Rodent Regatta

I’m less concerned that my weblog doesn’t validate!

Howard Dean came in third in the Iowa caucus last night. Weblogs and many big media operations had said he was in the lead up until a few weeks ago. I didn’t here a single outlet suggest he’d finish third.

The bloggerati had already assured themselves that Dean was going to be our next President. He might still have a shot at it; I don’t know.

Here’s the gratifying thing about his loss. I feel better – not because of my views on leadership, government and politics! It’s because I got an affirmation that there is a relative minority of people who are truly ”on the web.” Sure, every company’s got a web site. Lots of people use email.

Yet, there are still a great many influential and powerful people who don’t have a web site or weblog, they don’t use email and they don’t get their information from web sources. Admittedly, this will change with time. For now, though, there’s not quite the stigma attached to being ill-informed about the web.

Certainly, candidates are using web sites or weblogs in new ways. Some will visit those sites and be influenced by them. However, with Iowa we see that other forces were at work at the same time that the Dean campaign focused intently on the weblog phenomenon.

It troubles me that my weblog doesn’t validate. It troubles me less today than it did yesterday!