Chris you are right on with this one.  I came from the netroots and then started working for labor.  The site that I run for a group of unions for my day job is successful because I am writing in the culture of the netroots.  In that way I have started to bridge the gap.  My readers are both rank and file and members of the netroots.  Unions need to do a better job of communicating and engaging with the netroots in their culture and style.

It's an interesting idea. I think I don't buy it--it's tinged with a little too much "we are the new flesh" triumphalism, for starters--, but it's worth thinking about.

Elections.  Policy, schmolicy, we've got to win first.  Win.  Win.  Win.  When we can win elections in then we'll talk policy.  Did I say WIN????????  First you've got to win.  Nothing else matters.

In the netroots, people are organizing mainly around things like parenting, region, sexuality, sustainability, religion, music, sports, gender and profession.

But that doesn't apply to MyDD. Or, in general, to Kos. (Though Kos is so enormous and unmanageable, they could be planning an invasion of Tierra del Fuego over there and no one would notice.)

This blog is clearly about none of the things listed; it's about politics.

But it's not about issues in politics, either.

How, if it's attracting self-selectors interested in the detail of politics (the knowledge assumed here is much more extensive than that assumed by, say, the New York Times politics pages, I suspect), does it manage to avoid the issues you identify as DC establishment?

I think, for the same reason that our political journos cover issues on as superficial and horse race a basis as possible: because issues (in the DC sense) are hard work.

To take just a couple of examples: the MA health care plan is probably the closest thing we have to a blueprint for an advance towards UHC. No layman (certainly not me!) could possibly understand it without a lot of expert guidance and a lot of personal application.

And net neutrality - though an issue hitting MyDDers where they live - is, in its technical issues, devilishly complicated, and requiring even for the most basic of appreciations a knowledge of telecoms law and practice that few round here possess.

But even those issues where the technical difficulties aren't so great - such as estate tax repeal - simply don't excite MyDDers.

My sense is that the most popular issues surround heroes and villains. (Election activity per se will send the stats leaping, but most comments will be on races in which a sphere-designated hero or villain is running.)

Thus Hackett and Cegelis and Lamont/Lieberman and La Clinton, for example.

And Alito, of course, and that mythical filibuster that got lefties so worked up.

And on Schiavo, Jon Stewart (I seem to recall) made great fun of this being the only element of healthcare policy to get the GOP juiced.

But the same thing could equally be said of the lefty sphere. (Juice is so very far from polite interest.)

Now, this is all just my impression - perhaps someone has crunched stats that prove me wrong. But it is my impression...

So, what to do? How is the lefty sphere to have an input into DC-style issues if it fails to debate them, or indeed to show much interest in them, in its most populous fora?

Labor is a single issue constituency?  That's right out of the right wing slime playbook.  Labor is interested in the environment, civil rights, the economy, war and peace, and a lot more.  I think a far better way of looking at this is to recognize that the left blogosphere is functioning in large part as a substitute for unions.  It provides a way for people who aren't in a union and may not be where there is a realistic shot at getting organized any way soon to organize themselves to promote a broad progressive agenda.

So I think it is a two way street.  Nathan is doing a good job of penetrating the blogosphere for unions.  The blogosphere needs to coordinate better with organized labor.

Well, I'm one that did recommend the labor diaries (among others), but you got me all wrong!  It had nothing to do with guilt, but with the history I found interesting, and the thought that the issue should be discussed, and perhaps we could learn from what has happened in the past to another group trying to change things.

Recommending a diary doesn't necessarily mean agreement with it or guilt, IMHO.

Although I think this post is very incisive, I think it misses a couple of very important points.

There is still a labor culture in this country, though not as strong as it once was.  With union membership hovering around 10%, there are tens of millions of people who are union members.  Throw in their spouses, partners and children, and add in retirees and workers who would want to join a union, and there are indeed lots of working families.  In some areas, especially Detroit, the portion of union households is strong enough to sustain union-friendly businesses.  So why is there no working-families-blogosphere?

One possible explanation is the digital divide: working families, by nature, don't have as ready access to the Internet and blogging know-how, and even less so the time to blog.

That's not enough of an explanation of course.  Another possible explanation is that unions themselves discourage blogosphere participation; the AFL-CIO blog is a perfect example of the kind of press release blog I never want to see on a liberal web site.  Check out most local's websites, and you'll be luck to get working links, much less a blog with comments.  But on the other hand, PurpleOcean.org (SEIU's community blog) is an extremely open site, and it doesn't get a whole lot of user participation.

