Leftosphere

Interesting points from Bill. We should neither overestimate nor underestimate the power of new tools online. We have to match online tools with offline goals in order for political entrepreneurship to continue to grow on the Right. -Matt Moon

I've noticed a trend over the past few weeks, roughly concurrent with the Twitter-reinforced Tea Party movement, which is a tendency on the Left to dismiss Twitter both for its apparent limitations as well as its embrace by the political Right. Not only do I think they are making a mistake, but the explanation in part illuminates why Twitter is becoming ever more important to online communication.

To begin, here's erstwhile conservative John Cole making the former point:

Here is what I don’t understand about twitter. When blogs came out and started to rise in popularity, lots of folks in the MSM and elsewhere said “Great. Just what we need. The undigested, unedited thoughts of the rabble.” If blogs are the undigested thoughts, tweets are the orts.

Here's Bloggingheads regular commenter B.J. Keefe, responding to new host Matt Lewis' point -- via my post here -- that the Right is succeeding on Twitter:

Is this anything worth bragging about? What does it even mean, that there are more Republicans spewing out sound bites and ill-considered thoughtlets? ... [G]iven the choice to "dominate" on Twitter compared to, say, the blogosphere, let alone actually getting people off their couches to go knock on doors, I know which one I'd pick.

Even as Markos Moulitsas has recently taken to Twitter, at least one Daily Kos community member decided to hoax the TCOT list about the contents of the stimulus bill -- "$2 million for Shamwows" -- and with some success, too. (On the other hand, this guy makes a good point.) And here is Gavin M. from Sadly, No!:

Twitter is that new thing that’s like burping the alphabet. Republicans are big on it because they have nothing to say.

He is being glib (what? impossible) but this is a trend, all right. What's driving this attitude? We can't ignore sour grapes -- for the first time in a while, the Right is being recognized as doing something online better than the Left. It only makes sense the Left would want to minimize that, both to reassure themselves, discourage the Right and encourage skepticism among outside observers.

It's absolutely true that, by itself, Twitter is a stunted communication tool. The brevity allows for faster communication, which also means less context and a greater likelihood of jumping to conclusions. Then again, the value of each individual tweet is infinitessimal and easily countered (the so-called "self-correcting blogosphere" in fact wasn't, but the Twitterverse may be different).

Of course, there is a lot more to Twitter than 140 characters, thanks to its API and developer community. For those who may have not been following it closely, Twitpic lets you share pictures. Power Twitter embeds those photos (and links to YouTube) on the page. Utterli lets you post audio. Services like Bit.ly make it easy to track clicks on links you post. Both Farhad Manjoo and David Weinberger have recently explained how Twitter users have compensated for its limitations.

Twitter's homepage famously asks "What are you doing?" but, famously as well I think, the vast majority of Twitter users ignore this question and say whatever they think needs to be said. Twitter is what you make of it.

This is interesting:

• Daily Kos, the biggest political blog of all, has approximately 734,000 visitors/day.
• Hot Air (Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit) has approximately 567,000 visitors/day.

Instapundit isn't doing too bad, either, with his daily traffic up to 376,000/day. The traffic trends of Daily Kos and Hot Air are even more interesting...

Daily Kos

• April '08: 29,262,488 (visits)
• March '09: 23,987,984
• Traffic: -5,274,504

Hot Air

• April '08: 7,616,673 (visits)
• March '09: 17,897,554
• Traffic: +10,280,881

Last month, Simon Owens found that post-election blog traffic declined 58% on the Left, compared to 36% on the Right.

There is no simple explanation for this.  Obviously, the Left's higher baseline and more contentious 2008 primary/election season plays a part.  But I suspect we'll be rediscovering something we had previously learned in the 90's and 00's: the internet is good for insurgencies and opposition.

Ezra Klein makes an important, oft-overlooked point:

One of the really interesting things about the blog The Next Right is how closely it echoes liberal laments from early-2005. But where liberals were sadly marveling over the Right's physical infrastructure (Heritage, Fox News, the Olin Foundation), now conservatives are staring up at the Left's electronic infrastructure. But the complaints are much the same: They pay people to do things! They're more ruthlessly efficient! They're more tightly connected with each other! It always makes me think of an interview Bill Kristol gave to Jon Stewart, where he said something like, "don't worry Jon. The worm will turn. It always does. We look good now, but I'm here to tell you, just wait.

I actually think the Republican Party is in a position very similar to the Democratic Party circa 1995 - alienated from its own base, struggling to maintain whatever power it can, but without an agenda that really resonate with the public.  And, like the Progressives in the late 90's-early 00's, the Right is increasingly unconvinced that the Republican Party really has the ability to advance its goals. 

That said, this 2005 American Prospect story by Garance Franke-Ruta about the right wing blogosphere is an amusing time-encapsulation of Klein's point...

But unlike traditional news outlets, right-wing blogs openly shill, fund raise, plot, and organize massive activist campaigns on behalf of partisan institutions and constituencies; they also increasingly provide cover for professional operatives to conduct traditional politics by other means -- including campaigning against the established media.

And instead of taking these bloggers for the political activists they are, all too often the established press has accepted their claims of being a new form of journalism. This will have to change -- or it will prove serious journalism's undoing.

The Leftosphere is now everything she had alleged the Rightosphere to be in 2005.  And Garance Franke-Ruta now works for "the established press".

If it's true that today's District v. Heller ruling is the first time in U.S. history that the Supreme Court has has directly ruled on meaning of the Second Amendment, it also seems likely to be the last. The battle has carried on for decades in lower courts, but those cases too are likely to be cut short, if not cut off altogether.

But what about the cultural/moral argument? I noted in my previous Next Right post that the left has largely acquiesced to gun rights. They may do so grudgingly, but for all intents and purposes they've given up. Except... that's not what I found on some of the most influential leftroots blogs.

Instead, I found significant agreement with the ruling. Not just that, but matter-of-fact statements of support for an individual right that would have been unthinkable even five years ago.

The Obama campaign is setting up an online war room...

A crack team of cybernauts will form a rapid response internet “war room” to track and respond aggressively to online rumours that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and a Muslim.[...]  Jen Psaki, a spokeswomen for Mr Obama [said] “The only way to run a campaign is to respond immediately when inaccurate information is put out."

This is important.  It's not enough to focus on responding to the mainstream media, as mainstream media coverage is often just a final manifestation of stories that bubble up days, weeks or months earlier online.  If you're not monitoring and shaping information development online, you'll find yourself playing defense in the mainstream media.   And losing the battle for conventional wisdom.

The Left has gotten very good at this, setting up campaign war rooms (e.g., Clinton, Obama), permanent campaign war rooms like Think Progress, Wonk Room, TPM Muckraker, TPM Election Central and Media Matters, and war room research distribution points like Atrios and Talking Points Memo and others.   Progressive advocacy groups are also tapping into this, as well.

Meanwhile, where are the War Rooms on the Right?   Who has an effective version of this? I can't think of any serious equivalent.  This is a major strategic disadvantage.