What’s next for Blog for America?
: The body’s not cold but still, I can’t help wondering what happens to the Dean blog if and when he drops out of the race.
It could just fade away or, for that matter, be turned off like the lights at the last campaign party.
But doesn’t that seem like a shame? All that enthusiasm and energy just dispersed into the ozone?
But can it really be transferred to another candidate? Won’t the Deanies find themselves at war in this realm they rule — especially without a candidate in the castle. If Dean throws his support to Edwards, say, and lots of the Deanies don’t like him or don’t think he can win, then there’ll be Kerry v. Edwards squabbles. That would be unbecoming and unproductive. Not pretty.
Can it be transformed, instead, into a movement? Well, in a sense, of course, it already is a movement (more than a campaign). But a movement for what? A movement against Bush? A movement for the Internet? Again, it’s a headless horseman.
Can it be taken over by the Democratic National Committee as the basis of its next-generation party organization (in other words, can the DNC do to BlogForAmerica what BlogForAmerica wanted to do to the DNC)? No, that probably wouldn’t work for, as a DNC representative said at Bloggercon, such an organization really can’t be quite as bottom-up and open as a campaign; it has too many constituencies and political priorities to safely relinquish too much control and that would wrankle the Deaniacs.
(Update: Surly in the comments suggests leaving it up with comments disabled as a monument to the Deaniacs.)
So what happens to all this effort and organization? Is anybody planning for the eventuality? Or will it become just a chapter in the history of the new world of Internet politics?
