This is a second in a series of posts about bloggers, who they are, where they came from and what they believe. The next blogger featured will be Chris Bowers, from MyDD.
Let's start with the facts. Peter Daou doesn't rant from his basement and he never blogs in his pajamas. Which shouldn't come as a complete shock because Peter is a consummate professional, 41 years old, married and living in New York City. As you will see from the conversation that follows, Peter comes to blogging with a unique life story. He spent his teens in Beirut, Lebanon and survived a Middle East civil war. He's an accomplished jazz keyboardist, a longtime human rights and environmental activist and a leader in the online political world.
Peter joined the Kerry campaign in late 2003. As Kerry's senior online communications advisor, he was responsible for monitoring online activities and working with the senior campaign staff on the issues facing Kerry/Edwards in the blogosphere. One of my enduring memories from the campaign is of walking into the chaos of the war room and there in the back left corner would be Peter - calm and focused in the vortex, staring at his computer screen and typing away.
After the election, Peter launched the Daou Report - a popular aggregator of the political blog world - his site is now part of the Salon online group. Peter has also been featured on MSNBC and advises several major organizations and foundations.
For several days last week, Peter and I talked and emailed and talked some more about the mainstream's misperceptions of the online world; we looked back at the Kerry Campaign, ahead to this fall, and way ahead to a day we are both personally looking forward to, Election Day 2008.
So Peter, it's been a couple of years now since we first met on the Kerry Campaign, looking back at it with some perspective, what's the lesson?
Well, one important lesson is that Democrats should stop counting on the traditional media to avoid peddling pro-GOP narratives. Kerry the "flip-flopper" and Bush the "firm leader" were fictional frames that took hold because of the frequency of repetition in the media. I'll never forget this Daily Kos post about Bush's list of flip-flops posted in March of '04. Despite that laundry list of about-faces, somehow you never heard about Bush the flip-flopper. The media problem is one of the reasons I'm now consulting with Media Matters, an organization at the forefront of this issue.
How did you feel coming from the war zone of Beirut to the war room of a presidential campaign?
A presidential campaign is a war zone in its own way and though nobody dies (hopefully), the future of the nation - and the world - hangs in the balance. I saw things in Beirut I wouldn't wish on anyone, but living through war teaches you about trust, honor, and sacrifice, things you value your entire life and that you try to bring to everything you do. Trust and honor are sorely lacking in this administration, which is why I've tried to do my part to help elect people who I believe can restore it.
Remember New Hampshire? Was that the coldest you've ever been in your life?
Absolutely! My wife Samantha and I live in New York, but we hate the cold, so it was miserable for us. I remember that it was so cold people could barely walk a block without wincing. Still, thousands braved the weather and marched for two hours to the site of the Democratic debate in Manchester.
Obviously, the online political transformation that was in its infancy in 2003 is now full-blown and intensifying, what do you see as the online community's impact on 2006 and 2008?
The online community is now an important incubator of ideas, a place where a relatively small, dedicated group of people get together and flesh out every possible twist and turn of an issue or a story, feeding their ideas into the bloodstream of American thought and helping drive the national debate.
I know you share the belief that unless both the online and offline worlds start working together, we're in trouble. You've taken that a step further and written about THE TRIANGLE OF POWER - give us the highlights of that theory.
It's simply a way to understand the scope of blog influence. In essence, I argue that the power of the blogs is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment (thus, the triangle). I don't think bloggers alone have the public penetration to alter conventional wisdom on their own, at least not yet, but they can put targeted pressure on the media and on political operatives and work with those two power centers to shape public opinion.
Looking ahead to 2008, if you had the chance to give each potential Democratic candidate one piece of advice - what would it be?
Read blogs and find out how people really feel. Then look at the media landscape and understand that without fixing the media problem, you're hopelessly disadvantaged.... I guess that's two pieces of advice.
Speaking of the media, I know that one of your passions is holding them accountable for misleading reporting, how did you get started on this?
I've gradually come to the realization that the single biggest obstacle facing the left is the pervasiveness of anti-left and pro-right narratives in the media. What's the point of your message if it's filtered through a media lens that's unfavorable to your position? You know, 'weak' Dems and 'strong' Republicans, 'un-American' left and 'patriotic' right, and so on.
Until the left gets its act together to address this imbalance, we'll have more Gore-ing of Gore and Swift-Boating of Kerry. And more anti-Hillary tabloid journalism like the kind we've seen recently from the New York Times, David Broder, Tim Russert and others. The astonishing thing is that the "liberal media" absurdity is so entrenched that arguments about pro-right narratives are still met with suspicion, if not outright derision. The standard reply from rightwing bloggers is not a factual rebuttal, but simply "you must be crazy." Jamison Foser recently posted a great piece about the media problem.
What blogs or sites do you read?
Hundreds a day, too many to mention here, but I'm a fan of the great blog writers like Digby and James Wolcott.
What do you think the Huffington Post reader would be surprised to find out about the top bloggers out there?
The fact that many of the best and most influential bloggers are women. Also, that the 'top' bloggers aren't always the high traffic ones.
What's the last book you read?
I just href="http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=6d3e98ec-678a-421d-9480-07a0012aedcc">finished Eric Boehlert's 'Lapdogs' and Paul Waldman's 'Being Right is not Enough'
I know you're a full time consultant and you blog seven days a week. Any time to pursue interests or goals outside of politics?
I wish I could say yes, but aside from my regular pick-up basketball games (an obsession of mine) and the occasional jazz club or movie with my wife, there isn't much time for anything else. One of my regrets is that I haven't had the time to pursue an academic career. When I moved back to New York from Lebanon to go to college, I saw the university life as a respite from the turmoil of Beirut. It's funny, philosophy students are often taunted about the impracticality of their field, but I relished the idea of a quiet life as a professor -- which I guess would have marked me as one of those "liberal elites" rightwingers are so freaked out by. How I ended up in the high-stress world of politics is another story....
What's interesting is that with all the garbage out there about bloggers being an irrational pack of raving lunatics, I've never matched wits against a sharper group of people. Anybody who spends serious time among bloggers gets humbled very quickly - Joe Klein, Deborah Howell, Richard Cohen, Chris Matthews and others have learned the hard way. The analytical skills you learn in the academic world are scant preparation for the rough and tumble world of the blogs. It's one of the reasons old-school political consultants are threatened by the netroots - how can a couple of strategists in a room compete with the collective, real-time wisdom of millions of political junkies?
Finally, I've seen it written that the trend of online journalism and commentary is the ultimate form of free speech and true democracy in action. Kos and a million other blogs all started with the same amount of traffic, zero, and now he has millions of hits a month and other blogs still have minimal traffic; what's your view?
There are two parts to your question. First, if you're asking whether Markos deserves his success because of something he's done, the answer is yes. The high traffic blogs I follow offer something to readers that justifies the size of their readership. HuffPo is a perfect example: there were early critics, but the site fills a void and success has followed. The same holds true for Glenn Greenwald, Crooks and Liars and Firedoglake. Having said that, I make it a point to feature new and lesser known blogs on my site; every blog plays a role in the dissemination of information, whether it reaches five readers or five thousand.
There's another larger point here as well, and that's about the long-term evolution of this medium. Human nature being what it is, hierarchies are bound to form and typical social dynamics come into play. Cliques and power spheres emerge and you end up with the usual internecine fighting. I'm a big believer in the open, decentralized, democratic nature of the online world and I understand why people celebrate the revolutionary nature of online communication, but I realize that in time this structure will calcify and something new will come along to shake everything up.