Why keener Blogs Locally

Written by: kid oakland on Sep 26, 2006 11:29 PM EDT

(This is a post by local blogger and Blogs United member Keener of NH-02 Progressive. He's been in the news lately...

nh-02.blogspot.com/2006/09/to-re...

...this post he wrote at the beginning of September could not be more relevant.)



Ok, MissLaura went some weeks ago

blue-granite.blogspot.com/2006/0...

now it's my turn.



Most of my life I have not been that politically active. I've been politically opinionated, but I'm not the kind of person that takes to organized anything, be it religion or politics. In 2004, I volunteered for the Kerry campaign. Outside what I would describe as one decidedly apolitical experience stuffing envelopes for Dick Swett in 1990, it was the only time I had been involved with any party activity.

And I did the Kerry campaign week after week. And it sucked. I say this with sincerety: I am grateful to all the Franklin County Massachusetts Democrats that came up here to help us canvass in Keene. But from my admittedly novice viewpoint, it felt like the entire party structure was overwhelmed. We had other candidates running, like McKim and Hodes, and people canvassing couldn't tell you even what position those people were running for. I remember a fairly well-placed Kerry campaign kid from MA was driving with me one day, and he said, so you're from here right? And I said yeah. And he said - so what are all these "Bass" signs about? Who's Bass?

This was the third or fourth time he'd canvassed Keene.

Let me be very clear -- the local people that ran the Kerry campaign were great.

Flash-forward to this May, and I'm talking to a friend of mine who also canvassed for Kerry. And we didn't know each other so good back then, so this is the first time we've really talked about it, almost two years later.

And I start spouting off about how ridiculous the Kerry campaign was here, and why didn't they just run it through the local party infrastructure. And he says he's been to meetings recently, and there really isn't all that much party structure. It's like 15 people he says.

In other words, I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

I think I realized for the first time that people like me were the problem. Sure, I'd get fired up about a campaign, especially in a presidential year, especially in the last couple of months. But I expected to be wooed by that campaign initially, you know, romanced. Or maybe (as was the case in 2004) scared shitless by the thought of losing.

And then maybe, MAYBE, I'd support the guy. MAYBE I'd come out and campaign.

But that's where my party identification existed - from about a month after the convention to the day of the election.

After that, my friends and I evaporated. Disappeared for four more years. And then we'd complain what lousy primary choices we had, etc. And eventually we'd be wooed in the last days of the campaign to help out. And shocked by how disorganized it was. And so on.

I'm a programmer by trade, so I thought of it in network terms. Networks like campaigns are most effective when they can plug into existing subnetworks, like permanent party infrastructure, churches, social clubs, mailing lists, etc. It's the existence of strong local subnetworks, decentralized, yet richly connected subcultures that allow an endeavor like a campaign to work well.

But what was happening here was that we were forcing the campaigns to build their own infrastructure from scratch every two to four years. To get stronger candidates and better chances what we needed to do is build up permanent local infrastructure. By ghost-towning the party every November we were killing it. We were hamstringing it's ability to build strong farm league candidates. And we were forcing campaigns to spend their time rebuilding local infrastructure instead of tapping into it.

There are heroes in this regard, and you can find them down at your local party office. But I wasn't one of them.

But I didn't know how to change that. Strangely, I wasn't even thinking of it in internet terms.

Then a friend of mine mentioned to me that the "Kos" in Daily Kos was actually Markos from my alma mater's student newspaper The Northern Star. I used to know a bunch of people that worked with Markos, and I read his column back then. So out of curiousity I went and checked it out. And shortly after that it was announced that Paul Hodes was one of the netroots candidates. And I saw some of the other local blogging efforts that people were doing for some other netroots campaigns, and I think right then and there I realized this was what I had to do.

Well, I should say I realized this was what I "should" be doing. Then I bumped into Yankee Doodler's blog...

theyankeedoodler.blogspot.com...

convinced me to get a move on. While getting started I bumped into the Blue Granite blog

bluegranite.blogspot.com...

and realized well, there goes my idea for a cute name.

I settled on NH-02 Progressive, and the rest of the story you can read in my archives.

The most rewarding thing to me? It's the local connections.

I have actually overheard conversations, right in my hometown, about my blog. I have actually had someone be shocked when they found out I was Keener.

I've also found I'm connected to readers in various ways having nothing to do with politics - a friend of mine's new roommate actually read the blog separately from knowing who I was. There's even more amazing stuff than that, but I should stop there.

The point is a stranger could look at my measly 500 visitors a week and think what's the point? I mean, how can hits on that level be doing any good?

It's worth it because a good 100 of those hits are my neighbors. It's worth it because I'm at a Drinking Liberally event or a campaign rally, and someone says to me, hey, have you read this thing, this NH-02 Progressive?

And I say, oh, yeah, I read that now and again. Why do you ask?

And believe me, while I love dKos, all the mojo on dKos cannot buy you the pride you feel in that moment.

So in summary: get partisan, get local, and blog all of it.

Over and out.

{This post originally appeared on keener's blog NH-02 Progressive.}

nh-02.blogspot.com/...

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