A while back, I got the url democrobot.com, based on a conversation with Jon Berger and Eric Klotz about how there aught to be a digg.com for political news. At the time it was sort of trendy, and not especially needed (this was in early 2006 IIRC).

I think the time for such a site may be drawing near. The relationship between the established blogosphere, the newsmedia, and the major Democratic political campaigns is becoming increasingly symbiotic. Many major bloggers walk the line well, but quite a few don't. Trust is on the decline as people play favorites without acknowledging their biases, and/or take professional gigs with no disclaimer.

Add that to a campaign season which seems to have a very strong top tier, and you have a very different scene than 2003-04, when the internet fueled disruptive insurgent candidacies. At this point, online communications are a fully-integrated integrated part of the political establishment, and that includes much of the widely-read blogosphere. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it's not like before.

However, at the same time, there are a large number of new/upstart citizen journalism projects which will produce a large volume of (relatively) independent campaign journalism. There's also a much greater chance that staffers will post anonymously about the inner workings of some campaign operations in more obscure fora. There will also be a glut of low-quality audio and video content to sift through. This is all new.

The sifting is what's needed. That's where democrobot might have a purpose. If you added in Zack's old "PPipes" idea of aggregating progressive/Democratic mailing-list messages, you'd have something that would be pretty interesting, and pretty useful too.

I clearly don't have a lot of bandwidth to take on additional projects, but it might not be all that much work to get up and running. We'll see.

Just pulling something out of my last post which I found real interesting upon re-reading, the phrase public life.

If there's one real huge difference between living here in Humboldt County versus New York City, it's how small the public sphere seems to be. I'm sure this will be a contrast anywhere else I live, but there's a way in which the spatial restrictions and density of the city adds a decidedly public character to much of life.

Most of your time, on average, is spent outside your home. You socialize in public places and because of the genial nature of eyes on the street and because no one drives anywhere, you can get drunk in public with little fear for life or limb.

Here it's very different. Life is more private for more people -- you can spend six months at Westhaven and never really go out, still be happy -- and for that do head out, the band of experience that really passes for "public" is somewhat narrower.

This creates an interesting situation for me. While I'm hardly a gadfly or a social-climber, I do enjoy the kind of energy and interactions that come from having a public profile. I'm also very much a newbie, and finding the right scene in which to see and be seen is on my TODO list for sure.

Anyway, more gozo later. Just thought it was an interesting and revealing turn of phrase.

This is a smart move; electable is the word that comes to mind.

She should be getting it out on YouTube.

So I did my part and watched the State of the Union last night. Reading the coverage I find myself once again out of step.

• I thought that on the whole Bush's speech was nice, although he's clearly getting worn down and sort of cranky. Get the president a juice box and someone get Condi to take a nap.
• Substantively it was pretty stupid, both politically and policy-wise. Although that's been covered elsewhere, in brief by embracing themes like Health Care and Immigration Reform, Bush is alienating some substantial subset of his remaining support. He also proposed things -- like subsidized opt-in insurance -- that are terrifically ineffective.
• Did no one else see him grab Speaker Pelosi's tit at the end???
• While I liked how he started off on calling out CEO pay, and I like that everyone seems to think it was a tenacious response, Jim Webb's ditty felt stiff and boring to me, like a high school teacher giving a lecture. I like his reasoning and tough, brass-tacks bearing, but I prefer it seasoned with some passion.

Anyway, I'm pleased that Bush had to thematically go our way on Health Care, Energy and the like. That matters. When it comes to making programs happen, the President actually can't do anything. As easy as it is to forget this after the last six years, the President actually doesn't make the laws, at least not according to the Constitution.

This means his stupid proposals are just that -- empty talk -- but the subject of that empty talk bodes well for people like me who savor the notion of energy independence, universal health care, universal net access, and an economy that embraces the notion of service rather than servitude.