SFGate: Left-leaning bloggers flex muscle in Texas

[Kadie]

Left-leaning bloggers flex muscle in Texas
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, July 20, 2008


(07-20) 04:00 PDT Austin, Texas -- Last year online activists inspired by DailyKos.com, the nation's most popular liberal blog, swelled with power as the Democratic presidential candidates debated at their annual convention, asking for their blessing and a little cash - or at least a link to their site.

And this year? In the words of Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog on which this Netroots Nation convention of political gate-crashers originally gathered: "We are the mainstream."

The progressive online movement is now faced with its most significant challenge: using its online power to help elect a Democratic president. Doing that will require many of the 2,000 bloggers and activists gathered here since Thursday to leave their laptops behind and perform one of the oldest of political duties: knock on the doors of potential voters - especially in red-state America - and persuade them to vote their way.

Expanding "online to offline" is a dominant theme among the netroots who have gathered for four days in Austin, a sweltering blue island inside red Texas - and the Barack Obama campaign, long a favorite, is leading the way. On Thursday, the campaign talked up its "Neighbor-to-Neighbor" contact program now in 20 states, which hopes to coax a majority of the 1 million ardent Obama supporters roosting on the candidate's Web site, www.barackobama .com, to phone, door-knock or otherwise contact those within walking distance of their homes about the strengths of the presumed Democratic nominee.

"It's not just about being online and saying, 'Wouldn't it be great if?' " said Chris Hughes, the 24-year-old co-founder of Facebook who now directs Obama's online organizing strategy.

The Obama campaign has won plaudits for its groundbreaking use of new media, from the 1 million supporters it has recruited through Facebook - the social networking site used by 80 million people - to the 12,000 grassroots groups (such as the clutch of Bay Area train commuters in "Baby Bullet Riders for Barack" ) that have formed on the candidate's Web site. While former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign is credited as the first to broadly use online tools, Dean's campaign manager Joe Trippi said Friday, "If the (Howard) Dean campaign was the Wright brothers, then Obama was Apollo 11."

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