For Those About to Blog...

Today in Chicago, the Democratic candidates for President (7 out of 8, anyway) gathered to pay homage (and give out free promotional T-shirts) to 1,500 liberal bloggers at the Yearly Kos convention. From the little I've read, every candidate supplied the proper red meat for their blue state base, everything from universal health care to high emissions standards to promises to reverse the rotation of the earth so that the Iraq war never started. I'm glad I missed it. The political cynic in me cannot handle too much blatant pandering in one conference.

I have come to accept that one person's special interest group is another person's constituency, but the whole group of hopefuls all kowtowing to a far left agenda, all in one day in one place, to what is arguably a fringe group of frustrated, part-time, struggling would-be novelists would be too much for this Watergate Democrat. Even I think an event like that would need some "fair and balanced" ideas to keep it watchable.

(The flip side is that it's about time that the liberals found an effective way to at least begin cutting into the power of the Republican talk radio/cable news machine monopoly. Perhaps next year, the Kos convention will have 15,000 leftie attendees, all with Sean Hannity's home email address.)

Of course, I was encouraged to hear that bloggers as a group are now courted directly by the campaigns. And since I am blogging now, perhaps the various campaigns would be interested in pandering to me and my family. How about a tax break for owners of pre-1996 Volvo station wagons? For that small piece of pork, I'd be willing to post a favorable blog about Jimmy Carter's 1978 human rights agenda, or even paste on a liberal-leaning bumper sticker (how about "Your Karma Ran Over My Dogma", perhaps my favorite nonsense message of all?). I guess since candidates are all hot for bloggers now, I must ask that you please forward my web address to the candidate of your choice. Let's see if he/she will want to personally try to earn my vote. That's all I really want - to be pandered to. I am not a special interest group. I am a constituent.

I'll have to work on controlling my cynicism before I reach Manchester.

JS