off topic but what a great national security team!

Hillary Clinton: Sec of State
Robert M. Gates: defense secretary,
Gen. James L. Jones: will be national security adviser
Gov. Janet Napolitano: homeland security chief
Eric Holder: attorney general
Susan Rice: ambassador to the United Nations.

Sirota is projecting, of course. If his policy prescriptions aren’t followed, he’ll pull his condescending prick routine and mobilize his massive email list so that David “Dear Leader” Sirota can direct this great nation—only he can save us.

That’s a pretty massively douchey column from him. I guess Sirota can’t wait for the nomination and some actual, you know, policies, to become a whiney irrelevancy.

The sad thing is Sirota and I probably agree on a vast majority of issues (I’ve often said Bernie Sanders, who he used to work for, would be my ideal president), but I’m growing weary of his preemptive temper tantrums. And the “Dear Leader” shit was beyond the pale.

Criticizing Obama is totally acceptable, but, sweet jeebus, some folks on the left have been putting in overtime on nothing but that lately and it’s getting tiresome.

I always go back to this, but why in the hell weren’t all of Obama’s harshest progressive critics backing Dennis Kucinich in the primaries?  He was the only true blue progressive of the Democratic candidates and I didn’t see any of the leading minds of the netroot world getting behind him.

I don’t agree with this statement by Tom that progessives were:

more or less useless during the election (Obama won with a network he built himself, not the ‘netroots’

To make who elected Obama this discrete is taking it too far. I would posit that there is a connection between the ‘netroots’ and the decline of Fox News, and the emergence of Olbermann, Maddow, etc., and that this change in the media institutions had some impact on the election, whether it was Obama or Hillary, or whatever Democrat got the nomination. The election success didn’t happen in a vacuum only in the run up to the voting ... the netroots had some precipitating impact on the outcome.

Otherwise, though, what Tom said!

:)

pop, you’ve got a very good point there. The liberal blogosphere in general (including the netroot blogs) first served as a counter-balance to the rightwing noise machine and then genuinely overwhelmed it on the web. And a lot of people took notice. I think there’s a chance Olbermann could have taken hold on his own (his first real web connection was Fark, not Daily Kos), but I don’t think we’d be watching Rachel Maddow in primetime without it. I guess that also has to do with the fact that Air America wouldn’t exist w/out the liberal blogosphere either.

Kevin, your Kucinich question is excellent, and it also ties in with my favorite query to those who claimed that Hillary’s “18 million strong” voters would need special care-and-handling to vote for Obama: if they were so set on Hillary, why didn’t each of them send her five bucks to erase her campaign debt, or send her money BEFORE that debt erupted? I mean, do these people REALLY want their candidate of choice to win or not? If Feingold had been in the race, he would have been my first choice, but even he’s not simon-pure, and call me crazy, but it was more important to see a Democrat win than to hang myself up with “but he’s not perfect on all the issues!”

And yeah, I think the fact that Obama didn’t go on bended knee to the netroots is a plus in my book. As he has said repeatedly, he’s planning on being president of ALL the country, not just certain demographics. Given that we’re coming off an administration where Focus on the Family was consulted about Supreme Court nominations, that’s refreshing.

I know I’m a totally broken record on this, but hard-left progressives need to wake up and realize that NO American president has ever done everything we on the left would like, and no hardcore leftie has ever been elected president—certainly not by running as a leftie. That’s no excuse for not holding Obama and his team accountable, but given how laughably wrong a lot of the crystal-ball gazers across the spectrum were during this campaign (Hillary is inevitable, it’s gonna be Giuliani, no wait, Fred Thompson is a game-changer, Palin will siphon those disgruntled Hillary voters and toss the election to McCain—and my favorite—“OBAMA CAN’T FIGHT THE GOP ATTACK MACHINE OMGWTFBBQ WE’RE DOOMED!!!), I’m not particularly inclined to trust their prognostications on what Obama’s appointments mean for the future.

