Chris Bowers (born January 23, 1974) is a blogger for

DailyKos Daily Kos ( ) is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party and liberal American politics. The site publishes blog posts, polls, election and campaign fundraising data, and is considered an example of " netroots" ac ...

and a manager of their email list. He was a blogger and co-founder of OpenLeft, and was until July 2007 a front-page blogger for

MyDD MyDD was the first large collaborative politically progressive American politics blog. It was established by Jerome Armstrong in 2001. Its name was originally short for "My Due Diligence." In 2005, MyDD was profiled in Campaigns and Elections ma ...

. His focus is on polling and data-driven analysis of US politics, as well as of the blogosphere. Bowers was a member of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee, representing the 8th district of the

Pennsylvania State Senate The Pennsylvania State Senate is the upper house of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Pennsylvania state legislature. The State Senate meets in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg. Senators are elected for four-year terms, stagger ...

, and a former resident of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

. Now he resides in

Washington D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

He is a former union organizer, and a strong supporter of

organized labor The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considere ...

. Bowers has overseen netroots surveys that he says demonstrate that progressive Internet activists are driven more by partisanship and pragmatism than far-left ideology, and that show bloggers are influential on rank and file Democrats.

John Edwards Staff-Blogger Controversy

In February 2007, Bowers stated "I have a pretty vicious rant and an important

action alert Action may refer to: * Action (philosophy), something which is done by a person * Action principles the heart of fundamental physics * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video gam ...

lined up, but I am waiting to hear from the Edwards camp ...". about the controversy over bloggers

Amanda Marcotte Amanda Marie Marcotte (born September 2, 1977) is an American blogger and journalist who writes on feminism and politics from a liberal perspective. She has written for several online publications, including ''Slate'', ''The Guardian'', and ' ...

and Melissa McEwan, recently hired by

John Edwards Johnny Reid Edwards (born June 10, 1953) is an American lawyer and former politician who represented North Carolina in the United States Senate from 1999 to 2005. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the vice presidential nominee under ...

. When Edwards announced he would not fire the bloggers, Bowers announced he considered the event significant enough to tip him into supporting Edwards in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary. Further, he initiated a blogger campaign to email traditional media outlets with additional facts about William Donohue and the blogger employed by Republican Presidential candidate

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American statesman and United States Navy, naval officer who represented the Arizona, state of Arizona in United States Congress, Congress for over 35 years, first as ...

, Patrick J. Hynes. Bowers reported some success in these efforts in that several media outlets (including the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

) did report on the items Bowers suggested were relevant.

Other notable activities

In 2006, Bowers and Matt Stoller took over BlogPAC from

Markos Moulitsas Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (; born September 11, 1971), often known by his username and former military nickname "Kos" ( ), is an American blogger who is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos, a blog focusing on liberal and Democratic Party pol ...

and

Jerome Armstrong Jerome Armstrong (born 1964) is an American political strategist. In 2001, he founded MyDD, a blog which covered politics, making him one of the first political bloggers. Armstrong coined the term '' netroots'', and was referred to as "The Blogfa ...

. BlogPAC was active until 2012. During the 2006 election, Bowers again came into the spotlight for two internet campaigns he initiated. The first was called "Use It or Lose It" where he and other bloggers analyzed the FEC reports for "safe" Democrats and implored them to donate some of their campaign finance reserves to other Democratic candidates in more competitive elections. As a result of this campaign, several Democrats did donate additional money, including John Kerry and Barney Frank. Bowers estimated the effort generated a minimum of $2.3 million for Democrats in competitive campaigns from "safe" Democrats. The second campaign in 2006 was a

Google bomb The terms Google bombing and Google washing refer to the practice of causing a website to rank highly in web search engine results for irrelevant, unrelated or off-topic search terms. In contrast, search engine optimization (SEO) is the practic ...

(or less pejoratively, a "search engine optimization") campaign against a list of Republican candidates. The idea was to elevate perceived negative stories in traditional media outlets about these candidates in Google searches. Bowers attempted to distinguish this from other well-known Google bombs, such as

Miserable Failure During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, presidential election of the United States in 2004, Google bombs were used to further various political agendas. Two of the first were the "miserable failure" Google bomb linked to George W. Bush's Whit ...

or Flip Flop search terms returning biographies of George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 election, by returning only serious and factual articles about the targets. . Bowers is a Fellow at the Commonweal Institute.Commonweal Institute Staff and Fellows list

References

External links

*
Video of debate/discussion with Chris Bowers and Conn Carroll
on Bloggingheads.tv
Bowers profile at Commonweal Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowers, Chris American atheists American male bloggers American bloggers Living people 1974 births