Perhaps the reason is that the worker blogs that are popping up are just not very well noticed.  Mini-Microsoft got some attention here - one reference in the past year, by my count - but few other workplace blogs have received attention.  However, I've noticed small workplace/union blogs popping up in my neck of the woods (can't find the link I was thinking of just now - damn).  These blogs will never make anyone famous - they are meant largely as a communication mechanism for the workers at a specific worksite, and are exceptionally uninteresting to anyone who doesn't work there.  But they are incredibly important developments nonetheless.  There are also some bigger ones, like www.futureoftheunion.com, the online presence of the UAW rank-and-file movement.  And there are the fairly well-known ones like Mini-Microsoft and EdWize.  But by and large these blogs don't appear to be well-known or even linked to other workplace blogs.

Anyway, the sort of discursive point here is that working family culture is popping up online, but there may be some factors hampering it, and it's probably not very well noticed.  Much more to the point, I think there is a cultural disconnect between working family culture and "progressive" culture, which makes it difficult for us to see these sorts of online presences popping up and encouraging them.  This problem is endemic of a lot of problems - racial divides, class divides, educational divides, who knows - but it is a big one, and it does both progressives and working families a big disservice.

How to fix it?  'ellifino.

I think you're all missing the point.

As my first witness, I call to the stand the tape of the panel on "blog theory" at YearlyKos. The issue of diversity came up fairly quickly, and one of the panelists observed that there were about 8 White guys and one White gal on the panel, and there was some hand-wringing about that.

Yes, there are some cultural and lifestyle differences between the net roots and the rest of the world. We must constantly be aware of who is NOT at the table. The White gal in the panel (what was her name???) observed, accurately, that blog communities seek out people with the same discourse styles (my phrase, since I can't remember hers), and that there are subliminal cues that we unconsciously use to determine whether you feel like you "belong," and whether Joe Schmoe "belongs." Let's face it: the net roots is a very verbal world, consisting almost entirely of words. There's a whole big world of sociolinguistics out there.

So when we detect a different voice, we shouldn't be too quick to pile on, and drive that person away.

Is it too early to start writing a net roots history? I want to read about what happened to the Wonkette. Under the original Wonkette, and then under Holly Martins(?), the Wonkette was smart, savvy, female, and different (remember Panda love?) It used to be on my daily read list. But since Holly left, the new crew there just doesn't seem to get it. It is SO over.

I am reminded about a comment about the audiences that Howard Dean always seemed to draw during his brief candidacy for the presidency: 99% preppy White folks. Near the end of his candidacy, he made a very clear attempt to diversify who was on the stage with him, but the ploy was transparent and failed to convince. We need to avoid a similar fate.

Bob in HI

Chris-- Labor is not an issue, but a far more pervasive "lifestyle"; in fact, it is what people do forty hours plus per week and the labor movement taps into a wide range of that lifestyle, from advocating civil rights legislation to protecting peoples jobs at the workplace to sponsoring picnics for their families.

My office is in a union building which often teems with hundreds of janitors doing this and that activity together.   While union "culture" is not as strong as it once was, it is actually far stronger than almost any competitor except the churches, which is why at election time unions are able to deploy so many volunteers tied into that culture.

The problem of the blogosphere is not that they don't care about labor issues-- because they often share the "issues" -- but that they are so disconnected from the union culture itself.  They don't even know that tens of thousands of workers are coming together to support each others in the Hotel Workers Rising campaign or that whole myriad of organizing and political campaigns associated with the union movement.

To be really blunt, the YearlyKos convention was impressive, but would be considered a pretty small event for any union holding its annual convention.   And for a union, each attendee would be there not just on their own behalf but representing often hundreds of other people, a far deeper democratic "culture."

Sure, a lot of unions are less vibrant than that, but I am sometimes amazed at anyone dismissing a culture of unions that bring together tens of thousands of workers at union halls and conventions every year-- and involve contact and one-on-one talks with millions of workers each year.  Most of this happens between stewards and workers on the shop floor or other venues than the Internet, so it's invisible, but it's very real.  

When I was lining up my YKos schedule on Air America and saw the panel on the labor movement, I groaned as only a 37 year veteran of said movement can groan, having heard it all before. I dutifully tuned in, however, and learned once again how vital the labor movement is.

Issues discussed included the social ramifications of a de-industrializing America and the very exciting ongoing linkup of labor with downtrodden immigrant populations in the hospitality and other industries (refreshingly different from the xenophobic approach of the not-too-distant past). It really was a shame so few people caught that panel, because many in this movement would have enjoyed it.

