The FPC fights back against the cynicism
My commentary on Kendrick Meek’s blockbuster sweep of the Florida Netroots Awards prompts a lively back an forth over at the FPC blog. Said Dave Harper (the guy who actually helped me out during “the spam attack,” (my bad, I thought it was Kenneth) feels that I may have been a bit too cynical and snarky about the liberal blogging phenom that is Kendrick Meek:
I respect the right of the authors to air their opinions, but I find that their commentary is a bit cynical. Yes, Kenneth Quinnell works for Kendrick Meek, who won an unprecedented number of the awards this year, but that doesn’t impugn the validity of those awards. Meek won the majority of votes, for whatever reason, and Kenneth didn’t do anything nefarious to ensure that.
First of all, I didn’t imply that he did “do anything nefarious to ensure” Kendrick won. As far as I’m concerned, Kenneth Quinnell is doing his job, and a good job at that. Kendrick’s site looks 100 percent better, and apparently, every so often, he or his ghost poster even blogs…
That Meek was favored was due to the same selection biases that control any voting process. Name recognition was a likely factor. That Meek chose to hire Kenneth for his Senate campaign may have played some role, as Kenneth actively promoted the awards on his twitter account and on Facebook. Kenneth’s numerous social media contacts within the progressive movement were certainly a sizable percentage of those who voted. Yet, it must be noted that Kenneth never encouraged his contacts to vote for Meek in these awards.
Most importantly, Meek chose to publicize his nomination for these awards to his supporters, just as many other nominees publicized their respective nominations. This was, without a doubt, the best explanation for how he could have won in so many categories. Meek has a large mailing list, and he chose to use it. Getting out the vote is one of the most important factors in any race.
But of course. Although that doesn’t explain how a guy with no connection to the netroots managed to get nominated five times … and it’s a small point, but exactly a day and a half into the competition, Ken Quinnell felt constrained to send out an email to the Florida Progressive Coalition mailing list which read…
Voting for the 2009 Awards has only been open for a day and a half and we’ve already passed the total number of participants from last year. We should hit 300 voters by the end of the day. The biggest part of the boost comes from the fact that the Meek campaign sent out a notice about the awards to its constituent list (while I wrote the e-mail, sending it out wasn’t actually my idea, it was my boss’s). If anyone is associated with any of the other candidates who are nominated, you might want to push for them to send info out to their supporters. One, it makes the competition more fair. Two, it helps us promote the awards and the nominated blogs & activists. If the competition were to end today, Meek would win every category he’s in. If other campaigns/candidates push this out to their supporters, we might see that change.
Good advice. And by constituent list, does Kenneth mean the voters of District 17? Well, they may be a lot of wonderful things, but doubtful they care two shakes about the “netroots.” It’s a small point, but it does go a ways toward explaining how Mr. Meek managed to win the Twitter vote while hardly tweeting … and it makes triumphalist messages like this one ring false:
Nearly 650 bloggers and online activists across the state of Florida voted on the awards, which are now in their third year.
Well, maybe not 650 “bloggers and online activists..”
Meanwhile, another critic, Peter Schorsch, pointed out, in perhaps the most polite rebuttal EVER, that apparently, the netroots awards are… well … more like the “People’s Choice Awards” than the “Oscars” …
I guess I need to apologize because I was looking at these awards as if they were a true artistic competition. I have competed in (and won) Pollies and Addys for my political work and I think I may have used that experience as a frame of reference.
Because in those competitions, if a nominee doesn’t reach a certain standard, even if they are the only entry in a category, they cannot win the Pollie or Addy. In certain categories that Meek won, such as Best Use of Twitter and Best Professional Blog, the absolute lack of regular content should have prevented him from winning.
I don’t want this to sound like sour grapes. I am very grateful to have been nominated and all that jazz. I guess I am not so in love with any candidate that I think it’s an honor to be nominated in the same category as them.
Amen, brother. At this stage, I feel that I should note that I’m writing this post knowing that I don’t actually care about this issue in particular. If the FPC wants to line Kendrick’s walls with awards and crown him the king of the left wing blogosphere, complete with an actual crown, I say go for it. However, I do find it … interesting … that the “netroots” seems to be so easily brought on board a candidacy that until a certain high-powered blogger entered the picture, had no connection whatsoever to the issues liberal bloggers supposedly care about. Apparently, what the Florida netroots really cares about is winning that Senate seat, which is ironic, since apparently, many activist Democrats of the non-blogger variety don’t think Meek can beat Charlie Crist. From a recent Herald article:
The contrast is striking. Democrats are champing at the bit to see Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, take on Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum, while the Miami congressman is still fighting the perception that he can’t beat the sitting governor.
“I will tell you regardless of what you may hear, what they may say, what they may do in the future, we will win this race,” Meek declared in a ballroom that had emptied out Saturday afternoon after a two-hour lineup of speakers.
