First of all, congratulation to John Liu for becoming the first Chinese-American to be elected to city-wide office in New York City. That's a huge slap on the face for the New York Democratic Party establishment; an establishment that's never been too keen on grassroots movements unless they can co-opt to solidify their status-quo.

The other big grassroots story of the night was Bill de Blasio. He walloped Mark Green, one of the darlings of the New York political elite, in a run-off election and breezed into the Political Advocate's office with 76.9% of the vote.

For a political establishment that doesn't support grassroots movements unless it's ready to line their pockets --remember of all the so-called grassroots progressives and Democrats defecting to the Bloomberg campaign?-- these two wins are a wake-up call for the NY Dems political establishment.

We'll have to see how these two fare for or against the status quo in the next four years.

1. Obama is not the Democratic Party.
Virginia is the best example of this phenomenon: Even though Obama carried the state, voters repudiated the slim pickings pushed on them by the local Democratic party. Creigh Deeds, the genius Democrat who lost the election, ran as an anti-Obama Democrat. In a state that Obama basically swept during the general elections.

WHAT KIND OF STRATEGY IS THAT? Oh right, the strategy of a Democrat who rightfully doesn't look at Obama as representing him.

The biggest mistake for the Democratic Party was to sucker themselves into thinking that whatever genius political strategy Plouffe and Axelrod were able to use in getting Obama elected was going to absolve them of their state and local sins of nepotism, cronyism, corruption but most importantly utter ineptitude.

Last night was a big wake-up call for Democrats who think they'll be able to coast on the coattails of Obama for the next 3-7 years.

Which takes me to the big story of the day: Bill Owens will for New York's Congressional District #23. What's the moral of that story?

2. Carpetbaggers better not fuck with upstaters.
The sleepy corner of upper New York state became an ideological battle ground for the extreme right of the Republican party with a non-Palin-looking Dede Scozzafava being muscled out of the election by the GlennBeckian non-resident of the district Doug Hoffman. Yet in the process of eating their own, out-of-state extremists revealed the awful truth about the New York State Democratic Party: They suck.

Democrats in New York state are rarely differentiated from their Republican counterparts. Abortion is not a political lightning rod for New York politicians. On the contrary, NYC boasts a rather disturbing amount of African American and Latino right-to-lifers on their Democratic Party rolls. What separates Republicans from Democrats is the amount of money they're willing to put at the feet of the political establishment in both Albany and Washington DC.

NY23 happened to be one of those districts that NY Dems didn't look as particularly profitable for them until the teabaggers came into town. And that's basically their modus operandi: Many districts in the state are marked as losses from the get go. NY23 proved what a dangerous strategy that is --especially in a year when one more Democrat in Congress could make a huge difference in Health Care and Immigration legislation.

The challenge for true progressives in New York state will be to not only get rid of anti-gay, misogynist, immigrant hating Republicans. The challenge will be to find progressives to run against Democrats with similar political views, from local all the way up to Congressional, regardless of whether it is a "red district" or not.

3. Michael Turk put it best, Can we now agree that 2008 was a referendum on Bush and GOP arrogance, and not a vote for radical liberalism?
This bears repeating over and over and over again. Obama wasn't a choice for radical liberalism. Obama wasn't even a choice for the Democratic Party. Obama didn't even win because he was a centrist. Obama won because he successfully sold himself as an outsider from the political establishment who had a vision of a United States that could be better without partisan politics.

In other words: Obama won because he was the ANTI-IDEOLOGICAL, ANTI-PARTISAN candidate. He didn't win because people believed he could change the swamp of Capitol Hill or the rats' nest of the Democratic Party. He won because he not only wasn't part of the swamp or the rats but because he aspired to transcend all of that with his presidency.

Michael Turk's comment was directed to Republicans but you might as well use it to bash into the heads of Democrats why they can't rest on Obama's laurels. 90% of the Democratic Party does not represent "Change We Can Believe In" and that's what got played out in all of lat night's electoral losses.

4. All the money int he world is not going to win you a mandate
The race was called in favor of Bloomberg when he was winning by 3%. He ended up tallying a 4.58% win. That means that the Boss Bloomberg plunked down $21,834,061.1 per each point in his margin of win. That's an obscene amount of bribe money; yet it proves that if New York City had a true political grassroots movement represented in the Democratic Party, Thompson would have squeaked in a victory.

5. New York City is ready for a grassroots renaissance
Thompson didn't win because he was one of the ultimate insiders just like his losing predecessor, Freddy Ferrer. It's not just that Freddy was Puerto Rican and Bill was black. It was really the fact that these two have been part of the political establishment of New York City for far too long. Every single Democratic mayoral loser since Dinkins has been part of the party establishment.

