Liberals Play Catch-Up In Blogosphere?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Blogging, General PoliticsThis is interesting. I’d personally like to see how they’re defining a conservative blog vs. a liberal blog vs. a centirst blog.
Liberal activist Web loggers have made major advances on the Internet, but they remain far behind their conservative adversaries among the top 250 political blogs, according to a study by a Democratic think tank.In a detailed report on the political power being wielded by bloggers, who have become a potent force in national and state campaigns, the study found that while liberals have “a decided advantage” over conservatives among the top 40 blogs (24-16), “conservatives hold a whopping 133 to 77 advantage” among the next 210 blogs.
The study said this was “a serious problem that progressives must confront,” if they are going to overcome the conservatives’ advantage at the local level.
So liberals are 20% ahead of the conservatives in the top 40, but woefully behind in the top 210. I wonder why they decided to go with the top 40 and the top 210? Don’t we usually see the top 50, 100 and 200? Very odd.
And by the way, they’re defining Instapundit as a conservative blog so the methodology might not be as cut and dry as they might hope. I definitely think Glenn Reynolds in center-right, but he’s certainly no Little Green Footballs.
In any event, read the rest about the rise of the conservative blogosphere as reported by the Washington Times.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 13th, 2005 and is filed under Blogging, General Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 13th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Considering Reynolds links almost exclusively to conservative sources, he’s a conservative source. And if LGF is your threshold for conservatism, there are less than ten conservative blogs on the internet, and about 8 of them feature the word “Aryan” in the title.
August 13th, 2005 at 10:07 am
I think I’d like to find out how they’re defining these as well. Looks like I’ve got another project. :)
August 13th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
As for the top 40 vs. top 210 split, it would be tempting to make a comment about tendencies toward authoritarianism vs. tendencies toward pluralism, but I’ll forego it.
I think the term “conservative” applied to “Instapundit” does a disservice to both. Unless by “conservative” you mean “reluctantly voted for Bush in the last election.”
“The study, “Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A New Force in American Politics,” was conducted by two Democratic bloggers …” Would be interesting to know who they were. The article doesn’t tell us.
Worst thing about the article is, no link. I think I found the study here:
http://www.ndnpac.org/npi/blogreporthtml.html
You have to go to the PDF files to see the list.
Andrew Sullivan also is on the :conservative” list — voted for Kerry in ‘04, so there goes that trheory. So is Roger Simon. So is Balloon Juice, which often spars with conservatives. So is Ann Althouse (!) and our friend Michael J. Totten (!!).
And, most astonishingly to me, “Iraq the Model.”
Iraq the Model is run by two Iraqi brothers, in Iraq. They are not part of the American political system in any sense. To be “conservative” in Iraq would have meant, so far as I can calculate, either to want to preserve the status quo under Saddam, or to want a leadership of old-fashioned religious figures. The brothers are vehemently against both and risk their lives for their principles.
August 13th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
Indeed! It would be a great first project to see what is liberal, what is conservative and what fall somewhere in between, aka the militant moderate.
August 13th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Fair enough, but does he think to conservative sources or right-moderate and left-moderate sources? A study of this would be very interesting because if we judge somebody by who they link to, we might be able to see trends emerge.
Thanks for the idea Jesse.
August 13th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
I don’t know what the trouble is in defining a conservative blog as opposed to a liberal blog. I don’t know all of the blogs listed, but the pattern seems pretty clear: Those who supported the war in Iraq are conservatives, and those who are opposed to everything Bush does are liberals.
The one possible exception I saw was Intel Dump. I recall that he wasn’t necessarily keen on going to war with Iraq. I believe his problem wasn’t that force was being considered, but that going to war with Iraq would limit our options elsewhere. Maybe the fact that he even considered war as an option made him a right-winger.
August 13th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Justin – if you looked at my blog, the vast majority of what I link to is conservative sources. To amend my original comment, what Reynolds links to approvingly are conservative sources.
And Totten, Simon, et. al. are conservatives, at least in a blogging sense. The “war in Iraq” has seemingly extended in their minds to everything liberals or Democrats do. This isn’t a particularly interesting debate, commenters aside, largely because it’s obvious who’s conservative and who’s liberal by the goals they seek in their blogging. Charles Johnson will frequently say he’s not a conservative, and yet you use him as the model for conservative blogs. It’s one of the hallmarks of the conservative blogosphere – continually support conservative goals and insult liberals, yet when you’re labeled as what you’re obviously are, pull a Bill O’Reilly and trot out some dusty part of your political beliefs that you never talk about unless you’re trying to assault someone else as a labeler.
(Oh, and if reluctantly voting for a major-party candidate means you’re not actually of the ideological camp you belong to, then most liberal Kerry-voters aren’t liberals at all…)
August 13th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
Interesting. I won’t disagree with that observation about Instapundit, but when I looked at your blog initially, I only glanced at four or five stories. Given that sampling, I pretty much saw links to liberal blogs and online reprints of newspapers articles. And the one mention of Townhall (which is decidedly right wing) doesn’t have a link to it. But this is probably because it was glance instead of an actual look.
