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Saturday, August 06, 2005

Credit Where Credit is Due

There's been a lot of talk in the past few days about who gets the credit and who wears the collar for what happened in Ohio-2. The bottom line is that everybody that participated helped to earn each and every one-tenth of one percent on election day. I'll be the first to admit, it feels good to see your name in the paper and listen to people talk about how you contributed. But if you really want to take a look at how and where this really started, both online and offline, if you don't mention the people of Southwest Ohio, you missed the story completely.

Jerome hit on it today, and I want to expand on it. Without Chris Baker at OH-02, I don't think any of what happened online actually happens. Without the Cincinnati Blog or Drinking Liberally in Cincinnati, I don't think the DFA Email happens. And let's be honest, the DFA Email was HUGE and lent a ton of credibility to the effort. Without the efforts of Ann Driscoll reporting on the race, again, none of this happens. I would be remiss not to mention Kevin Kefgen's grassroots produced commercial as well.

With all due respect to Markos and today's piece by Elanor Clift, it's real easy to point to the largest blog out there and say, all credit goes there (note: Markos was the first person to re-direct the praise). I have come to realize that when it comes to success online, the truth is often a lot harder to uncover, and most often starts somewhere in the bowels of the blgosopehere. Just like Dean Nation and Jerome's work contributed mightily to the emergence of Howard Dean--they contributing before most of us even knew who the Governor was.

If you want more detail about what went down in SW Ohio before most of us even knew who Paul Hackett was, I wrote a piece over at Grow Ohio, the day after blogosphere day, that talks about the roots of Ohio's netroots and how they really got this thing off the ground. You can read that here.

Posted at 03:13 PM in Ohio | Technorati

Comments

They're waiting to play Slot Machine Jean in Washington.... she is going to be used and abused by every side... Bush is grinding his teeth at the Republican Party in the Cincinnati/2nd District area. They played the wrong hand and we still have a queen-ace in the hand and 3 queens and aces in the deck... a pair of dumies is going to be easy to beat... it changes the whole outlook of where the neo-cons are going... for them it's time to go all in. They're down to their last hand. The rest of the dummies have already folded... they are in a lose-lose situation.

C'mon ace... c'mon queen...

"Go get um, Paul!"

Posted by: The Smoke eter at August 6, 2005 05:45 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I'm really glad you posted this. I found OH-02 via Ohio Watch and the late, lamented (hopefully soon-to-be-resurrected Bring Ohio Home. The networking by these and other Ohio blogs have helped me become much more cognizant of goings on in our state.

Posted by: Christa Hupp at August 6, 2005 09:29 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I consider it nice that Paul Hackett gave his best effort, but we have an increased minimum wage to pass through congress. We need to make the disappeared unemployed people reappear by granting them another 6 month extension to their unemployment benefits, and we have a meager prescription drug discount that the Republicans foisted upon seniros in 2003 that will not help middle class people very much and we need to repeal this faulty law and replace it with an 80 percent prescription drug benefit. We need to stop social security privatization and increase the payroll tax for social security and remove the taxable income limit for social security tax. We need to get voting by mail done throughout the united states and the only way you're going to get this done comes from forcing those big companies that give aid and confort to the Republican Party through mass consumer purchasing strikes also known as boycotts.

So please join the revolution for progressive legislation at http://www.boycott-republicans.com

Do you really want to wait until 2006, when the Republicans plan to attempt to pass their social security destruction program in Sept. in a few weeks?

Posted by: buckfush at August 7, 2005 06:36 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Cincynation, with thousands of hits per day, was constantly promoting the Hackett camapign -- and it took a lot of heat from conservatives.

It even advertised on the Swing State site. So, I think you need to give some thanks to them, too. Cincinnati Blog only gets 400 hits per day, compared to thousands for CincyNation.com. CincyNation got 151,000 hits on election day.

Posted by: Piedmont at August 8, 2005 11:56 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment