has done a lot of journalistic work on how Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, and the rest are ‘mainstreamers’ of far right rhetoric, like with immigration and the constant toying around with (and occasionally saying outright) the idea that liberals are traitors.

So summing up, on the left there’s no huge power structure to suppress/bribe away aiming for a big new tent, where muscular Democrats can rally their bases by pushing for universally-minded things instead of quietly acquiescing on the regular wedge issues, while the right’s big push is for mainstreaming far right rhetoric and trying to find faux-contrarian niches in think tanks. Instapundit and Hugh Hewitt, big tech-blogger dudes, have only been to happy to join the sneering top-down Fox News echelons. On the left too there’s Ana Marie Cox, whose job in the top-down media went from being ‘the most mentioned liberal blogger b/c she dealt with gossip and so wasn’t too serious’ to Time’s head blogger basher. Funny how that ended up.

This is far too long already, so I’ll wrap up with my prediction that this’ll change even faster now. I watch the 24 hour news networks in my spare time (when the Simpsons aren’t on) and since that Tony Snow(job) appointment, and now with the easily replaceable and hyped up anyways Al Qaeda guy dead, the top-downers are back on the bandwagon. That’ll speed up the general malaise the public has felt with the government and the press faster than any detailed blog post on Judy Miller, and push more people to look on the Net and for the money people looking for trends to give telegenic bloggers more access. And considering the number of bloggers, if a few of the newly chosen turn sour to their people they’ll get turned on quickly enough to stop schmoozing (like Mark Warner’s party at YearlyKos) from doing too much damage.

I’d also like to counter the assertion by a couple of the panelists that this is a movement without an ideology. I’d say that if there was one ideology, it is of one leveling out the process, that we’re all citizens, we all have a voice. And, democracy works best when we’re all involved.

I greatly enjoyed this discussion. However, to constrain this discussion to oversimplified generalizations (right/left, conservative/liberal) would be to miss the point. In addition to acknowledging the fact the blogs exist, and are growing outside mainstream politics, we must also acknowledge those left out of the blogosphere. Millions of Americans cannot afford a computer, let alone high-speed Internet or a hosting package. Yet, these people are undeniably a part of the political process. Yes, blogs are representative of growing demographic of politically motivated and angry people. And yet, the demographic of poor and truly politically disenfranchised is growing every day. When will we ask them to join this discussion? How can the digital revolution include those who cannot afford to be a part of it?

Yes, this is a revolution. Let us not be so arrogant, however, to presume that this revolution extends to everyone. How relevant can it be when it excludes millions of people?

It isn’t just talking politics, but Doing politics and Doing citizenship.

I’m willing to accept that liberal bloggers write more ideas, and conservative bloggers repeat more talking points. But there hasn’t been a lot of research in this area; there could be and there should be.

“The difference is there is almost no one to challenge the posts in RedState.”

Interesting. Also known as the “echo chamber.” What happens on many blogs is that any opposition simply tires of challenging many of the posts/comments/ideas by a given blogger.