But, as my friend Greg likes to say, “it’s clear that Obama and his team play a longer game than anyone else.” That’s evident in many ways this week, particularly in the reaction of the pundit class to his first serious trip overseas. While the bloviators pound their chest and proclaim the trip a failure because Obama didn’t get specifically what he wanted on certain tactical matters, the Obama team rightfully ignored them. Axelrod was positively beaming as the trip concluded, giving a calm piece of insight into the administration’s strategy:

Before leaving Istanbul, W.H. senior adviser David Axelrod called Obama’s eight-day European trip “enormously productive”…but added that the results of the trip won’t be seen for some time.

“You plant, you cultivate, you harvest,” Axelrod told reporters. “Over time, the seeds that were planted here are going to be very, very valuable.”

Plant? Cultivate? Long-view? Actually work to improve relations and restore America’s image before starting to cash in those chips? All foreign concepts to the TV (and often blog) pundits of the world, and all the more grateful we should be to have a team that ignores them.

As time progresses – the reaction and analysis of the Obama administration is increasingly becoming a dividing line between what we once mocked as “serious” and “unserious” people. But there really is no better word to apply to this situation. Quite simply, a large number of the bloggers and online (and offline) pundits are just not serious – or more directly – to be taken seriously.

What makes someone “serious” isn’t if they instantaneously agree with the Obama administration – no no, let’s dismiss that straw man immediately, since we know the David Sirotas of the world will inevitably employ it.

No: what makes someone “serious” is whether or not they even attempt to dig into the substance of the issue – and whether or not they try to see the long-term strategy behind a move the Obama administration makes. Since we now know that the administration views everything through a long-term lens, wouldn’t it behoove pundits to at least TRY to determine what that lens would be? If they don’t even try, but react emotionally, tactically, or with a short-term view – what’s the point of even reading them anymore?

A perfect example: the decision by Obama to keep Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. When it was announced in the fall, the outcry was completely predictable.

Poor Chris Bowers. It’s become all too easy to pick on him, but not without reason. And when it comes to the Gates issue, Bowers was the first and loudest out of the gates, screaming that keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon would be a disaster that signals to the world that Democrats can’t be strong on defense and wouldn’t signify “change” at defense:

Secretary of Defense is the big enchilada. Arguably, due to the vast percentage of federal spending it receives, it is more important than all other cabinet secretaries combined. The President may be Commander in Chief, but it is the Secretary of Defense who is decides how most federal revenue is spent. We need change in the Department of Defense, and keeping Gates along with his entire team of advisors and assistants doesn’t fit the bill.

Within minutes, Meteor Blades at DailyKos jumped on that horse, citing Bowers’ argument. Indeed, the meme spread like wildfire amongst a blogospheric audience eager to demand “change!” without considering whether the bloggers who led this charge took a second to do even the smallest bit of reporting to see if, indeed, Gates might actually implement real change under a President Obama.

Well, someone did – in particular a diarist at TPM named FlyOnTheWall – who actually took the time to do some research on this issue:

The standard critique of the mainstream media, as the traditional press is derisively known in the blogosphere, is that it privileges process over substance. But on defense policy, at least, a similar charge could reasonably be leveled against these bloggers. Conspicuously absent from any of these laments is a detailed, substantive case against Gates. The argument is being conducted almost wholly on symbolic grounds.

Chris Bowers may be the most widely-cited online critic of this pick, so it’s worth taking a close look at what he’s written. Bowers points out that the Pentagon budget accounts for a huge percentage of our discretionary spending, and it’s entirely out of control. But is Gates the problem, or the solution? Bowers appears to have no idea. In fact, Gates and his team have attacked a series of previously-sacrosanct weapons programs. They’ve done so in the absence of any material support from the Bush administration, and in the face of fierce opposition from the Democratic congress.

He continues:

Richard Danzig is reportedly Obama’s choice for Deputy Defense Secretary, a role he is expected to full until he takes over for Gates. How does he feel about the Pentagon chief? “I think Secretary Gates has been a good secretary of defense,” Danzig told reporters back in October. “I think he’d be an even better one in an Obama administration…. Many of the kinds of efforts he’s made are in tune with what we’re trying to do.”

Substance. Strategy. Thinking long-term. Hyperventilators screamed that Gates wasn’t change. Well, guess what? He may have been better position to implement change than anyone else. Jump ahead to today, with the news that Gates wants to cut out old-DoD programs and reform the way the Pentagon does business.

Reaction from Yglesias?

