It's hard to be sure, but I believe March 8th, 2005 will end up a key date for the 2006 and 2008 elections. But it may have even more of an impact on the blogging community.
First, let's define terms. Blogging is going to end up much bigger that people writing entries in reverse chronological order and commenting on them. The blogging community refers both to those who are doing that in the present day, as well as those who participate in what we evolve to be.
Today was a key day for the bankruptcy bill. I'll tell you, I don't know a lot about the bankruptcy bill. A lot of us don't. That's part of the problem. But we all do know that there is something very, very wrong with it. You can just tell by the stench from Washington.
We did what we knew how to do. Josh Marshall set up a Bankruptcy page, but only a couple of days before the key votes. Atrios hosted a "bankruptcy day" where participants were to call and nag various congresscritters. And there were a handful of diaries over at Daily Kos, as always.
It wasn't even close to enough. And today, the blogosphere got a big dose of reality. We're alone in this, and we do not yet have near the amount of power we need to do things right.
First, here is the list of Senators who voted for cloture, which did away with the filibuster threat:
Biden (D-DE)
Byrd (D-WV)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)
In addition, Feinstein (D-CA) voted to let it proceed from committee.
On a purely political level, some of these Senators made the right play. But some of them miscalculated. It's too early to tell who's who yet, but the hints of fallout have already began. There is not a lot of Democratic cheerleading going on in the online community today, and to many, a line was drawn by people with long memories. Atrios and Max have predictions of Senators who will never be President because of this.
It's a fair criticism to say that the bloggers are just being dramatic at this point. But I think it's whistling past a graveyard to dismiss it too quickly. We fueled the transition of financing from big corporations to grassroots this election cycle. And the influence of our opinion leaders isn't exactly shrinking. We are the future fundraisers, technology leaders, and PR folks of future campaigns. At the same time that we're forced to accept the lack of power we have now, one gets the sense that the community has recommitted to taking more power in the future.
Now, what caused this failure? We'll explore this in a future post.
Posted by tunesmith at March 8, 2005 11:09 PM
