Fasten Your Seat Belts

If you don't think you've witnessed new media change politics yet, this is the time to start paying attention.

Within an hour of the announcement of Justice O'Connor's retirement, the blogs (namely, Daily Kos) were filled with speculation that -- all in all -- had the mainstream media beat in its depth. Keep in mind that the media have been preparing for this day for years -- note that all the slick graphics reading "A Change on the Supreme Court" were ready to go. And yet their analysis was still very easy, even weak (I'm saying this having witnessed CNN's coverage and perused the sites of some major newspapers). While the MSM seem to be a bit caught a bit off-guard by an O'Connor retirement (and not a Rehnquist retirement, as was expected by everyone including some prominent senators and the White House, according to Red State), the blogs were able to adapt quickly and with depth. See Kos or Red State.

And action on the blogs is the least of what we're about to see...

I know People for the American Way have a myriad of ways people can "act now" before there's even a nominee to fight (I'm all for preparedness, but doesn't this exacerbate the perception of Dems as obstructionists). Currently, they're using a $10 and 10 pitch, asking for $10 donations and the names of 10 friends. At the very least, they should be boosting their mailing list quite a bit during the impending battle.

More interestingly, though, they have set up a Mass Immediate Response system that will send breaking news and action alerts to your cell phone and e-mail. I'm sure the other side of the aisle has some similar programs. If you're passionate about this stuff, or if you're just interested in seeing what strategy these groups have developed, I'd recommend signing up.

On a related note, Bush has said there will be no nominee announcement before July 8. So, this has a lot of time to stew around in the blogs. This is sure to spark some fun conversation around the BBQ this weekend. There will be fireworks, indeed.

UPDATE: I tried to post this around 1 p.m., but Blogger was down for some reason...could it be an overload of people weighing in? Yeah, probably not. But wouldn't that have been an interesting piece of trivia.

Congress (is learning to) Heart E-mail

While the Congress Online reports online are a bit out of date (they want you to buy the new ones), I want to applaud TNHegemon for his post, allowing those among us who'd rather read something online than in their hands.

Having just finished a 5-month internship on the Hill, I understand the authors' frustration with both members' offices and constituents themselves. The unsubstantiated fear of manipulation of e-mail correspondence sent by a congressional office seems not just silly, but inefficient. To respond to e-mail with regular mail a) looks strange, b) takes a long time, and c) requires the use of more intern/LC time. Since 9/11 and the anthrax scare, however, congressional offices are learning to appreciate the hassle avoided by e-mail.

The authors stumble upon an important distinction between effective and ineffective e-mail. They write:

"The seemingly easy electronic access to Members of Congress has also fostered a public misperception that individual Members should be accountable to all citizens who write, regardless of where they are from. Advocacy groups and grassroots lobbyists have played a key role in creating these unreasonable public expectations. They have taken the lead in encouraging high-volume, mass communication because they assume that offices will tally incoming e-mail, even if it is not from constituents, and be influenced by high volumes of e-mail that reflect a particular viewpoint...Indeed, fueled by these "astroturf" lobbying practices, the majority of e-mail messages that congressional offices receive come from outside their districts or states. Offices have responded to these non-constituent e-mail messages as they do with non-constituent postal mail - by ignoring them."

It's likely that most of us have sent these messages through our favored advocacy groups on many occasions. If Congress mostly ignores them, why do organizations continue to hammer away at this tactic? I have an inkling that flooding congressional inboxes might not be as ignorable as Congress would like it. Chances are, you will get the attention of the office. Whether this attention -- stemming from annoyance -- is good or bad is another issue altogether.

Blog/FEC Drama Once More, with Feeling

Well, Kos is at it again.

Yep, he's ripping into the Professor Carol Darr, head of IPDI and "clueless embarrassment" to GW, again for her prepared testimony at the public hearings on blogging and FEC restrictions this week.

Last time, I thought Kos went too far, resorting to namecalling and overall missing Darr's point. This time, while still holding tightly to the namecalling rebuttal, Kos knocks a base hit for his cause, catching Darr in what appears to be a change of tune.

In her submitted remarks, Darr argued against blogs' inclusion in the media exemption to campaign finance law because they might damage the "privileged status" the press now enjoys. Now, Darr comes to the same conclusion out of a fear that it will allow corporations to evade campaign finance law by putting up a blog and funneling money into it.

Kos' response: so what? Just by putting up a blog, he argues, a corporation can't guarantee influence. And he's right. While the Toaster would love to be influencing public debate on a national level, it's not. Not because it doesn't have the resources that a corporation could pour into a Toaster-like blog, but because it doesn't have the earned reputation required for people to take what blogs say seriously.

But, on the lingo for "corporate blog"...I got dibs on "clog."

Waking Ohio Up...

I thought I was done...

In the On Point radio broadcast "The Marketing of the President," New York Times correspondent Matt Bai describes the Bush campaigns pyramid scheme as both "visionary and disquieting."

We've spent enough time here at the Toaster talking about why the marketing of the president was visionary, but what's so disquieting about an efficient, powerful volunteer program that produces tangible results?

Bai points out the key ingredient left out of the Bush team's grassroots jambalaya: originality. In creating the much-touted grassroots scheme that beat John Kerry in Ohio and carried the presidency for Bush, Mehlman and Rove established the need for a uniformity of thought at all levels of the pyramid. Directives and talking points came from the top and flowed down to all points of the pyramid in the same way that Bush hypothesized his tax cuts would. People like Betty Kitchen, Bush's 66-year-old Clark County chairwoman who had been running local campaigns for years, were put in positions to tow the Bush/Cheney line and meet recruitment quotas in a strict, performance-oriented system. One of the main goals of the program, thus, was "keeping people very much within the program."

The result: The amazing thing about top-down mentality is that results can be quantified and progress can be charted. There's no question that this level of organization, which according to Bai had never before been attempted on such a scale, was instrumental in securing the 70,000 votes that carried the state for Bush.

While the Mary Kay-influenced pyramid scheme can certainly be touted for its ingenuity and effectiveness, Bai's right in reining in assessments of its self-promoted grassroots civic empowerment.