Well, that’s just plain wrong. Totten attacks the liberals who are knee-jerk anti-war reactionists that call Bush a muderer and think he’s just as bad as OBL. He also happens to live in Portland, so I think that has something to do with it. Many of his social views are much like mine, except we disagree about the prosecution of the war. Somehow this dumps him in the conservative camp, as if to be a liberal means you HAVE to be against using the US’s military as a liberating force. I won’t agree with how Bush prosecuted the war, just like I won’t agree with how liberals cry foul once somebody talks about how the Iraq war could have been a just war. What Totten has also found, is that the right-wing seems much more inviting of dissent and the left seems much less so. Oddly enough, I have to agree with him, but I think it’s mostly regulated to the blogosphere. I think you’ll find that many respected “conservative” bloggers have many moderate views on social policy and individual freedoms. But they stop short of going the route of the ACLU. I think Totten is in this boat, and all of a sudden he’s labelled a yoostabee Democrat. Huh?
See, I don’t agree with insulting most anybody because it simply doesn’t do any good. I’ll throw up my arms and exclaim frustration, but very rarely do I throw the insults around. That’s why I created this blog as a place where people from both sides could come together and have a conversation without having to worry about the rheotric and the name calling. Sometimes it’s successful, and sometimes it’s not, but I notice that the people who stick around here the most are the ones who don’t do a heck of a lot of name calling or rhetoric slinging.
Coincidence?
August 13th, 2005 at 11:48 pm
I don’t want to be a stickler for semantics, but it’s not the top 40 versus the top 210.
“while liberals have “a decided advantageâ€Â? over conservatives among the top 40 blogs (24-16), “conservatives hold a whopping 133 to 77 advantageâ€Â? among the _next_ 210 blogs.”
So that’s not including the first 40. Though I agree, the top 50 would be better to see than the top 40.
So instead of 133 to 77 in the top 210, it’s actually 149 to 101 in the top 250.
August 14th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
I concede that defining “left” and “right” is an inherently amibguous exercise, but if somebody (like Glenn Reynolds) who calls Ward Churchill “the fact of the left” and that large parts of the Democratic Party “aren’t just anti-war, they’re on the other side” isn’t conservative, I’m not sure who is.
August 14th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Since when did “conservative” = “anti-Democrat?” I’m old enough to remember conservative Democrats.
August 14th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
He said that? Scott, please point to these articles. Thanks.
August 14th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
“The study, “Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A New Force in American Politics,� was conducted by two Democratic bloggers …� Would be interesting to know who they were. The article doesn’t tell us.
The authors are Chris Bowers of MyDD.com and Matt Stoller of Blogging of the President (BOPnews.com)
The link you found is the correct article.
August 14th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
Justin: The “Ward Churchill is the authentic face of the left” post is here. The “John Kerry has it tough…he’s been trying to send a positive message on the war when many people in his own party are actively rooting for the other side” post is here.
August 14th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
Thanks Scott. Two things though.
First, the post about Ward Churchill (WC) is a good one, and I agree with much that Reynolds says because he’s talking about how the Dems can help themselves by shunning idiots like WC. However, I do disagree with he says:
However, I think in this context, Reynolds gets my sympathy because I think he’s genuinely frustrated that guys like WC are getting so much traction on the left. But again, I think he’s wrong. If anything, Dean is the face of the the left right now, which isn’t great, but it’s a whole lot better than WC.
The second post is spot on and I agree with Reynolds. When ads are calling for the death of Rumsfeld, they should be shunned out of hand. That’s ridiculous and Reynolds points to it as an example of how Kerry is going to have a tough time convincing the middle that he’ll be a good leader, when the vocal ones within his party are being so unreasonable.
To the statements that Reynolds is a conservative blogger, I still disagree. But I do think he’s right-center and usually that’s what most people think a moderate is: a republican. And I’m here to tell you that this isn’t the case. In my experience so far, moderates are more interested in ideas than ideology, and I think Reynolds falls into this camp.
August 15th, 2005 at 10:06 am
1)Ward Chruchill is, of course, getting no traction whatsoever on the left. I, like most liberals, had never heard of him before the right became obssesed with him, and think he’s a crackpot whose writings have no value at all. Neither Reynolds nor you has identified a single American liberal of any prominence who has defended either him or the subtance of his remarks. Ted Kennedy’s prescient speech about Iraq certainly doesn’t qualify, although it’s useful in making it clear that Reynolds considers any criticism of Republican foreign policy “traitorious.”
2)An ad placed by one Democratic “club” cannot be extrapolated to “large numbers of Democrats,” unless you believe that since Tom Coburn and Glenn Reynolds are both supporters of George Bush they share exactly same views. (And, of course, this analogy is too generous, since Coburn is actually a United States Senator, not a few random cranks.)