The blogosphere would be well advised to cultivate ongoing contacts with labor, which continues to represent millions who have nothing to do with blogs and never will. The disrespect of the transit workers in New York City so common in the left blogosphere a while back was a disgrace and a sign, if any is needed, of the middle class / professional background of so many participants. Fine, that's something the left blogs have been touting as a rejoinder to the wild-eyed hippy slam, but let's not forget that there are whole worlds of people out there, our natural allies, who have their own organizations and well-honed traditions of struggle.
.

While I agree most of the time with Chris I'm going to have to take issue with some of the substance at the post. First off I think Chris is taking issue with the way Nathan framed the first post on the issue, as why don't you care about this issue rather than why don't you care about the labor movement. You've written way too much, and way too many pixels have been wasted on the front-page of this blog on specific labor issues, or the importance of labor unions for labor to be considered a single issue. Every writer on MYDD to a certain extent gets labor issues as part of the larger progressive blogosphere.

Secondly, It's completely wrong to think of labor unions as single issue advocacy groups. We come out of Presidential elections arguing that our candidates should have been populists, championing the causes of the middle and the poor. The other day Chris wrote a post about how Edward's work on poverty issues and labor issues propelled him to the front of the pack among presidential campaigns in Iowa. We don't come out of campaigns saying that if Kerry had made ANWAR his centerpiece he'd be president today (in all due respect to my enviromentalist friends.) It doesn't move people, and it doesn't move votes the way workplace, and pocket book issues move votes.

People don't organize in a mass way around most other issues like the organize around workplace issues. It's why next to the church, workplaces are the best ways to create political identities and Republicans realize this. There have been a whole host of issues that Republicans have championed that poll in the 30's, but the one that hurts them most and that they don't want brought up again are issues like Social Security. For all the work that the blogosphere did on Social Security (and it was pivotal), it was the mobilization of labor unions, and their members that scared the Republicans. It's why the best way to raise money for any project on the right is to make that project have an anti-union slant, why the Bush administration's top goal, and the group it always helps are large corporations and issues that weaken labor unions. It's because the weaker labor unions are the weaker the overall progressive agenda becomes in the US. Without organized labor Gore would never have been close to becoming president.

I think there's some substance to the other parts of the post. I think there are reasons, to labor's determent, that we've come later to the blogosphere though I think the Ykos convention shows that labor is interested, and I know for a fact that union members organize online through unions and through professions.

Anyhow, my point is that I read that Chris is more annoyed with the pitch than the substance. I could be wrong.

I think that Chris is absolutely right that the blogosphere is culturally organized.  I think that he pulls a bit of a sleight of hand when he steps back and says:

In the blogosphere, there is no "health care" blogosphere, but there are parenting blogospheres, wine blogospheres, and physician blogospheres. There really aren't any blogs focused on environmental policy, but there are blogs such as Tree Hugger that focus on how to live a sustainable lifestyle.. . .

The Left blogosphere loves careful poll and demographic analysis, media analysis and criticism, elections, political horse race stories and front page policy debate (especially foriegn policy).  The blogosphere is rarely interested in something that the traditional media isn't also interested in.  Especially when it comes to policy and legislative politics.

My great disappointment in the blogosphere has been to see so many smart people who loved politics and had so little interest in policy.  I didn't see any substantive discussion for the most part of the Massachusetts healthcare plan.  I never see any discussion about how to make schools better.  Sustainability issues are only found on sites like Treehugger until "An Inconvenient Truth " triggers the right wing slime machine and viola! A political streetfight, now it's interesting to the Left blogosphere.

I'm always disappointed how much poll analysis I read versus how little coverage, tied to netroots lobbying of Congress and legislation I see.  The Bankrupcy Bill? Snore. Net Neutrality? Viola! legislation as a cultural issue.  Wake Up!

In Washington the AFL-CIO may operate on the Hill as a single issue lobbying group.  The fact remains that their is much more to the Labor movement than that, as Nathan as others have pointed out.  Culturally, I think that the Netroots just doesn't care that much about working peoples issues.

The House Appropriations Committee approved raising the minuimm wage today and you'd never know it from the Left blogosphere.

The Farmworkers always have a campaign that they are asking for signatures or letters to the editor.  You never see any calls to support striking workers.  But you can get thousands of signatures on a petition to take Chris Matthews or Tim Russert to task.

It's not surprising that Nathan pointed this out.  Besides being one of the few bloggers who does labor, he's also one of the few bloggers who does policy.

This is all natural.  We all tend to be interested in being where the action is.  That's why so many blogs on state and local politics get off subject with people wanting to talk about Iraq or other front page concerns.  That's why no one in the blogosphere takes it upon themselves to make sure that news from Afghanistan makes into their blog a few times a week.

