Webcast shows bloggers officially out of the basement

I joined four prominent liberal bloggers from Colorado's SquareState.net last night at Drinking Liberally Denver to talk politics with at least one goal: Not to use the word "basement."

After all, political bloggers have never been taken more seriously. SquareState.net is one of the 55 websites credentialed to join every delegation to the floor of the convention hall when the Democrats come to town to nominate their presidential candidate this August.

But eight minutes into the discussion, which we taped for viewing-on-demand, Richard Bateman, who posts as WeatherDem, mentioned the stereotype of bloggers sitting before computers in the basement to illustrate how far they've come.

"The responsibility is great," Bateman said of bloggers' unprecedented access to the convention. "There's been some level of disparagement in the last four years. ... I think there's a lot of bloggers, like us at SquareState.net, who have done an excellent job of establishing our credibility. We're not just crazed people in basements typing away madly with no real basis for what's going on in the real world.

"We are the real world," Bateman said.

It was a statement that struck me at once as kind-of bold and at the same time as dead-on accurate.

Throughout the discussion with Bateman, Aaron Silverstein, who posts under his own name, John Erhardt, or JohnE, and Raf Noboa, or RNoboa, the theme of activist bloggers rolling up their sleeves and keeping tabs on Democrats and Republicans alike kept things lively. Silverstein and Erhardt will be key bloggers using the SquareState.net credential.

Erhardt said he expected the access to fundamentally change how the convention would be perceived, by allowing bloggers to bring "what is going on in the convention or even personalities out to the rest of the world, really, that the traditional media might not be covering."

When I asked if a Democrat wins the presidency would that take some of the heat out of the left's active blogging - after all, without George Bush to rail at, what will they do? - the group argued passionately they intend to hold the party accountable.

"We take very seriously in our party the idea of correcting our own flaws," Silverstein said. "Sometimes we are the harshest critics there are going to be. If you read SquareState you will see we are not always applauding the party."

The wide-ranging discussion covered how bloggers hope to cover the Democratic convention, their policies on covering politics with activist political views, and even their unhappiness with some aspect of the Democratic Party.

"As a combat veteran of this war," Noboa said, "one of the things I have criticized the party that I love on is, sort of, it's coming around on the Iraq war."

Another irritation we discussed was the controversy surrounding part of the Democratic National Convention Committee's handling of the blogger credentialing.

In recent days the liberal blogosphere has been buzzing with criticism claiming that an influential blog site in New Jersey was excluded because it criticized local party leaders. A second complaint was that African American bloggers aren't well represented in the credential pool.

Erhardt is one who has signed a letter to Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean complaining about the state blogger issue.

We gave it a good talking through. On the one hand, there was a lot of competition for the credentials. On the other, the Democratic National Convention Committee's chief executive, Leah Daughtry, is an African American who has championed Civil Rights.

Last night Erhardt and his peers on the SquareState.net panel downplayed that any serious problem existed and expressed hope that the issues would be resolved as the remaining credentials are released.

"I would defy anyone to make a list of the bloggers that would exclude some of the very prominent people," Silverstein said, tipping his hat to other prominent Colorado political bloggers. "The perfect list wasn't makeable."

My thanks to the panelists, who made it all work, even in the glare of my made-for-print stagecraft.

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