Yet look at the massive margins that got both de Blasio and Liu elected. If any of these two guys want to become mayor the lesson is very simple: FIGHT MICHAEL BLOOMBERG FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS.

You can't raise $100 million to buy yourself the local and national media? Fine. Then fight the man every single step of the way for the next 4 years. Govern like you were still campaigning. Amass grassroots support and boost the numbers of your independent allies. Most importantly though, KEEP YOUR FACE IN THE LOCAL MEDIA. That means every single week, every single month, you gotta get yourself out there in front of the cameras, on the newspapers and most importantly on the blogs to move your message over and over and over again.

Michael Bloomberg doesn't have a mandate. Liu, de Blasio and every single Democrat who wants to become the next mayor needs to keep that in mind until 2013.

Which gets me to my favorite peeve:
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Here's the background: The features editor of the brick&mortar Washington Post, Raju Narisetti,  tweets some awesome commentary such as :

“We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not ... but we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.”

and 

“Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from ‘standing up too quickly.” How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail.”

These comments were tweeted on a private account; meaning that unless Narisetti gave you permission to follow him, there was no way to see the tweet. That is, unless it was cut and pasted into a new tweet, email, blog post, et cetera; and attributed back to him. Is that a bad thing? No, not really. There doesn't seem to be a breach of privacy. The problem has to do with the Washington Post itself.

In Ombudsman Blog - Post Editor Ends Tweets as New Guidelines Are Issued, Andrew Alexaner writes about Narisetti's reckoning of his tweets: They were “personal” observations, he said. “But I also realize that... seeing that the managing editor of The Post is weighing in on this, it’s a clear perception problem.”

And that's in and of itself a problem: The assumption that there's no perception at all in news reporting. And that WaPo sees this as what brings value to their "brand of journalism". A brand of journalism that seems to say that nothing that has happened in last 100 years in the field of knowledge studies (philosophy, linguistics, history, sociology, politics) bears any threat to this "freedom from bias" lie.

Let me give you a recent example using the latest news about Roman Polanski as an example.

Look at the following headlines which basically report on the same bit-of-news about Polanski's arrest and impending extradition to the United States. There's from the website of a California TV station, Roman Polanski arrested on warrant for 1977 sex charge. Here's the headline for a report coming out of the usually right-wing and conservative Examiner: Director Roman Polanski arrested for 1977 rape. Yet also look at the rather fact based opinion piece wrritten for the Guardian by Melissa McEwan: Roman Polanski's life of crime. Compare that to Anne Applebaum's The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski. This last one was written for The Washington Post and still is bereft of any explanation of Ms. Applebaum's conflict of interest in the Polanski matter.

That's just a rather pedestrian example but it presents rather nicely how bias is projected by newspapers. In the case of the Polanski debacle there are those who refuse to call him a rapist even though he plea bargained his way into the statutory kind. Then there's those who either see Polanski as too good for the adjectives "fugitive", "criminal", "statutory rape" and instead opt for describing his situation as being inconvenienced by a "sex charge".

Which is why it's really amazing to read these guidelines. At this day and age, it is rather distasteful if not ludicrous for any newspaper or media outlet in this country to publish guidelines that dictate, All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens.

WaPo is not only denying they are free of bias when writing a headline about a fugitive child rapist who also is a popular Oscar wining director. What they are saying also is that, after the 100+ years of ontological work by the likes o Nieztsche, Hegel, Blanchot, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Eco, Barthes and others that "perspective" and "opinion" are matters of "personal privilege".

As if perspective were something outside of humanity, something that you can turn on and off. As if "giving up perspective" were not only possible but in the case of WaPo something their employees really want in order to sell their "brand of journalism"

To which I have to say to the ladies and gentlemen of the Washington Post editorial board: Every single article or report your company publishe is a representation of your collective biases as a publication. To try to hide your biases is exactly the same as admitting them and wishing them away. Denying the individuals who work for you as journalists their ability to express and discuss their opinions and biases in a public forum is to force them to lie about the work they provide to your company. Which is to say, your desire to sell impartiality as residing outside of the reality of human perspective is a lie and it taints your image by suggesting you are a fabricator of news instead of being a true witness to history.

The full text of the guidelines was posted by Staci D. Kramer and we're reblogging with my commentary below:

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From The Upside of the Seattle Paper's End - The Daily Beast:

This dramatic shift could be the catalyst behind a new era in the news business. The single most important message sent by this action is that the news business has changed, and it may be possible to better serve an audience digitally than in print, and do it profitably.

