Clark Campaign Pushes Online Community

Andrew Bayer

Clark Campaign to Debut Big Blog

The presidential campaign of Wesley Clark understands the power of blogs. That's why the candidate will debut a big community site that centralizes the personal blogs of his supporters and offers grassroots tools. By Chris Ulbrich.

[Wired News]

I'd say I'm really excited about this, but Dave Winer said nice things about the plan, so I've got to be skeptical. =) Dave Sez:

Winer said he was encouraged that campaigns were starting to recognize the value of blogs to the democratic process.

"A voter with a weblog is ten times more powerful than a voter without a weblog, because there's more to voting than just going in and flipping a lever," he said.

Now, obviously, Dave's got a personal interest in weblogs, since he's the primary shareholder of Userland and the originator of a number of the key formats involved. But I've said before that I'm inherently skeptical of Dave's fanatic insistence on the power of weblogs in politics. Obviously, in a literal sense, there isn't ANYTHING more to voting than just going in and flipping a lever, but I know what Dave means - by giving each of us a voice, we have more impact than just our votes. But I wonder about that. I doubt I've influenced anyone else's vote with my partisan rants, though I do concede that some of the big blogs might have that kind of influence. But how does that differ from other media? The big names have influence, the schmucks don't. How do weblogs actually change things?