How the right explains the left’s online dominance

February 12, 2008

The last I heard, the right was feeling quite pleased with itself because there was some evidence to suggest the traffic for the top liberal blogs was trending down, while the traffic for the top conservative blogs was trending up. This item, relying on SiteMeter data from the end of December, argued, “It has long been understood that the largest liberal blogs have generally produced more web traffic than the largest conservative blogs…. After surveying the traffic stats of many major political blogs, I found that web traffic for several major liberal blogs either declined sharply or stayed the same while major conservative blogs saw a sharp increase in traffic.”

Now, apparently, the right is prepared to argue the opposite — liberal blogs are more popular — but with a rationalization to explain the phenomenon.

Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online — though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives “have families because we don’t abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism.”

I see.

I’m not quite sure how best to respond to something like this — it’s unusually unhinged, even by the standards of the far-right blogosphere — though I think Matt Stoller is on the right track by relying on simple mockery: “Now, being a doctor who performs abortions is in fact a job, so one might find conflicting narratives in Erick’s quote. And if the way to use the internet well politically is to up the number of abortions, then the GOP is kind of fu**ed.”

On a slightly more serious note, Erickson actually went beyond tasteless nonsense to offer the right advice on how its end of the blogosphere might catch up to ours.

First, he argued, conservatives must place less emphasis on punditry (“everyone wants to be the next online Rush Limbaugh”) and begin to emulate the left’s use of the Internet to facilitate organization and activism.

Second, they should focus to a greater extent on local- and state-level politics, and in particular on the 2010 race, which Erickson regards as more important than the upcoming presidential race, as it will determine which party controls the redrawing of congressional district lines.

Third, they must “transcend old tech” in order to enjoy the same kind of advantage over e-mail that the Republican Party currently enjoys with respect to direct mail marketing. Bloggers, for instance, might seek to collect reader e-mail addresses as a first step toward turning casual commentary consumers into donors or full-blown activists.

That’s not bad advice, as far as it goes, but given that the far-right blogs tend to think it’s impressive when someone peeks in a low-income family’s window to see what kind of countertops they have in their kitchen, I have a hunch it’ll be a while until they’re taking on anything too sophisticated.

Zzzzzzzzzz…

  • Liberal blogs will continue to have an advantage until conservatives figure out how to use the mouse. So rest easy.

  • unusually unhinged, even by the standards of the far-right blogosphere

    When you see half the country as baby-murdering pro-terror advocates of bestiality, the world is a very scary place. And scared people do stupid things.

  • On the question of abortion . . . I’ve always wondered . . . if there were a genetic test that could determine whether a kid would turn out liberal or conservative . . . would conservatives abort their liberal fetuses?

    /snerk

  • That may well be the single stupidest thing I’ve ever read in my entire life.

    And the scariest too, if someone that mouthbreathingly moronic is (a) gainfully employed and (b) a parent.

  • I don’t know, it seems to me that Kos and C&L understand capitalism pretty well. I don’t think any ads on their blogs have been posted for free!!!

  • It’s actually kinda simple. Political affiliation is very much a generational game to date. Older people, the more conservative ones, aren’t that thrilled with new technology– no surprise there.

    Therefore, the only republifucks hanging around the internet tend to be the wanna-be youths, who have no vested interest in actually being a republifuck (I’d be willing to bet that roughly 100% of declared republifuck youths have republifuck parents).

    So it’s only natural that a newer technology like the internet would be attractive to more liberal people.

  • This is reminiscent of the 90s pc vs mac war. We all know where that went, just look at the mac man and the pc man in the commercials. You could easily watch those commercials and see how they could extend to politics by asking yourself, how would “pc” react to the terrorists, how would “mac” react?

    Or you could just go back to my previous tried and true analogy of the two types of people. People are either Andy Griffith or Barney Fife. How would GW Bush, uh, i mean Barney react to the terrorists?

  • “So it’s only natural that a newer technology like the internet would be attractive to more liberal people.”

    Or maybe it’s because they have not been as disgruntled these last 7 years (the same time period that blogs became popular) and therefore have less to bitch about…

  • Most of the popular liberal blogs are popular, not necessarily because they’re based in liberalism, but because they’re based on fact. Everytime someone like Friedman talks about how the tide of the war will turn in six months, there’s a blog with a link to ALLL the other times he’s said that very thing in the past. When Bush talks about spearheading a new program, and then offers no financing for the program (like extending the military’s unusued education benefits to the soldiers’ respective families), a blog is there to point this out. Some dillhole claims that dissent destroys the morale of the military? Liberal blogs find a poll of military personnel that proves otherwise. Someone takes a quote of Bill Clinton;s out of context that makes it seem like he believes in the opposite of the point he’s making? Liberal blogs are there to provide the whole quote in context. Why would George Allen call someone a “macaca” and what does that even mean? Liberal blogs explain it all.

