Blogger Endorsements

Chris Bowers has a really good post that has made me think. Not many of the important bloggers have bothered to endorse a candidate in 2008, and their activism has been mostly about pushing back against stupid media narratives (Edwards got a haircut! Obama hearts genocide! Hillary has boobs!) as well as charting the foibles of the Republican candidates. But as far as taking one candidate and supporting them, it's been absent. I'm not sure if it's for the reasons that Bowers describes (friends in the campaigns, not wanting to piss people off), though he's more inside of it than I am, so it's certainly possible. But I think Mke Lux' comment is instructive:

But I really do believe that the most important one is the rising strength of the progressive movement. Even though there is no clear movement candidate, the fact that every one of the candidates have been steadily migrating our way on a range of issues is the best testament to the difference between now and this time, 2003, and it's the reason there is no clear choice.

I also wanted to comment on Chris' thought about being "insidery". I think the short head bloggers clearly are more insidery than they are, and there are some obvious downsides and dangers to that. But I think there are good things about that, too, and not just that it's a reflection of the movement's strength. The way movements actually make change is that some folks in them keep banging away on the outside, but some folks go inside and create change from within by getting a seat at the tables where elected officials and party power brokers make decisions.

Dean was a radical departure from the rest of a cautious, establishment field in 2004. Now most of the candidates are staking out increasingly progressive positions and following the progressive leader:

John Edwards may be stuck in third place in the polls and fund raising in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the populist seems to be playing an outsized role in driving the terms of the party's debate -- generally to the left -- on everything from Iraq to health care [...]

It is the essence of Mr. Edwards's strategy for winning the nomination: to come from the left, and win over the party activists who tend to dominate the early primaries and caucuses [...]

Mr. Edwards seems to feel freer to address issues that might alienate the party and business establishment. Just as former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean pushed the Democrats toward more staunch opposition of the Iraq war four years ago, Mr. Edwards seems to be having a big impact on forcing the pack to follow his agenda.

This is why my only campaign donation has been to Edwards, but is doesn't disqualify the others who are coming later to the party. Indeed, Barack Obama's views on poverty are very worthy of being added to the debate, and the same with Hillary's thoughts on cost control in health care, and Richardson's ideas on no residual forces in Iraq, and Dodd's carbon tax, and many of Kucinich's ideas, etc. So there is a far different tenor to this race than in 2004, which is why it's hard to compare apples and oranges.

I don't think blogger endorsements would move any votes, and they would launch a thousand flame wars in comments. So what's the point in a race where there are so many candidates advocating progressive viewpoints?