The Catalyst: Chris Bowers

Speaking at four panels, Chris Bowers – the editor of Open Left (www.openleft.com) and treasurer of www.blogpac.com – will be one of Netroots Nation's busiest attendees. We spoke with Bowers regarding the netroots, Internet fundraising, and mending the Clinton/Obama rift, online and off.

---

Austin Chronicle: The panels you're speaking on are evenly divided between policy and organizing questions, and more meta concerns, like the act of blogging and building your readership. What's the balance to strike there?

Chris Bowers: I think a balance like that is going to vary from person to person. ... But it's imperative, I think, to have both broad core values and infrastructure operations, and to always make sure they're anchored within very specific issue-oriented policy in specific fights. You need the broad movement building, you need the broad meta questions, but lacking specific fights – such as over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – the movement itself has a very difficult time building up.

AC: Do you think FISA is going to reverberate a lot through the convention this year?

CB: Without question, without question – I think it will probably be the most frequently discussed issue.

AC: It seems liberals have a leg up on conservatives through small, online fundraising. Do you think that gap's going to close?

CB: There was a time in the 1990s and the early part of this decade where Republicans had an advantage in terms of small donations. That was largely earned through direct mail. There's always new technologies, new issues people organize around; it's difficult to say what will happen in the future. I think in the short term, over the next four to six years, yes, absolutely, Democrats will maintain that small donor advantage.

AC: You're speaking on a panel examining the Clinton/Obama divide in the blogosphere; MyDD.com, the site you formerly worked for, became controversial for its pro-Clinton stance. Do you think those wounds are being dressed?

CB: I would say that on the whole ... the wounds are definitely healing. On a more individual level, I have no doubt there are significant numbers of people with lingering wounds, lingering feelings of being treated unfairly. Whether or not those will be healed in time for the election remains open to question. But right now Barack Obama seems to be earning roughly the same amount of support from Democrats as John Kerry. ... Given that Democrats are a much higher percentage of the electorate in 2008 than they are in 2004, it seems he has the support of as many or more Democrats than John Kerry. So in that sense, it seems to me that the wounds are healing, both online and off.

AC: In your bio, you talk about joining the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee. Was that a conscious effort to work with the existing party machinery?

CB: I think that's been a conscious effort on behalf of the entire online progressive movement – it's not just a virtual movement. The Internet is a medium we use to organize, but the organizing takes place largely offline. I ran for state party office. ... I wanted to do it in large measure to show other people how it can be done, that it's very doable.

---

Chris Bowers speaks at Crashing the Party: Transforming Netroots Activism Into Grassroots Action Within State and Local Parties, Saturday, July 19, 1:30pm, Ballroom F; Progressive NASA and Space Policy Under a New Administration, Friday, July 18, 3pm, Room 19; Meta, Saturday, July 19, 4:30pm, Exhibit Hall 4; and Measuring and Managing Your Online Paid Advertising Campaigns, Friday, July 18, 9am, Room 18C. All events at the Convention Center.