    THAT’S why liberal blogs are popular, they provide a fact-based context to the horse hockey we;re spoon-fed on a regular basis and provide the links to back it up. Something they wouldn’t have to do if the conservative blogs and sites didn;t lay the horse hockey down so thick in the first place! Also something they wouldn;t have to do if the MSM did its damn job and called out the liars for their lies!

    Which is why there’s few popular conservative blogs. Hate radio and Fox news spins the lies, and the MSM repeats the lies. To then tell the lies again on the internet is kinda superfluous. But to find someone somewhere to challenge and refute the lies? Well, that kinda of resposnsble citienry has found a home online. And it flourishes. It might not be changing the dynamic as fast as we’d like it, but it’s slowly eating away at the spin, the noise, the nonsense. The old adage about how a lie can spread around the world while the truth’s still getting its shoes on is slowly changing. Now, the truth manages to get its shoes on, have breakfast and get stuck in rush hour traffic 🙂 But it’s catching up.

    But until neoconservatism embraces truth, the internet is counterproductive. It serves a purpose, but not as well as other mediums.

  • It’d probably help if Erick didn’t ban anyone who dares to question anything ever posted on his site — that tends to turn people off.

    Also, it has less to do with the size of one’s family or employment status, and more to do with one little pesky fact: It’s the message.

    More Americans now consider themselves aligned with Democrats in terms of policy and where the future direction of our country.

    Because of this — and the incredibly ridiculous “punditry” in which they participate — people just aren’t interested in buying what these clowns are selling.

  • JRS jr– but whatever you do, don’t forget to thank Dear Leader! Without him, I don’t think that blogs would ever have risen to the heights which they have. After all, what would they have been railing against for the past 7 years under President Gore….?

  • One problem I see here is this – the republican/wingnut types tend to be followers, the progressives tend to be activists. The followers look for someone to obey, and without a person to egg them on, they just meander. The activists want to get off their butts, and thus look for leaders who do something and fulfill their needs. Even I, a person not nearly as active as he should be, write my congresspeople, send donations, make calls, etc – and there are sites that keep me up to date on issues and help me be active.

    The followers really just want someone to tell them what to do and make them feel better by knowing who to hate and who to scream at. These aren’t constructive groups – they’re minions, they’re essentially unskilled political labor. They don’t set deep goals or long-term plans or see the big picture – they rely on others for that.

    Yes the wingnuts have some leaders, and are glad to follow Republican marching orders – but literally that’s all they’re capable of doing. They’ll be rallied BY someone, but since they can’t articulate larger goals and plans, they can’t rally themselves.

    So I wish them well. What I really expect is that the online wingnuts will only manage a somewhat better fear-and-smear machine, and perhaps even more odius activities and invasions of privacy. They’ll need to keep doing more and more crazy to keep the hordes moving.

  • When you consider EpRick the RedState is begging for funds because their site is held together by spit and damp Cheetos the funny goes to 11.

    But since Rickie is shameless about pulling crap out of his arse, here are my reasons Liberal Blogs tend to do better than Conservative Blahgs:

    1. We haven’t blown all of our money on Mountain Dew and Cheetos so we can afford decent computers.
    2. Higher literacy rates mean reading is a pleasure not a chore.
    3. We respect laws so we don’t purchase computers from a guy in a grocery store parking lot.
    4. We aren’t afraid Osama Bin Laden will reach through our computer monitor and pluck our beating hearts from our chests.
    5. We know there’s more to the internet that pRon.

    Any more?

  • As the author of the bloggasm article you link to, I should note that I’m not a member of the right. A lot of rightwing bloggers used that article as a reason to celebrate, but I just posted it because I found it to be an interesting trend.

  • First of all- If abortions were as profitable as, say, boob jobs, abortion would be fine with conservatives.
    Second, capitalists don’t have “jobs”, only liberals have “jobs”. Capitalists are the ones who provide the “jobs” at wages that don’t keep up with inflation.

  • Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

    The only reason the righties have any traffic is the fact that computers are now so user-friendly that bipeds lacking frontal lobes and opposable thumbs (homo sap, i.e., the righties) can use them just like real people.

    Those little 20-nothing boobs over at RedState are proof of the disaster of home schooling. It was the only thing that kept them from being chased home every day. Let’s recall that Ben Domenech – the poster boy for home-schooled plagiarism – was one of the “founders,”

  • The Republican tactics were born of a time when fact-checking was more difficult, when somebody couldn’t look up information on wikipedia, opensecrets, or polling report to quickly debunk Republican talking points. The truth catches up to lies faster, in a short enough time that people don’t forget what the lie in question was.

    Additionally, the Republicans, instead taking an investigative reporting attitude towards politics, have chosen instead to once again reinforce party orthodoxy.

    Democrats take advantage of the information economy of the web to successfully compete with Republicans for those not quite committed. Especially important is the emphasis in many parts on a practical, fact-based attitude towards politics. Our apparent grounding in these facts serves us well, makes it easier for us to convince people of our beliefs.

    Then, having motivated and been motivated, we have used our resources to redefine our relationship with politicians into a more active one.

    It’s easier to run on truth on the web than to try and maintain a political process based on misinformation and B.S. When people can quickly google and factcheck information, lying to them is only going to get you hurt. Actions speak louder than words, and with the internet, people get the message faster than ever.

  • I thought that remark was tacky, but they have never been known to play nice even though they are “Christian”. We’re the “intellectual elite” that doesn’t work? Riiiiiiiiight…and we abort because we want to have more time to read blogs… Riiiiiiight…

    I have several RW friends who are the nicest people you would ever want to meet, but other than face-to-face with people they know, they really believe that people are basically evil and that social darwinism is justified because anyone they don’t know is (like my son says), “strange, different, thusly to be feared”. In spite of that they consider themselves optimistic. Go figure!

  • Dragon Scholar hit a really important point. The Republican Party ain’t the Daddy party for nuthin”. Republicans like “strong” leaders that tell them what to do. Politics is giving and following orders so one-way media like talk radio, which the right excels at, works great for them. Rush’s listeners are called ditto-heads for very good reason

    Liberal thought is a two-way street. It begs for give and take and the internet is the perfect medium for such concepts.

    Castor Troy is correct that there is a generational gap in internet proficiency and use, but the average blogger is in his 40’s so that may not skew as young as would be expected.

    JRS does have a point that conservatives happy with Bush have had no reason to go online, but if the media wasn’t so tilted in favor of this administration and newsgatherers actually did their job, even they would have plenty of good reasons to bitch about the current administration.

    Lastly, if there was ANY good conservative content on the web, maybe it too would develop an audience. But when the vast right wing wasteland is populated by the likes of Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Glen Reynolds and Red State why waste the electrons reading that?

  • Fifty years ago I used to like to read right-wing rags because the authors did a bang-up job of documenting the progressives’ progress. Of course, to them it was documenting the moral decay of our country. Most on the left, by contrast, cared little for facts. They were heavy on ideology and feelgoodism. What thoughtful, fact-based analyses there were I found mostly in places like San Francisco’s International Bookstore, most of the books in which were published by the Foreign Language Publishing House in Moscow (a guy from the FBI, in a hotel across Market Street, photographed coming in and going out of there).

    Today it’s reversed. The right-wing blogs seem almost exclusively set up to entertain the “amen corner” of some idiot church. What apparent “facts” they deal with are almost completely trumped up, i.e., incorrect, lies. Today it’s the left-wing blogs which actually document things. Unfortunately, since they stick to truth pretty much, they can’t document progress. Rather, they describe relentlessly the utter failures that Pelosi and Reid have turned out to be. They describe how cowardly and sheeplike significant numbers of Senate Democrats behave.

    The right-wing essays of fifty years ago always made me happy, realizing that progress was continuing beyond the New Deal. The left-wing blogs of today actually depress me, but I keep reading them since “amen corners” full of delusionals depress me even more.

  • Third, they must “transcend old tech” in order to enjoy the same kind of advantage over e-mail that the Republican Party currently enjoys with respect to direct mail marketing. Bloggers, for instance, might seek to collect reader e-mail addresses as a first step toward turning casual commentary consumers into donors or full-blown activists.

    The second part is obviously something they need to work on, but I would argue they already have dominance over e-mail. 90%+ of the political email I get is anonymous mass-mailed right-wing smears.

  • Every time I’m privy to a right vs left name-flinging war like this, a recurring quandary occurs. If the left is so certain that their positions are supported by methodical and rational thinking, why are there liberal Christians? The right and the fundies seem consistent in that they both appear to me to be authoritarian and have little use for facts. But the left is an oxymoron. Why the emphasis on facts with respect to politics and total abandonment of rational thinking with respect to religion? I have never understood this.

  • One of the points made several times here is that the left provides fact-checking and information, the right does not.

    That suggests one more dynamic to me.

    Liberal blogs provide me with information and tools. Right wing blogs provide red meat and trying to rally the Wingnut masses. The problem being that it takes a lot of work to keep people in a froth of hate and anger – so you have to constantly keep up the effort to keep people angry.

    The problem is that you don’t DO anything that way. You just keep throwing red meat to the hordes – you don’t build anything, you have to use pre-built structures (the Republican party, other groups) to even involve the slavering hordes. So you’re putting in a lot of effort to keep people going, but have to funnel them into structures built by others to get them to do anything. There’s nothing being MADE on the Ravening Wingnut level.

    Progressives, seeking information and improvement, are building. The Wingnuts are just hating.

  • The main problem is that conservatives are top-down people and liberals are bottom-up people. They take orders from above, with the RNC elders giving marching orders to Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.; and then letting them trickle down from there to RedState and below. And so it’s impossible to empower the riff-raff bloggers to do anything on their own. That’s why their “grass-roots” organizations are all astro-turf and why they can never really have a MoveOn. Not only do they not want to empower these people, but the people themselves don’t know how to do it. Centralized idea distribution like talk radio and Fox News makes sense for them, because it helps distribute the same ideas to jerks all over the country.

    Liberals, on the other hand, clearly have no one to turn to but ourselves. We turned to blogs because we weren’t being represented anywhere and don’t need to wait for our orders from anyone. Talk radio and television are no good because they don’t really let us talk back; which is exactly what we want to do. Blogs let us talk back. While conservatives use blogs as a means to ignore the MSM, liberals use it as their only way to talk about what’s in the MSM. We don’t need a centralized mind telling us what to do. We just need a way to talk to each other.

    For conservatives, they see how well we’ve used the net and think they can just shift their Limbaugh/Fox focused energies to that, but it’s impossible. It’s not just that the internet is better at this stuff; it’s that the advantages it gives liberals just doesn’t apply to conservatives. The internet gives liberals the ability to form a hive-mind which can work together to solve problems. Conservatives were already born that way, so the internet could do nothing but divide the hive. And more likely, all it does is give them an echo chamber to help them reinforce what the leaders tell them. And it will never be more than that for them. Conservativism could not exist if these people were allowed to think for themselves, as the delusion only holds up if they all see the same fantasy world.

  • Chopin said:

    Every time I’m privy to a right vs left name-flinging war like this, a recurring quandary occurs. If the left is so certain that their positions are supported by methodical and rational thinking, why are there liberal Christians? The right and the fundies seem consistent in that they both appear to me to be authoritarian and have little use for facts. But the left is an oxymoron. Why the emphasis on facts with respect to politics and total abandonment of rational thinking with respect to religion? I have never understood this.

    Just an amateur theologian here, but … 😉

    The right wing views and uses religion in the classical sense — as a way to unify the masses and get them all in line. That’s not to say the people are sheep now compared to, say, the Middle Ages. Back then you didn’t have all that many options and just joined the same church as everyone else. Now, folks switch religions all the time, or find it later in life, so it’s a conscious choice (at least in most “modern” countries).

    However, the model is still the same now as then: Someone of authority (sense a theme with other comments?) provides counsel/directions/the occasional “order” to those who are positioned lower in authority, and those lower people then do/repeat/take to heart whatever is said. It doesn’t matter if it’s God, or Jesus, or Jehovah, or space aliens. There is a definite, defined order, and everyone is expected to adhere to it.

    Why else do people care if two other people get married or not? Why else do people want to tell consenting adults what they can or can’t do in their bedroom? Why do they want to tell others what they can or cannot put in their bodies? Why punish, ostracize, marginalize, or whateverize anyone who believes differently?

    Because it’s about order and following it. Logic doesn’t factor into it.

    But of the people on the left who I’ve known to be religious, the view is different.

    Religion is not so much about defining and guiding a life — it’s about enhancing life. It’s not twisted and turned into public policy, but remains a personal philosophy. Yes, there is still structure, and those with more knowledge of whatever particular belief it is do provide direction.

    But there’s no desire to have religion control every single part of every single thing they do, since the focus is more about the overarching ideals that make up the core of the philosophy.

    This isn’t to say that one is “better” than the other, although it may look like that. Simple truth is, some folks like the structure, enjoy and feel comforted by the thought of having someone to watch over them and tell them how things work, and view the tenets or positions we find silly as perfectly reasonable.

    Religion can also be a powerful force for good, since some wonderful things have come out of it — MLK did, after all, use the Bible as the basis of his peaceful protests, and Ghandi’s beliefs sustained him through incredibly rough times.

    On a personal level, the advantage I see with the left wing religious folks is that they don’t seem to be nearly as evangelical, so they’re not always trying to convert every person they meet … which makes them a lot less annoying.

