The Left-Wing Blogosphere and the Democratic Party

The Hill reports:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has taken some beatings recently in the liberal blogosphere.

An online poll at the leading blog Daily Kos put her approval rating at 19 percent. By comparison, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean garnered 84 percent.

When she posted to the blog last Wednesday, describing her resolution calling for ethics investigations, readers offered excoriating reviews: “She is out of touch and dragging down the party,” wrote one. “Pelosi has zero credibility with me,” averred another.

But even as blog readers were pressing the submit button on their most withering opprobrium, Pelosi was preparing to take her House Democrats a few steps farther into the blogosphere.

Last week, her office launched three new blog-friendly efforts. It established an RSS feed for the House Democrats, a kind of clearinghouse for distributing press releases, floor speeches and even sound and video to Internet surfers. It started sending out a daily e-mail to Democratic members summarizing the day’s prominent blog posts. And Pelosi began making weekly guest posts at Daily Kos.

How blogs interact with politicians and those who get out the vote is something to watch.