Anyway, it is hardly surpising that someone who considers the Democratic Party to consist largely of traitors is considered a “conservative” blogger, and nor is there any significant difference between the level of discourse at Instapundit and LGF. (Charles Johnson is nominally pro-choice too.)
August 16th, 2005 at 2:43 am
LGF is a special case. I can deal with Charles; he’s given me some links. He’s angry about Islamism and he’s been attacked so often and so viciously from the other side that he seems to take it personally now. I probably would, too. It’s a rough game. But the comments threads on his posts are another thing entirely. I have given up trying to explain that I’m not a conservative, and I accept that label now with a resigned sigh. After all, I’m registered GOP voted for Bush (actually voted for “anyone but anyone but Bush”) in 04, support the Iraq project. But the few times I tried to post on LGF I got jumped by the regulars. Some of the bigger left-side blogs have the same problem.
Your caveat of “of any prominence” would allow you to dismiss anyone I could name who HAS defended W.Churchill (Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bill Maher, Alexander Cockburn, among others). You’d likely say they have no political power, therefore no prominence. But you’ve heard of them before and so have I and many other people, which seems to suggest some “prominence.” On the other hand, I wouldn’t call any of them “liberals” (well, Maher, maybe), but they’d call themselves that, and many of the liberals I know and work with are quite fond of them.
So, you set up a challenge for us, but built in plenty of trap doors to disqualify any answer you don’t like.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:01 pm
“So, you set up a challenge for us, but built in plenty of trap doors to disqualify any answer you don’t like.”
I’m sorry, but this is silly; the “trapdoor” is demanded by the nature of the claim. Reynolds didn’t say that “a few radicals” supported Ward Churchill; he said that he was “the face of the left,” and Justin said he was getting significant “traction.” To have to come up with at least *one* prominent liberal still doesn’t come close to justifying Reynolds’ smear, but it’s certainly a minimum. (Maher might qualify, although I’m not aware of him defending the *substance* of Churchill’s remarks. And, of course, the Stalinist Cockburn would not call himself a “liberal.”)
And, again, I’m not saying that Reynolds is a conservative because he voted for Bush. I’m saying he’s a conseravtive because he considers anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman a traitor.
August 17th, 2005 at 1:20 am
It’s also worth pointing out that when Reynolds does disagree with Bush or the Republican agenda he has an odd habit of turning those posts into attacks on the left of various sorts.
August 17th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
I watched the Maher/Churchill interview. Maher is a bit of an idiot. I think he’s reading his (defensible) views into Churchill’s indefensible ones. He also has a sense of solidarity in persecution. It’s an embarrassing performance for both of them. Getting a mildly sympathetic interview with a comedian who’s also a liberal constitutes “traction on the left” or, better yet, the “face of the left” than we have different operational definitions of our terms.
The reason we’re hammering away at this is that it seems to me that being a serious centrist or moderate would mean being able to see through such a transparent rhetorical strategy as the whole Ward Churchill thing.
August 17th, 2005 at 4:07 pm
Well, you made achallenge and I gave it a shot. Maher was the best I could find, lol. So we’ll acknowledge, unless further evidence surfaces, that no “prominent liberals” lined up behind W.C. Maybe he’s a useful litmust test for “reasonable left” vs. “loony left.”
But if you subtract his bile and his snarl, and reduce his screed to a series of unemotional statements, how many would sign on to it? That’s a pure hypothetical, of course, and probably a topic for another thread and another day.
August 17th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
I suspect that signifigantly *fewer* people would find his claims worthwhile if stated in such a manner. As they stand, they appeal to a naive sort (I confess, for a brief time in my early youth I might have been suseptible) who find a certain kind of angry radical posturing attractive in and of itself. Stated clearly and directly, there would be nothing to disguise the fact that it’s nonsense.
August 17th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Interesting, djw. I was thinking that if you drained off the vituperation and the adjectives, you’d have Chomsky. But then, we might be saying the same thing here.
August 17th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
The Chomsky argument against the left is a better one, and I have often expressed a bit of dismay that so many on my side find so much value in his arguments. But let’s be clear, Chomsky, Zinn et al never wrote anything even close to as appalling as what Ward Churchill argued. If Churchill was simply echoing Chomsky, Fox News never would have dug him up and no one would know who he was.
And even then, it would be wrong to suggest that someone like Noam Chomsky represents the face of the left. I would allow that Chomsky has some traction, but he’s never had an impact on anything that the Democratic Party has done.
So, I’m inclined to think that even that argument fails to hold water.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
“Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bill Maher, Alexander Cockburn”
Mumia Abu-Jamal and Alexander Cockburn would certainly not consider themselves liberals. Cockburn attacks liberals, as such, on Counterpunch regularly. Now, I’m on his side of that debate, but it’s still not any more fair to taint a good liberal imperialist (I’m sorry, patriot who opposes preventive war only when it might be counterproductive for America’s position in the world) like Kerry with Alexander Cockburn than it is to do the reverse. Hard as it may be for people in the US to believe, there are in fact positions to the left of liberalism.