Different directions

The latest tool in the American online political battle has just launched: BlogPac, a Political Action Committee (PAC - they'e one of the myriad organisations allowed to raise and spend funds in American political campaigns) designed to take political blogging one step further and be actively involved in the political process:

Writing a blog post is not enough. Reading a blog post is not enough. Commenting on a blog is not enough.

Being educated is the first step toward political change. But the next step requires doing something.

BlogPac.org is that next step -- a group of bloggers not content to simply write words or read them, but eager to take action on the pressing issues of our day. We will not sit idly by and merely chatter as everything we care about burns. And you join us in our efforts.

Beyond what effect it may have, it got me thinking about the differences between political blogging in the US and the UK, and the different routes they've taken. It's interesting to note while more and more British politicians start blogging (the latest being Green Party leader Keith Taylor and Liberal Democrat MP Sandra Gidley) to the best of my knowledge there's not one US politician (above the state or local level at least) blogging. Politicians have used blogs - most notably Howard Dean, and there are also official Kerry-Edwards and Bush-Cheney blogs - but none of these are actually being written and run by the politicians themselves.

Instead, US blogs are being used to motivate and tap into an online activist and fundraising base - witness the number of candidates advertising on blogs and the fundraising efforts by Kos and Atrios, amongst others. While there have been recent developments in online fundraising by political parties in the UK - see this post on Perfect for more - political blogs have been mostly used as a communication rather than a fundraising tool. It'll be interesting to see what, if any, changes there are in British blogging as campaign managers learn from the American experience in the run-up to the General Election.