The doubts about Meek — coming at a time when the governor’s Republican rival, Marco Rubio, is gaining ground — were widespread enough to persuade former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre to jump into the Democratic race last week. Most activists are skeptical of Ferre’s chances but say his campaign shows Meek doesn’t have the race locked down.
And yet, I guess many in blogland are willing to fall in love (and in line) without whoever they think the Democratic candidate is going to be.
Well, in the immortal words of cynical, snarky people everywhere: “good luck with that.”
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6 Responses to “The FPC fights back against the cynicism”
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When I first read your earlier post, I misunderstood it much like Dave did, to suggest that somehow the awards were “rigged.” Rereading it later, I realized that wasn’t what you were suggesting. I do think there are a few clarifications necessary, though.
1. With the exception of the Hall of Fame (winners Gelber, Aronberg, Kates & myself) and the Political Courage Award (winner Grayson), all of the other awards were sponsored by the Florida Democratic Party Netroots Coalition (a caucus within the party), not the FPC. FPC did not give Kendrick Meek any awards.
2. The awards (with the exception of those from FPC) are for Democrats, not progressives per se.
3. The awards were not designed to simply reward active participants in the Netroots, but also anyone who uses the web to achieve political goals.
4. Meek has consistently reached out to some in the Netroots, like myself for instance, since long before the 2008 election or his entrance into the Senate race. He initiated a meetup with bloggers at the DNC in Denver, although it fell through due to scheduling conflicts on both sides.
5. Peter’s remark about 5 tweets referred to October prior to the beginning of the convention, which means 5 tweets in 8 days, not in a month. Dan Gelber was nominated for the same award and finished second, despite only tweeting twice in the same period, so Meek isn’t alone in that. Also keep in mind that the October tweets were not even relevant to the voting, since the voting was closed by then and the awards were for what people did in 2008 and early 2009 (since the JJ dinner in 2008 through August 2009).
6. Maybe you and I define online activists differently, but I would consider people that do things like signing up for candidate e-mail lists, act based on them and vote in online polls that have actual outcomes (such as the awards) to be online activists. Others may disagree.
7. The article from Adam Smith/Beth Reinhard that you quote to support the idea that Democrats don’t think Meek can win does not actually support its claim. The only evidence they really provide is that the room was half-empty. What it leaves out was that the speech was given after four hours of speeches including introductions of nearly every single candidate for office on site, long delays and the fact that lunch was to have begun almost an hour earlier. Many people had left, but not because of any lack of enthusiasm for Meek. I know, I was there. I videotaped it. What was impressive was that hundreds of people were still there to see Meek and that by that point that was the only reason they were there. On top of that more than 100 people came in as Meek began to speak chanting, waving signs and flooding the area close to the stage in a way that no other speaker received. There is no question that throughout the weekend there were more supporters on site for Meek than any other candidate and that they were much more active and enthusiastic than any other candidate. Only Dan Gelber was in the ballpark. If the convention presence and excitement for Meek was a sign that he was in trouble in the election, then every other candidate is even more trouble since they all had smaller contingents.
That being said, I don’t take any offense at anything in this or Peter’s article and I respect the work you do, even if we don’t agree 100% of the time. the 95%+ where we do agree is good enough for me.
It doesn’t take a rocket science to look back over the last couple of years to note the same names grace the People’s Choice “win” list every year. I would imagine some will soon brag at least one win in every major award category.
I chalk it up to voters with access to many computers with obvious legs
Moving on, perhaps the awards could be tightened just a bit. For example, in one particular category, the winner had posted less than 15 blog posts the entire past year.
For those with a body of work….doesn’t seem quite kosher.
.
@Kenneth –
Thanks for the reply. The fact that the Florida Democratic Party engineered (or “sponsored”) the nominations clarifies a lot. The party’s goal is to boost their 2010 candidates. I’m only surprised they didn’t toss Alex Sink in there, too. However, if the awards were for online activism dating back to 2008, it’s almost MORE egregious that Kendrick beat out the Obama campaign, which after all, won a presidential election in Florida in large part due to their online savvy.
That said, you are a great defender of your candidate, and obviously very good at what you do. Kendrick is lucky to have you.
@Blogging On -
Rated. We can call it the “less is more” blog award.
One more clarification, FDP had nothing to do with the awards. It was the FDP Netroots Coalition, a constituency caucus within the party (like the Small Counties Coalition). There was no engineering. All of the nominees were submitted by e-mail and open to the public. All nominees that were Democrats and from Florida were then plugged into the polling software, which was then open to the public as well.
Thanks for the further clarity, Kenneth. More information is always better. Cheers.
@2:
I chalk it up to voters with access to many computers with obvious legs
Or maybe, just maybe, there were nearly 650 people who voted for the blog/blogger/person whom they thought did the best job, and the blog/blogger/person with the most votes in each category won. You know, fairness and all that.
Jeebus, you’d think this was Ohio in 2004 or something ….