have you considered that we were doing more reading than writing? that might sound lame, but for instance, i didn't comment on any of armando's diaries, but i read every one.
i think that many people expected the "big" orgs (NARAL, PFAW, etc) to get involved and map out a real game plan for us to follow. i think we also expected that SOMEONE in the senate would step up and become the megaphone for such a movement.
so when kerry finally stepped up, it galvanised people. even if it may have been too late (and honestly i was not convinced it was too late until this afternoon), it was like "FINALLY! someone in a leadership position stood up!" so everyone put all their energy into trying to make it happen, trying to heed the call.
i dunno. just some random thoughts. i'm still processing it myself.
I agree that part of the problem was that it didn't appear that anyone was taking charge. Lack of leadership.
Sarah www.carterfornevada.com
And that lack of leadership was due to the fact that most Dems knew that Alito was going to be confirmed. We have 35 senastors who are sincerely against him, that's not enough.
It had the feel of something predestined. /No matter how hard we work, that shit from Connecticut is still going to vote for him*
It had the feel of something predestined. No matter how hard we work, that shit from Connecticut is still going to vote for him
Leadership. Leadership. Leadership.
I think people expected some 10-years-in-the-making master plan from PFAW/NAARAL, which never showed up. The outpouring of support after Kerry made an announcement shows that people were ready to act, but needed someone to lead the charge.
Unfortinately for all of us, Chris, no blogger is in a position to lead any kind of popular political action. Stimulate a groundswell is about as close as we get, but without someone who's got mainstram clout and influence, you don't get critical mass.
It might be easier for blogger(s) to drive press criticism, but the bar for meaningful action there is significantly lower. Just a few hundred comments on the WaPo blog is enough to bring down the house, apparently.
Stoller was right: the progressive leadership simply didn't really want to put in long hours on this.
Everything you said was true--and very clearly put.
But I still think there's something more to be asked.
Such as why--with all the remarkable self-organzing we've shown the blogosphere capable of--we ended up waiting for someone (Senator, major org, whatever) to do something, rather than the next thing simply happening as either (a) an emergent function of what we were doing already, or (b) the direct result of some very specific action taken by someone (or several someones).
In other words, I think you've described quite succinctly what we were doing--which was considerably more than meets the eye. But it does not address the gap between that and what we needed to be doing--and, more importantly, how we could have addressed that gap in time to do something about it.
Being the first to step into the light makes you very vulnerable to attack.
I believe that when a "big enough" leader finally steps forward, they give people tacit permission to join in. The leader can't be just anyone, though. He or she must be someone that people recognize as a leader - someone with enough stature to provide sufficient protective shade from the harsh glare of public attention.
People who aren't yet recognized as having sufficient stature may come out first, but they are not likely to block enough of the sun to give those waiting in the wings the protection they feel they need in order to step forward.
They are leaders, but small leaders. The protective shadow they cast is not long enough.
i would certainly like to see less waiting and more doing. in fact, i think the blogosphere is very capable of "more doing", and that's been proven.
from where i stand, this fight was different. on an order of magnitude, i don't think that we bloggers alone could have stopped the nomination even if every "big" lefty blogger stepped up with a game plan. we just aren't that powerful yet. and because the SCOTUS fight was so, well, huge, we needed everyone from NARAL to the green party to our entrenched leadership to our lobbyists to the netroots be on the same page, working from the same game plan, with the same end goal.
now, i think we had the same end goal: stop the alito nomination. but the middle part was not well coordinated or mapped out. it's like that southpark episode. step one: steal underpants. step two: ??? step three: profit!
nobody really put forth a real plan for stopping the nomination until it was too late, and from what i saw there (and granted, i may not be privy to some things) was very little behind-the-scenes coordination between the big lefty orgs and activists like us. now, there was a significant amount of coordination and information sharing between the netroots. and i must give senator kennedy and his staff a TON of credit for working with the netroots during the last minute push.
but i do think that some netroots folks tried to step up and lead (armando comes to mind). but on top of that, i also think that many of us feel empowered, but not quite powerful enough without the backing of our democratic leadership.
there's something i've written so often on the blogs, and that's that if we want our leadership to stand up and fight we have to show them that we have their backs. but i also think the reverse is true, that if our leadership wants us to have their backs, they have to stand up and fight for what's right. and that's what i was trying to hit on in my comment late last night. when someone finally stood up (kerry and kennedy), we were there instantaneously. we took all the information that armando and chris and everyone else had been putting out there, and used it when we executed kennedy's game plan.
it didn't work this time, and i just hope people learn their lessons and do better next time around.
I think it bears mentioning that while BlogPAC had gone out of its way to announce its intention to fight the nomination with "scalito.com" as early as November 1st, the site remained inactive until fewer than two weeks remained before the hearings.
markos and jerome disbanded it back in the fall. it is supposed to be replaced by another project run by stoller and others.
scalito.com was brigham's idea, and he's become toxic, apparently.
you can email me if you wanna discuss more details.
Amen. I wasn't commenting much but I was reading everything I could. I even added more blogs to my feeds just to keep up.
i think we also expected that SOMEONE in the senate would step up and become the megaphone for such a movement.
I expected strategy, planning, and coordination from the Democratic leadership. I guess that expectation was too high.
The Democrats blew the confirmation hearings but I thought maybe they could pull something out with a filibuster. Then Harry Reid says he's not going to pressure anyone, it's a "conscience vote." WTF?
I was grateful that Kennedy & Kerry led the way. (Truthfully, I would have preferred that Kerry cancel his trip to Davos then leading the charge from Switzerland.) Hell, I was grateful that anybody stood up. It's an improvement over the trained seal act we've come to expect.
It was like watching a group of people blossom from idiots to imbeciles.
Chris -- I remember well your first post you cite in this and remember thinking -- "oh good, someone is going to call on us to get involved." Then, no action items followed. Over at Bump on the Beltway, Melanie made a similar post suggesting we'd be called into action -- but nothing followed there. What happened to whatever initiative was promised there?
So I wrote my own Senators and let it go.
Annatopia -- like you, I thought we'd get useful strategy from the advocacy folks, though the one I hoped for was the Alliance for Justice who I have seen marshal opposition to nominees in the past. Something short-circuited there. I hope we'll learn what. NARAL and PFAW seemed to be just posturing, but I don't have a lot of faith in direct mail outfits.
The Dems on the Judiciary Committee were a tremendous disappointment. I listened to the whole Bork hearings back in the day and they were simply smarter (better staffed?) in those days. They were dopey this time round. I don't credit Alito on that; he could have been confronted intellectually.
Kerry is not my leader, but I am glad somebody stepped up a little.
