Joe McGinniss wrote a post about how very little impact the blogs have on Sarah Palin. He suggested we leave our keyboards behind and hit the streets.
As this is a dedicated Palin blog, it's interesting to have a look at the traffic ranking of Palingates and compare it to some other sites and blogs on my blog roll. Palingates is very small and I have always been aware of it.
I also looked at the C4P ranking. None of the anti-Palin dedicated sites ranks high enough to have historic data stored on Alexa, but C4P does...
The really big blogs cover politics in general:
#1. Daily Beast
#2. Crooks & Liars
#3. Politicususa
#4. Firedoglake
#5. Political Carnival
C4P traffic falls between Firedolake and Political Carnival.
The top five smaller blogs that deal with Sarah Palin (some not necessarily exclusively about her) come in the following order:
#1. Immoral Minority (sites linking to it: 403)
#2. The Mudflats (670)
#3. Joe McGinniss (110)
#4. Palingates (288)
#5. Politicalgates (97)
Over a million sites rank higher than the last two.
The reality is: We are small and have niche audiences.
Unless the political scene in the US has become completely unpredictable, Sarah Palin is the least of our concerns. All declared GOP candidates support big breaks for the corporations at the expense of services and entitlements for the majority of the people. They mix religion with politics and have a poor understanding of the Constitution. They don't believe in government but are all itching to be part of it, for some $trange reason...
Do the people who read and comment on the liberal blogs feel that President Obama's heart is in the right place? How important is it to implement some social reforms? Should Americans strive to become a more equitable society? Should everybody have access to healthcare as a right or should it be a privilege?
It's great to be part of a community of like-minded people, exchange opinions and share information online. Unfortunately, these communities are small and if they remain online, it won't translate into votes for what they believe is right.
Irrelevant as Sarah Palin appears to be, there are people actively organizing things for her. The same goes for the other GOP candidates. They're fuelled by corporate money: Oil, Big Pharma, Healthcare Insurance companies, etc.
GOP candidates are courting the teabaggers. They may have shrunk a bit, but they represent an interesting segment, as they probably never bothered to vote before the 2010 mid-term elections. They've been made to feel important, valued and will very likely vote in 2012. The irony is that they will vote against their own interests.
President Obama is raising big bucks for his campaign, but that won't do any good if people don't go out and vote for him. The GOP has already started the voting registration shenanigans and there are those infernal Diebold machines. They play dirty.
The people who elected Obama may be feeling despondent right now. The GOP has sabotaged all his efforts to address the problems of the economy. Recovery has been slower than expected for that reason, but Obama is being made into the scapegoat.
It's absolutely vital to re-energize Obama voters. They have to get out and cast their ballots in November 2012. Every vote counts.
It's important to share information online, but it's equally important to go out there and do some community organizing. I agree with McGinniss about hitting the streets, but I think it's possible to combine it with the keyboards. Campaign online, by all means, but those who can, please do it in the real world as well.
I'm not a voter, obviously, but I plan to make my small contribution to these efforts from afar. I will continue to write posts on my little blog, urging everybody to do what I can't do physically: To get out there and do some organizing.
If the GOP and the teabaggers can do it, we can do it!