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April 16, 2004

a debate about revitalizing the left

I spent the day--very enjoyably--at a meeting of people who have come together to create an advocacy Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. I'll write more about that next week. When I got home, I found that my post about revitalizing the left had provoked two extremely interesting responses on other blogs: an essay by "The Decembrist's" Mark Schmitt, and one by Matt Stoller. I haven't had time to absorb their arguments (or the various responses posted by visitors to their blogs), but I'm certainly open to their criticisms.

In my original essay, I accused leftish bloggers of failing to develop a positive vision. A reader told me about Mark Schmitt, whom I would definitely cite as a creative and substantive blogger on the Democratic side. See, for example, his defense of John Edwards, which is an argument for a moral and optimistic populism. I now look forward to exploring Matt Stoller's The Blogging of the President as well.

My blog gets moderate, steady traffic--but few comments or "trackbacks." I meet regular readers, and they mostly turn out to be people who don't visit blogs, but who come to this site because of my civic education and democracy themes, which concern them professionally. These are not people who naturally participate in public, online discussions. Neither do I, for that matter, so I don't blame them at all. But I must admit that it's enjoyable to provoke discussion in the "blogosphere." I look forward to pondering Schmitt's and Stoller's comments and responding.

Posted by peterlevine at 9:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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