A post by Peter Slutsky

Lamont’s Digital Constituency

DoubleSpeak commentator Ari Melber wrote a piece for The Nation called Ned Lamont’s Digital Constituency. It’s good. Have a read.

The Nation:

Joe Lieberman’s life as a Democrat ended on Tuesday with a fatal blow from Connecticut’s primary voters. The voters’ surging antipathy for Lieberman was stoked by many factors–the Iraq War, the President, the Senator, the surrogates, the pundits, the activists, the bloggers–but Ned Lamont’s victory was driven by two triggers: First, the war elicited a primary opponent; then Internet activists convinced voters that he was a viable alternative. Yet the recent obsession with bloggers, by traditional media and Lieberman boosters alike, only reveals one component of the Senator’s undoing online.

Bloggers actually constitute a small slice of progressive Internet activists, known as the netroots, which includes organizations like MoveOn.org and Democracy for America; informal networks like e-mail lists and MySpace groups; and Internet activists who use websites to raise money, broadcast videos and disseminate information. That is how Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas sees it. Just past midnight on election day, he emphasized that bloggers are “much smaller” than a third of the netroots, writing that it is “insulting” to focus on blogs instead of the real people who worked for Ned Lamont.

Read the rest here.

A post by Peter Slutsky

LAMONT WINS

Ned Lamont

News Round-Up:

Washington Post
New York Times
CNN
Bloomberg News

Blogs Round-up:

AmericaBLOG
MyDD
ConnecticutBLOG
Daily Kos
LamontBLOG
Ned Lamont Campaign Website

Read these links, drink your morning coffee and DoubleSpeak will be coming at you with much more information from last night’s election results in CT, GA, MI and around the rest of the U.S.A.

A post by Joshua Skaroff

Colbert Loves Republicans, Why Not Us?

From RawStory comes the news that arch-conservative uber-pundit Stephen Colbert will be addressing a GOP conference on “Mastering Blogs.” Apparently, much like President Bush, Mr. Colbert prefers friendly crowds that won’t challenge him.

Hey Stephen - Why are you avoiding DoubleSpeak? He has yet to reply to any of our requests that we may or may not have sent to join us on the show.

Maybe he just can’t handle the truthiness, Slutsky style.

Making it happen

This is why the blogosphere is such a cool place. The ability to make a positive change in the world, all without leaving your home. Many people have condemned political blogs and other online grassroots action networks to be short lived and ineffective. The 2006 elections will be a true test. But mad props are due to Mark Nickolas who started draftkenlucas.com in an effort to recruit former Rep. Ken Lucas to reclaim his own seat. Lucas has recently announced he will come out of retirement to help make Kentucky bluegrass blue again. AmericaBlog has more.