This is the move that justifies the decision to keep Robert Gates on at the Pentagon. Any new Defense Secretary, no matter how brilliant, would have had to have spent his first three months in office building relationships with the top military commanders and focusing on filling out the DOD civilian staff. Only a Secretary who’s already been in office could have the ability to propose sweeping change. But only a president who’s brand new could have the popularity and honeymoon effect necessary to have any hope of driving the changes through congress. Hence the appeal of the odd alignment of new president and old defense secretary.

Reporting. Thinking through the long-term. Examining the substance of the issue. This is what separates the bloggers whose work you should read versus those who just aren’t “serious.”

Why is it important? Because the more these people put themselves out there as representatives of the left-wing blogosphere, the worse it makes us look. Soon the stereotypes of us as uninformed rabble-rousers, ideologues rather than pragmatic, well-educated citizens, will become true.

Obama’s playing a long game. That doesn’t make him always right. But it means that any analysis that fails to at least take into account the potential presence of long-term strategy should be dismissed. As should these so-called “analysts.”

For example, yesterday he pimped his own appearance on Rachel Maddow’s show and proceeded to draw an equivalency between Obama’s policies and those of Ronald Reagan (yes, really) and went on to decry, predictably, how Obama was mean to automakers but nice to Wall Street baddies. By the way, to Maddow’s credit, she’s pointed out that many financial execs were pushed out before receiving government funds as well, a point Sirota ignored, of course. Sirota jumped the shark ages ago at DailyKos, where at least 50% of commenters on his diaries figured out his shtick and called him on it (which is one reason he no longer engages in discussions in the comments, prompting the invention of the term “Shit and Run Diary”).

But he still has his core group of fans who are determined to despise Obama and anything that doesn’t fit into the faux-anger frame. To the fanatical Open Left fans, things like pragmatism, actual governing which involves compromise and seeing the larger strategic political landscape, all smack of evil corporatism. Everything Obama does is something to be outraged by, to grab the pitchforks and the storm the castle walls (or in their cases, grab their keyboards and say things like, and I’m not kidding, “impeach Obama!”). But did even this audience, so determined to despise Obama at all costs, finally figure out how fake Sirota’s “populism” is? If they did, it happened in this Sirota post which set a new bar for pure, unadulterated idiocy. Here’s what he wrote about Obama budget director Peter Orszag, and I quote:

How does a budget director who claims to be a deficit hawk in an administration that insists it wants to get rid of government waste nonetheless get driven around in a government car with a taxpayer-paid driver?

Yes, that’s right, David Sirota dedicated an entire post to expressing outrage that the WH budget director, with perhaps the busiest job in town, gets driven around on the taxpayer dime. To the barricades!!!!!! Or not.

But Sirota’s core audience finally may have awoken. Almost every comment to this post expressed disbelief that Sirota would write a post on this. Some samples:

Orzag seems to travel around DC a lot — maybe this way he can be on his phone or reviewing budget papers all the time, rather than spend 2-3 hours per day driving or taking the metro.

He should lay off his secretary too, if he still has one, and if there’s a deputy budget director or assistant budget director they should get the axe. In fact, let’s chop out the entire office of budget director! Then we’ll really show ‘em who’s got images and appearances under control! We don’t need a real budget anyway, just something budget-ish.

This Orszag guy should be doing the real work that real workers do when they really work. He should be carrying heavy boxes around his office, raking leaves in the White House front yard, and taking out his own recycling. Someone ought to get a drill press and install it on his desk, and make him spend an hour a day with a hard hat and ear/eye protection on, getting his photo taken while drilling holes in sheet metal without any help from anyone. And shouldn’t he be helping Michelle dig holes in the organic garden?

The American people, despite the Drudge-like insistence, are not that facile and idiotic. The fact that Peter Orzag has a car and driver says NOTHING about this administrations policies and to make it seem like the appearance of this would is stupid beyond belief.

This is remarkably trivial. Wow, just wow. I can’t imagine any one actually caring about this.

Tipping point or turning point for Sirota? I doubt it. As long as he keeps getting his name out there and people like Maddow keep legitimizing his shoddy work, he’ll continue. But please, let there now, finally, be no doubt: David Sirota has no integrity. He is incapable of real analysis or thoughtful reporting. He is a bomb-thrower, and his target is the Obama administration, pure and simple. How else could you write a column focused on the fact that the budget director has a car and driver? I guess Sirota cares so much about working people he wants the federal government to lay as many of them off as possible.

He’ll keep on going, but this post was the nail in the coffin amongst anyone who thought that Sirota’s work deserved anything other than mockery.