    🙂

    Wow. Quite the “Outta Mysphincter” religious analysis there.

    Take it for what it’s worth, your mileage may vary, yadda yadda yadda …

  • JRS Jr said: “Or maybe [the reason conservatives get less hits on their blogs is] because they have not been as disgruntled these last 7 years (the same time period that blogs became popular) and therefore have less to bitch about.”

    That is so untrue. BGII’s immigration reform efforts, NCLB, the Medicare drug benefit. Not to mention the libertarian reactions to his imperialism, fiscal irresponsibility and unconstitutional activities.

    There are plenty of reason for conservatives to bitch and moan.

    That they don’t is proof they aren’t really conservatives, just opportunists and liberal haters.

    Conservatives aren’t mirror images of liberals. When Dr. George F. Will looks in his mirror in the morning, the fact that the person he sees parts his hair on the left doesn’t make that mirror image a liberal.

    The reason we have more bloggers is that progressives, liberals and populists can actually construct a sentence in English. This is certainly beyond the ability of the wingnuts’ dear leader, BGII.

  • I’d like to see his proof for the claim that conservatives “don’t abort their kids.” There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence from abortion providers who found themselves performing the procedure for young women who had been picketing them the previous day, and who were right back on the picket lines the next day. One doctor asked a woman who came to him for a second procedure if this meant she was no longer politically “pro-life.” She responded, in a panic, “You’re not going to tell my mother, are you?” and went right back to the “pro-life” picket lines after her second abortion.

    You’d be amazed how many “pro-lifers” claim to have seen the light after getting abortions themselves. Of course, the Christian narrative of repentance and redemption lets them wash all that away until the next time.

  • This stay-at-home, cookie-baking soccer mom finds that explanation kind of funny, and she can’t wait to tell her banker husband. We’re both lefties (who didn’t abort our three children).

  • This idea has been touched upon but not said explicitly: The Republicans do not practice participatory politics, because they (the party leaders) are wealthy men protecting their oligarchy and while they use and manipulate the unwashed masses to get the votes (along with cheating at the polls), they don’t actually want any of those nasty underlings getting educated, getting healthcare, having the right to strike for better wages, etc, etc. Just witness the recent budget which yanks funding for services that primarily benefit their own constituencies. Computer proficiency is difficult to attain if you haven’t been trained to problem-solve, a skill not taught in the No Child Left Educated era. Yes, they want women to be barefoot and pregnant, and definitely powerless, and the men working 3 or 4 jobs to get by, because then they and their children are so busy trying to survive that they will just do what they are told, rich fodder for religion and Big Daddy.

  • There’s no contest. Conservatives are the new niggers. We’re despised, ostracized, branded as violent racist Nazi fascists and blamed for all the country’s problems. How far is that, really, from the visceral mindless hatred of blacks in the South during the Jim Crow era?

    And that’s all fine with me. We’re tough enough to handle it. And we don’t have to draw on shady or corrupt financial resources, “paid volunteers” or a sympthetic and biased media to get our message out.

    …completely proving the article’s points, that anger and lies are the right’s only tools on the web. Thanks for the reinforcement.

  • After all this there are also several real reasons: liberals are on average twice as educated as conservatives and educated people surf the net while uneducated folks listen to am radio. Also, the internet is a place where one may go and accidently stumble on things one doesn’t agree with. This is a scary notion for conservatives used to not dealing with information that makes them uncomfortable. For liberals, thinking many strange and new thoughts is all in a days thinking.

  • RD–
    It’s stunning that those who are to blame for their own mistakes think they are the equivalent of those who were hanged for having a different color of skin.

    I guess having unfettered control of government for seven years is the exact same as those who are still underrepresented at all levels of power.

    I guess guys like Richard Scaife, Rupert Murdoch, Sun Myung Moon and Pat Robertson are no match for one guy.

    And two outlets that have never received a dime of funding from that one guy are the exact same as the four guys mentioned above funding and dominating The American Enterprise Institute, Regnery Press, Fox News, Newsmax, The National Review, Liberty University, The Washington Times, The New York Sun, Pajamas Media, Clear Channel, CPAC, PNAC, The Heritage Foundation, and countless others.

    Stunning. Truly stunning.

  • Mark- jeez, I hope you didn’t think I agreed with that deleted drivel! And, I agree with everything you said. I quoted one of the guy’s most ridiculous points (among many) because they were so instructive as to the right’s tired techniques: ‘Poor, poor, republican me.’ No educated person is going to buy that line.

  • RD–
    Oh no … I know we’re on the same page here. I just refuse to actually respond directly to trolls any more. I instead do it by proxy.

    🙂

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