They Don't Get It -

They Don't Get It - Question: If conservatives took over the internet, and no liberal newspaper observed the fact, did it really happen?

Articles in the Boston Glob and the Atlantic answer the question: "Al Gore didn't just invent the Internet, he wrote all the original content".

The Glob, in an article about the newfound influence of bloggers, focuses on the B-list blogger Oliver Willis and his site's contributions to the Howard Dean campaign, as well as another Dean-related site. Unmentioned, of course; the hulking presences of Instapundit, Sullivan, Volokh, Kaus, Drudge, even Lileks and Limbaugh (whose site isn't a blog, but behaves like one) - all right of center, all of whom wield more influence in their fingernail clippings than Oliver Willis' blog (as good as it is) ever will.

The Atlantic focuses on this month's flavor, "MoveOn.org". The site - founded in 1998 to protect Bill Clinton's right to lie to grand juries about his philandering - has made a splash lately with its big straw poll and its role in helping Howard "Duck" Dean jump ahead of the pack.

Political operatives see MoveOn as the wave of the future, a way to reconnect ordinary people to politics. As [Democrat wonk Scott] Rosenberg put it, "They really are at the cutting edge of a new model for how citizens participate in the political process." But he adds, "If they end up becoming a vehicle behind a single candidate, they are not adding a lot of value anymore to the political process."

Indeed. While the Atlantic article fairly breathlessly fawns over MoveOn and the johnny-come-lately Moovies, they do make note of one other Internet reality - shenanigans are everywhere (even after you factor out the fact that MoveOn's organization is sleazy::

Other campaigns complained that the MoveOn primary was rigged in favor of Dean. "The Dean campaign is fabulously organized on the Web," Walsh said. "When Salon writes a story, either pro or con Howard Dean, we hear from people immediately." But why the rigging charge? For one thing, MoveOn director Exley has done work for the Dean campaign. Moreover, after a straw poll of members, MoveOn allowed three "preferred" candidates—Dean, Kerry, and Kucinich—to send e-mail messages directly to its membership. Guess what? They were the top three vote-getters.

Guess what else? Conservatives, seeing Howard "Duck" Dean as a McGovern for the 21st Century, bum-rushed the MoveOn poll. Even *I*- and, says my email, some of my readers - voted for Dean!

Unmentioned in any of the stories I've seen from the left that lionize MoveOn and the Moovies: that the traffic they got during their poll (or, to be more accurate, that they're getting now) would fit neatly into the background noise for any of the major conservatives sites. And conservatives have been using the Web to organize for longer, and (unlike the slick, heavily-financed MoveOn site), at a much more grassroots level. Here in Minnesota, the Concealed Carry campaign was run primarily on the Internet - CCRN's website (not technologically updated since about 1997) was a gateway to an email newsletter that grew to be the second-largest in Minnesota, and was a very effective tool for mobilizing the concealed-carry movement that shocked the state last spring.

Prediction: After the '04 election, the Moovies will, themselves, "move on" to different toys. "MoveOn.org" will eventually let their domain lapse, and by early '06 the domain name will have been hijacked by a group of porn-site owners.

Posted by Mitch at July 24, 2003 06:46 AM