Hearst says it can serve the Seattle audience with an editorial staff of around 20 people on its website, a fraction of the number it employs on the newspaper. Which 20 they pick will have a lot to do with the ultimate success of the online venture. They will need to capture the essence of what makes people read the PI, which will be a different mix than, say, the 20 most important employees to the newspaper.

But the fact is, a website can take more advantage of everything else that happens on the web and link to content from outside sources, bloggers and other publicly available sources of information, like movie listings or little-league scores. Some things the paper did well can be provided on the web with little or no staff effort through links to outside sources.

I've highlighted the parts that caught my eye because I'd like you to tell me if you read this the same way I am : That the plight of newspapers is not only that content can't be updated once printed on paper but that the very idea of having to have paid editors, writers and staff is what's really ruining them. The assumption being that, if you can easily get it for free online why not just go ahead and build a whole media empire on the blood, sweat and tears of others?
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Where and When

February 2, 2009
Betts Theater, George Washington University, Washington, DC

Conference fees: $60.00 general; $20.00 student

Conference Goals

To harness the power of women on the Internet to promote women’s issues.

To create a forum – starting with the Fem2.0 website and continuing through the event – for women to discuss the issues that are of most concern to them today, and to encourage them to use the Internet to learn more, express their opinions about them and advocate for policies that benefit women and families.

To create an opportunity for a "meeting of minds" across generations and media platforms.

To unite women’s voices behind the issues that the vast majority of women support, such as education, healthcare, workplace fairness and economic security.

To position women’s issues and their advocates for the incoming administration.

To draw new audiences to women’s issues, especially those who are Internet-focused and can cross-pollinate to increase activism.

Expand the audience of women engaged in online media activity and activism.

NowPublic is one of the fastest growing participatory news networks in the world. Time Magazine voted it last year one of the top 50 websites and The Guardian UK declared it's one of the top 5 most resourceful news sites in the world.

They have come up with a way to measure "news influence" on the web. They insinuated that traffic to one's site and/or blog is not one of the lead indicators, but how the people listed are connected to others (especially other influencers) through social media like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and others.

I honestly don't know what to make of this list. I am at the same time amused and disturbed.

I already published at The Daily Gotham how it's weird that Arianna Huffington comes in at #2 because I thought she lived in California, not New York City. Then there's the grand daddy of the New York blogeratti, Nick Denton, coming in at #34.

It is though rather refreshing to see friends and colleagues on that list : Anil Dash, Nancy Scola, Joshua Levy, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung and one of my biggest inspirations as a web designer and developer, Jeffrey Zeldman.

Yet, and I repeat what I already said at our New York site, the most disturbing data point of this list is that I come in at #9.

Yup.

I am, as per NowPublic, one of the "top ten" news influencers in the New York new media market.

I will definitely have more to say about this new metrics system. Suffice it to say that I think it is not only thought provoking but vindicating.

It's cool that someone has been able to measure what I've been up to for the last two years : Building a sphere of influence through networked broadcasting and outside of the metrics of traffic volume or popularity.

As a former student of neo-baroque aesthetics and its network effect in arts, culture and communications, I felt inspired of the potential I saw on the web 12 years ago. It was a potential that I saw unfolding in the Net Art movement. And it was a potential that I saw come to a halt when Big Business, Big Media and Big Politics threw themselves on the net as a way to accelerate their hierarchical and teleological standards of growth and success.

Think of the 3 Bigs thwarting the growth of the net by imposing the growth of the walled web gardens a la Facebook, Daily Kos or The New York Times.

Yet networks are networks and old standards of influence and success will succumb to the net effect; not to the old measures as a result of the false scarcity and uniqueness created by popularity.

So, even though I truly believe this is a flawed index, it is by far the best attempt at measuring influence based on assumptions that are native to the technology and structure of community and communications on the web.
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I got our letter late last night saying that we finally got credentialed for the 2008 DNCC in Denver. It's a convention that promises to be historic and I want to be there front and center.

You can read the press release and check out the whole list of bloggers at the DNCC's blog.

UNFORTUNATELY the DNCC messed up when they went ahead and decided to pick a blog in New York that not only is not only NOT from the grassroots, but that is owned by people working in corporate media.

It's the reason why I got interviewed by Wired.com on the matter :

"What's amazing is that we've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local candidates along with the other state blogs," says Liza Sabater, publisher of The Daily Gotham, one of the New York state blogs that got the cold shoulder from the DNC officials. "Why would you give (the credentials) to a blog ... owned by a journalist? You're supposed to be supporting independent bootstrapped bloggers, not people who are coming in with influence and access. You're supposed to be giving it to people who are helping you to get candidates elected."
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