It's understandable, I just wish that there was a stronger counter current.

PS It's pretty funny that the MyDD spellcheck highlights "blog", "netroots" and "blogosphere".

A few observations:

First, the netroots are not that impactful on their own.  If all we are is the people who log on to these sites, we're a spit in the ocean.  The netroots only matter to the degree that we ripple out - as a conduit for information counter to the corporate media narratives, as a catalyst for activism, etc...  One of the dangers highlighted by the success of Yearly Kos, for example, is that we lose our humility and perspective, get high on access and being treated like we matter, start defining our own "culture" or "lifestyle" and become insulated, just a bunch of white upper-middle class liberals talking to each other endlessly.  Then, we become just one more of the DC issues groups we complain about.

My hackles go up whenever people dismiss the need for diversity.  One of the great successes of the right is to frame diversity as a fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good hippy-dippy thing.  It's not - without a diversity of voices, we (collectively) don't know what the f--- we're talking about!  All of us have gaps in our knowledge, experience, interests, etc..  The more homogeneous we are (in terms of class, race, gender, geography, age, anything that matters in this world) the more likely our gaps are to overlap, and the more clueless and disconnected the netroots are.    

Which brings us to the "streetfight" thing.  One weakness of the media that we often fall for is the "top-down" view of the world.  There are some savvy bloggers trying to reign in this tendency, but for so many of us, the narratives that catch our attention are the ones that have a promise of fixing everything from above: Plame will take down the administration!  Dems will retake congress! Reid will strengthen the Dem caucus!  Defeating Lieberman will whip the Vichy-Dems into line!  etc...  The truth is (which we all know inside) that Fitz won't save us, Reid won't save us, Dean won't save us, even the Republicans' current implosion won't save us.  The right has worked tirelessly and been well-funded for forty years trying to change the underlying political landscape, and they've succeeded in many ways.  It will be a long tough slog to start reversing that.

Which brings us back to labor.  A lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth about unions (myself included): corruption, exclusionary practices, etc...  For far more of us, labor is just irrelevant - due to the right-wing assault on labor and the decline of manufacturing, fewer and fewer of us (esp. mid / upper mid class folks) have any real contact with labor or unions.  That said, labor and unions are the SINGLE ONLY remaining check on unbridled corporate power in this country.  Unions also have the single biggest impact on helping the working class in this country.  There is no other entity that does as much.  

If we're talking about the democratic party (reforming, supporting, whatever), it's impossible to have that conversation without talking about unions and minorities.  If the netroots do not do everything they can to foster that conversation, I worry it will paradoxically become a progressive DLC: looking for top-down change, money based (small-donor, but still money-based) and isolated.

Look, it's can be a lot more fun to spend time (online or off) with like-minded folks who share your culture/lifestyle/frame of mind (which often also translates into the same class, unfortunately), etc...  But if we're serious about change, past a certain point doing so becomes self-indulgent and self-defeating, and betrays the potential of the netroots to foster connection.

Sorry for the rant (much of it cribbed from far better writers online who have made many of the same points).  For the record, take this as much as a self-criticism as a criticism of anyone else...

This is a great insight, Chris.
I think you could also amplify it by including the notion of political culture.
So, each blog also represents a way of doing politics, of getting a message out, of making change happen.
This includes tone, emphasis, the angle chosen on any issue.

If you combine lifestyle/culture and political approach, you can explain where each blog is coming from.
A blog community is a group of demographically like individuals, seeking political change in a particular fashion.

That description is too narrow to apply to most political parties, but might actually be appropriate to a faction or sub-party.  
Factions are often ideologically defined, and may be more so in current American politics, but not always.  
Sometimes they were based on ethnicity, which was historically tied to lifestyle.  
Irish working-class Democrats, for example, would have been a faction based on identity, lifestyle, or geo-location, not a narrow set of issue-positions.

The blogosphere is by nature geo-location-neutral, and ethnicity/race-neutral ... but language use, conversational style, look-and-feel of the site, how news is sorted and prioritized, all contribute to a cultural sorting.

I think overall this theme is a good enough idea, that you could possibly work it up into a book, or maybe an online guide to the blogosphere.

One of the benefits, from an organizing point-of-view, is an expert in creating online culture, who understood particular sub-cultures deeply, could help build blog or networking communities for them if they are currently underserved.
The construction and resulting feel of such sites might vary widely.

Maybe this is more like coaching a candidate in how to behave in a variety of cultural settings, rather than getting them to memorize issue positions.
Culture and issues do have a correlation, at any point in time, but the relationship shifts and issue positions even flip over time.