It occurs to me, we’ve heard all this before. Currently there’s much hype and brouhaha about how netroots and blogging will change the face of D.C. and politics forever and ever. Feingold is running Blogads asking the netroots to choose worthwhile candidates to give money to. Meanwhile, Kos and allies plan on Crashing the Party via the Net. Certainly the tired old non-Net dinosaurs can not stand up to this onslaught much longer, can they?
Um, sounds a lot like the dot com days doesn’t it? There were lots of crazed predictions about how old business models were dead and the Net would usher in a wondrous new world. It didn’t happen. Instead, the bubble exploded with many dot coms instead becoming roadkill.
Blogs will not change politics. Instead, once the shakeout is over, they will become another player, another tool for doing outreach. There won’t be a blog bubble explosion ala the dot coms, but reality will be setting in soon enough.
Politics and organizing is done face-to-face, in meetings, forums, in public. That will never change. Blogs and the Net are a tool to further that, but can never substitute for it.