It was clear since November 5th that the blogosphere wasn’t going to unite behind Obama and form an organization to help him enact his agenda. No, that would be too Republican for them – too “mindless” – too much like the Bushies of yesteryear who failed to question the Iraq War, etc etc (note, I’m using their arguments, not mine). But even in my worst nightmares I didn’t imagine that they would be so short-sighted as to join with far-right members of the GOP in demanding that the Treasury Secretary step down two months into an effort of economic recovery. Even the supposed “adults” are joining in the game: Arianna Huffington joined in the chorus. Perhaps most distressingly, Frank Rich, normally so astute at seeing past the Northeast Corridor bubble at what the pundits miss, insultingly calls the AIG bonuses Obama’s “Katrina Moment,” despite evidence that, in the real world, this media-ginned-up outrage wasn’t hurting Obama’s poll numbers (and yes, I personally believe the AIG bonus debacle is a tempest in a teapot – a distraction for those who can’t handle the notion that economic recovery might involve some unfairness).

Al Giordano smartly points out that Geithner’s departure would be a disaster for economic recovery, makes no strategic sense now, and illustrates how few of his critics are proposing a realistic alternative – both to his plan and to his position. He posted his piece to DailyKos, spurring the usual amount of “oh you are just saying we can’t criticize Obama” nonsense. Indeed, more than a few members of DailyKos have pointed out how eagerly the community and the left-wing blogosphere has been drinking from the spout of God Krugman. Yes, I know, there are plenty of economists who dispute the validity of Geithner’s bank rescue plan, and they could indeed be right. But not one of them has to deal with the practical nature of governing, nor do very few of them propose alternatives (Krugman believes in nationalization/receivership – but rarely discusses how ugly this would be, entirely ignoring the IndyMac example).

But this isn’t even my main point: my main point is that to listen to the whims and passions of some of these communities is a foolhardy endeavor. Remember how we all loved to pile on Kristol or Friedman and attack them for their poor track records of getting things wrong? Well – let’s see what happens when we apply that test to some folks in our own world.

I know, it’s poor form to call out a specific blogger…but hey, this is my site and I’m no longer on DailyKos. So let’s pick the most jarring example: a young blogger named Slinkerwink. Now, I know Slinkerwink. In fact, we worked together on a blog last year during the election. In those days I allowed my passion to get the better of me, and got caught up in some of Slink’s more virulent attacks on Obama’s campaign strategy. Well, I realized by the fall that I was wrong – and have admitted as much many times since. Slinkerwink still was convinced she was right in her diatribes against Obama’s campaign strategy. Fair enough. But given the degree to which she invested her heart and soul in his election, you’d think she’d give him more than a couple months to see how the results turn out?

Nope – Slinkerwink didn’t wait a day. She immediately launched into incessant barrages against his administration as soon as it went into transition, in particularly launching into unsourced, unsubstantiated attacks on Rahm Emanuel as the source of all things wrong in Obama’s world. Didn’t like a certain cabinet appointment? “Rahm Emanuel’s fault!” It was a constant, childish refrain. Then there would be more attacks on certain cabinet appointments, often relying on the reasoning of others. If you took issue with one of Slinkerwink’s assertions, the response would be, “Well, I guess you don’t agree with Glen Greenwald then!” As soon as there were issues with Daschle’s confirmation, Slinkerwink led a mob charge against the administration, demanding his dismissal (and, predictably, calling for Howard Dean to run HHS).

But perhaps the best example is this diary demanding that Obama withdraw Tom Vilsack’s nomination for Agriculture Secretary. In this work, she links Vilsack to everything from e.coli to childhood obesity, then uses the literate phraseology: “SAY THE FUCK NO to Vilsack!“

Flash forward to this week’s NYTimes, and an article about how sustainable food activists are thrilled with the Obama administration and with Vilsack in particular – who has turned out to be much better than they imagined. In fact:

The sustainable-food crowd isn’t alone in its love fest with the Obama administration and Mr. Vilsack. Food-safety activists have praised Mr. Vilsack’s remarks about creating a single food-safety agency, and nutrition advocates are enthused about his comments on school lunches and health care reform.

So, here is a clear example in which the passions and eagerness of members of the left-wing blogosphere led to a short-sighted burst of outrage which turned out to be misplaced. An apology? A retraction? Hardly.

Who does this behavior remind me of? A certain Nobel-Prize winning economist who works for the NYTimes. Remember this gem?

I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

How about this doozy, TEN DAYS into the Obama administration?:

Why has the Obama administration been silent, at least so far, about one of President Obama’s key promises during last year’s campaign — the promise of guaranteed health care for all Americans?