Kerry, I love you.

Thanks, Kevin!

The sad thing is Sirota and I probably agree on a vast majority of issues (I’ve often said Bernie Sanders, who he used to work for, would be my ideal president), but I’m growing weary of his preemptive temper tantrums. And the “Dear Leader” shit was beyond the pale.

Right there with ya.  In fact, part of what’s making me cranky these days is that I’m getting increasingly annoyed by the people with whom I agree on nearly every substantive issue.

The election success didn’t happen in a vacuum only in the run up to the voting ... the netroots had some precipitating impact on the outcome.

That’s a fair point.  On the other hand, I think the Great Stupidity Pandemic of 2008, which swept the blogosphere during the primaries, irrevocably damaged the ability of the blogosphere as a whole to make a positive impact in the general election; that’s the background for my “more or less useless” comment, which is admittedly an exaggeration.

Having been a spectator to the left side of the blogworld, my feeling is this: There was a good chunk of the netroots who felt vindicated by the failures of the Bush Administration, and felt that 2008 was going to be the year we got John Edwards as President, Bush impeached and in jail, the GOP buried, health care for everyone, and a pony under every Christmas tree. 

When the smoke cleared, however, we got Bush sneaking out of town, leaving the mess to a left-leaning centrist who has aspirations of being President for everyone.  Pragmatic Dems decided that they wouldn’t let the good be the enemy of the perfect.  Others, however, went back to the whining and stomping of their feet because Obama isn’t giving them a pony for Christmas.

I’m not sure whom you guys are referring to when you say “progressives,” “hard-left progressives,” or “Obama’s harshest progressive critics.” I don’t think an exemplar of the latter category would be David Sirota in a world that includes, for instance, Alexander Cockburn and Joshua Frank.

I think that a lot of people who are “progressive” in the context of the most prominent (mainstream) “netroots” sites are really something more like traditional Democratic Party liberals, of an ilk that’s been around in more-or-less the same form for about a half-century.

Traditional Democrat liberals, I think, largely supported Obama as an alternative to HRC who hopefully would be less hawkish and less corrupt than the Clintons and their closest allies. And they supported him instead of Kucinich for a simple reason: they didn’t think K had a chance in hell of being nominated, while Obama did.

You want to ask about why somebody or other didn’t support Kucinich… I happen to live in Ohio. You should have seen the campaign lit Obama and HRC were sending out here just before the primary, both claiming to take what essentially is K’s position on trade issues, which happened not to be in keeping with their own positions, as expressed elsewhere and earlier. It was like they were fighting over the Kucinich vote—except that K never made a blip in the polls even here in his home state (and had dropped out to defend his House seat weeks before the OH primary.)

What those disgruntled OH Dem voters wanted, it seems, was a front-row, feasible, electable candidate to represent that view. That is, as I see it, a candidate whom the mainstream media and the forces behind them ($$$) had anointed as a serious contender. I’m not saying that means those voters are ‘brainwashed’ or anything for seeing things that way: maybe they’re just world-weary and trying to be practical, same as me (Edwards>Obama supporter, though I voted for K in the ‘04 primary, and might have done so this year if not for the Obama v. HRC showdown), and the same as, presumably, some of those “progressive” commentators you guys are referring to.

If, sometime before we die of old age, a sea-change does come in American politics, and a candidate who holds true traditional-Dem positions like Kucinich’s has a real shot at the presidency—like say, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, (D-OH), should he ever emerge from his cocoon?—I think it will more likely be because of a grassroots movement than because of the influence of this windy and extremely self-referential “netroots” milieu as we know it today.

These are all good explanations.  I also think that a lot of people are just genetically programmed to whine and complain and blogging gives them that outlet.  Otherwise they’d be sounding off to their families and co-workers.  Or maybe they do that also.  But I know my family has expressed gratitude that I now re-direct my tirades at the intertubes instead of them.

