There was a mini-debate yesterday here on Daily Kos, in the wake of Ciro's TX-28 loss, on the "influence" of the netroots. In one corner were
Kos and
Armando arguing that the criticism to pull off a win in TX-28, and elsewhere, was unfounded, and frankly, a little baseless. As Armando put it, why are we trying to keep track of a blogger scorecard?
On the other side, there is a sort of a grumbling from within the netroots that these moral victories are frustrating, and we need to "win one" soon.
My point is not to dissect either argument, but to share with you some observations concerning what I'm seeing at the grassroots level.
I have contact with several people from netroots as part of my Young Dem group. One individual has corresponded with me recently because his frustration both with the netroots AND with the party apparatus.
Like a lot of people on netroots, this person was NOT a party activist. He was a person fed up with the direction of his country, and wanted to do something about it. So he turned to the Democrats.
What he found was an unresponsive party. Which, as we know here in the blog world, is pretty typical. Even in strong "blue" states, the local and state party apparatus does a poor job of cultivating new voters and activists.
So, he turned to the blogs. He got involved with campaigns like TX-28, and gave money to them. He doesn't know much about how politics works, but does know he doesn't like what he sees from the Republicans tearing our country apart, and he wants change.
But because some of the netroots annointed candidates he worked for have lost, he feels that his efforts have been wasted. Now it seems like the party apparatus isn't listening to him and other bloggers, and the netroots fights themselves are futile.
Fundementally, this has become a concern for me. I think too often we assume that the netroots "base" is Democratic party activists. And while that is probably true, there is a fairly large (and growing) segment of the netroots that was not politically active before logging on, and they are looking for answers.
The danger, I think, in the aggressive push for certain candidates by the netroots, and those candidates losing, is that these relative newcomers to the political process might eventually see as much value in the netroots as they see in traditional politics. That is to say, no value whatsoever.
We can't afford to lose these folks. We need them. And I'm not sure what the answer here is, so I'm looking for a discussion.
What can the netroots do to retain these folks? What can it do to get them active WITHIN the party and make changes? Are we doing enough? Is the netroots more than an online fundraising mechanism and bull session? Is it something else altogether?
If I had my druthers, I'd probably send all these people to seminars such as YearlyKos and then send them back to there communities and local parties to apply their knowledge.
But a lot of these folks can't afford that kind of money, time or commitment.
So where do we go from here?