Bloggers at Fault?/The New Grassroots

Posted on November 3, 2004 in Blogging Campaign 2004 Journalists & Pundits

The Los Angeles Times printed an interesting article: Bloggers Blamed for Bad Poll Info. I read the article and what is missing is any explanation of the mechanism of why we are to blame:

But the people who read these numbers — among them, thousands of ordinary Americans with an intense interest in the election — put too much faith into them and leaped to conclusions, said Bill Schneider, CNN’s polling expert.

“I think people believed them, and it’s particularly the case with Internet bloggers,” said Kathy Frankovic, CBS News’ polling director. “That’s unfortunate because it sets up expectations that may or may not be met. I think it’s a good exercise because it reminded people that early exit polls can be unreliable.”

Bloggers picked out different numbers to use for their purposes, said Joseph Lenski, who ran the poll with partner Warren Mitofsky for the NEP. As the day wore on, later waves of exit polling showed the race tightening.

The rift between Americans in the media and Americans outside of the media remains deep. That’s what we need to address here as we continue to examine what happened here. And I continue to feel that we must start by examining ourselves, that we must evaluate the feelings of hatred and rejection of core values that we share with those who voted for Bush out of fear of us.

No, it’s not about promoting the anti-same-sex-marriage issues or giving in on abortion. I think as we look back, we will learn more about how to conduct an election. I saw too many angry volunteers in Nevada. What we need are more people who love their fellow Americans regardless of their beliefs.

George W. Bush will not reunite this country in the near future. But we the People can and, just as Reagan followed our lead in the Cold War, so too must Bush follow our lead on the issues that matter to us.

What bloggers can do is continue to exercise a critical view on the doings of this election while keeping a check on their own hatred. Gandhi changed the world by keeping in check the rage of his supporters. You must love the British, he’d say to his supporters. We must love the Republicans.

Join with me now. Listen to me now. Love the Republicans as we spend the next two years striving to repair America. No more hatred. No more ugly caricatures. No more going along for reasons of political expediency as we did when the war was declared. Lots of emphasis on strengthening our love. Be nonthreatening and be firm in your love of liberty and justice for all Americans. They still dread Armagaeddon just as the Romans feared what Christians not sacrificing to their gods would do to their empire. We are in the same place as the Christians. And they ultimately triumphed over the state religion of the Romans.

This blogger shall not accept the blame for the loss. He accepts blame for his sometimes failed attitudes, his flashes of hatred. He shall begin to speak a language of Love. If there is a God, perhaps this is the message we are being told to hear. If the Buddha is Best as a t-shirt I have says, then we must return to the central message of that religion that all life is suffering. We have been very conscious, excruciatingly conscious of our own suffering and we have mocked the fears of others and presented ourselves as a threat. The lesson here is we must we must we must start to stop thinking about “coalitions” in the same old failed way and we must start thinking of a new unity.

I’ll be thinking about a New Grassroots in the weeks to come. I invite other liberal bloggers to think about the ways that they fell into hatred in the last few weeks and how we might renew ourselves as responsible Americans who truly live what we say we support: respect for diversity.

I want an America where the lions of conservativism can lie down in peace with the lambs of liberalism. Or maybe it is the other way around? Let us find the lamb inside of us and prepare to struggle in the Lamb’s War. Smile, my beloved friends. You have a gift given to you. Smile. Affirm your values of diversity and love.