Again I would make my case that intelligent discourse is a good thing.  A lot of people read this stuff who never comment, but may, in fact, be influenced by it.  If some people are going to demand their ponies and lie on the ground complaining until they get them, then I guess we just have to let them complain.  Grownups can still converse around them.  And gently point out the fallacies in their thinking.

I have nothing against Sirota, but…

I have to say it’s pretty fucking rich for him to start pointing fingers at the blogosphere and punditicizing on the reaction to Obama’s pre-Presidential (non)actions.  (Though, I may be assuming criticism that doesn’t actually exist, on his part.)  If it weren’t for dKos, he wouldn’t have the book sales and column space he currently enjoys.

That said, perhaps the broader point is accurate - the blogosphere isn’t terribly effective at effecting any kind of real change, outside of the campaign arena, whether we choose to believe it or not.  This might change with an Obama administration but I doubt it, and it’s a hair’s breadth from arrogant to think that we’ll actually shape any policy decisions in the next four years.  Not that we shouldn’t keep trying…

Then again, I just remembered that BushCo invited some bloggers (Blog of the Year in 2004!) to the White House.  But how many people outside the blogosphere are aware of that?  I’d guess very few.  Or, from LeftBlogistan’s perspective, did we see any positive results from the Powers That Be who attended YearlyKos and Netroots Nation? 

Then again (again), maybe we’re just finding our feet.  Maybe a new cadre of politicians who’ve leaned on the blogosphere for campaign support will keep one ear on the wires and consider what we have to say.  Til then, I’m just going to keep considering us a bunch of loud, albeit well informed, drunk bastards in a bar who will talk to anyone who listens.

Going back and re-reading Sirota’s piece, the term “massively douchy” really understates it.

Wielding his campaign’s massive e-mail list, the new president could mobilize supporters to press Congress for a new New Deal. Or, he could mobilize that army to blunt pressure on his government for a new New Deal. The point is that Obama alone gets to choose — that for all the talk of “bottom-up” politics, his movement’s structure grants him a top-down power that no previous president had.

For better or worse, that leaves us relying more than ever on our Dear Leader’s impulses. Sure, we should be thankful when Dear Leader’s whims serve the people — but also unsurprised when they don’t.

He’s really advancing the “Obot” theme that all Obama needs to do, when he is struck by an “impulse” is to dog whistle his kool-aid drinkers who will move as one to their computers and spam e-mail everyone in Congress to do His will.  C’mon Sirota.  This stuff just lays there and steams.  Did you just get up on the wrong side of bed this morning?  Otherwise maybe you should start guest blogging at The Effluence.

Again I would make my case that intelligent discourse is a good thing.  A lot of people read this stuff who never comment, but may, in fact, be influenced by it. 

I agree with this, and in fact I’ve long thought that the blogosphere’s most effective role is the production and distribution of memes.  At Thanksgiving, for example, when Jody’s sister’s Republican father-in-law trotted out the Big Lie of ‘voter fraud’, Jody’s brother-in-law (who is very smart, and a great guy) was right there with all the right responses—which he got because he pays attention to liberal blogs (and Rachel Maddow, of course). 

It’s also why I spend time on more mixed message boards arguing with wingnuts: I’m not trying to change the wingnuts’ minds, I’m trying to persuade the persuadable lurkers.

It sometimes occurs to me that the perpetually disgruntled elements of the blogosphere have more than a little in common with those annoying people who always bend the ears of others about how women don’t want to date nice guys, or guys only want to date models. They always have an excuse for why they’re not getting any that doesn’t involve examining their own overinflated expectations about relationships and faulty self-perception.

C’mon Sirota.  This stuff just lays there and steams.

True! I read that piece during my weekend travels and was astounded at how crappy it was.

Right on, Hilton.

Re Sirota: I’m pretty sure that as soon as he wrote the words “Dear Leader” not in the context of NoKo, it gave me license to not give a fuck about what followed.

If he manages to call Obama “Barky” in a major paper, will Sirota get his No Quarter merit badge?