Krugman then goes onto speculate, negatively of course, all the reasons why Obama wasn’t talking about healthcare in its first ten days. Only a couple weeks before Obama…talked about healthcare in front of Congress and then released a budget that set us on the path to universal healthcare…OH, and held a healthcare summit?

Now, I’m not saying that Krugman doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to economics. Nor am I saying that his clear history of disdain for Barack Obama – and the degree to which Krugman laid that out on the line during the primaries – is now causing him to root for Obama’s failure. No.

But I am saying that he’s far from infallible. In fact, he’s often prone to hyperbole. And when members of the left-wing blogosphere cite clearly fallible opinions as fact, and then look at their own track record of outrage without even giving the smallest hint of a chance to see if they may be wrong – then we see the dangers in spending too much time letting our opinions and feelings be swayed by the blog world we know and love.

Yes, Obama can be wrong and make mistakes, obviously. He has and will. Hell, even FDR tried and failed many things in his approach to the New Deal. But when we follow the passions and whims of the moment and raise up in outrage and demand a Treasury Secretary be fired two months into a crucial economic recovery because some have a different opinion about his approach…well, I just thank goodness that there are cooler heads in the administration. In the left-wing blogosphere? There’s a lot of growing up to do.

1) A failed economy under Obama brings Republicans back to power.

2) A successful stimulus plan will, once and for all, destroy Republican economic ideology. Enough time and distance from the New Deal allowed them to re-brand their same ideology as somehow relevant, but this would put the nail in that coffin. Period.

Josh Marshall, whose writing I think is generally excellent, but I think has been somewhat erratic since the election, nails it today:

…a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed. But the satisfaction will have to be amongst themselves since as a political matter it will be irrelevant. The public will be entirely within its rights to blame Democrats for any failure of government action that happened while Democrats held the White House and sizable majorities in both houses of Congress.

I know, I know, I’m getting repetitive – and I yearn for the day when there are more substantive things to blog about – but I can’t help it. And it’s not a question of disagreeing with someone. There are plenty of people I disagree with. It’s a question of David Sirota being an idiot.

I’ve railed against him before, so my feelings are nothing new. I’ve always felt like Sirota is an intellectually shallow hack who shoots first (at Democrats) and asks questions later. However, I was wrong. He never actually asks the questions later, he ends at the “shooting first” part. Part of me thinks he does this shtick to get attention. Part of me thinks he does it to prove some magical working-class credentials that he actually doesn’t have. But all of me thinks he’s helping bring down the left-wing netroots fast.

First there is his totally uninformed ranting against the infrastructure spending in the stimulus package (in a post titled, of course, “They Can’t Be Serious”). As it happens, that’s a huge amount of spending for a very small period of time and it’s just part of a short-term stimulus package, not the final word on infrastructure spending under Obama. Yet, in order to justify his faux-outrage, Sirota compares the short-term stimulus infrastructure spending against ALL the infrastructure spending that the Army Corps of Engineers estimates is necessary period in our country. It’s an apples and oranges comparison, but apples-and-oranges comparison are how dishonest hacks gin up anger.

When Matthew Yglesias, who has been writing about infrastructure and transportation issues at a level of tremendous expertise debunks said Mr. Sirota and proclaims himself pleased with the spending, we can see the hack’s efforts at drumming up hysteria for the transparent shtick it is.

And of course, almost instinctively, Sirota opposed Obama’s efforts to get the remaining $350 billion from the rescue bill, or as Sirota puts it, “The Wall Street Bailout” – even though the priorities are going to shift under Obama to doing what should have been done from the beginning regarding home foreclosures, and even though almost every economist thinks that money is another essential part of stimulus. Now Sirota has developed his own purity test, slamming Dems who opposed the Bush bailout (knowing, perhaps, that it might be mismanaged) but support it under Obama with his new strategy. Slamming Dems, seems to be a nice theme under Sirota.

Now again, I’m not opposed to pushing Dems on policy. That’s not what Sirota does. He uses intellectual dishonesty (or, more likely, ignorance) to gin up anger and knee-jerk opposition to Democratic office-holders, especially Obama.

Here’s a question for someone who claims to be speaking for the left: Hey David, as mismanaged as it was, what effects did the first-half of the bailout have on our financial system? Is it possible that things could have been worse without it? Is it possible that the new half might have beneficial effects on our financial system? Hell – do you even know what role banks and credit markets play in our economy, or would you rather rail against something, anything, in an attempt to get attention for yourself?

The sad part is, of course, that most of the left-wing netroots’ community sites have been infected with Sirota-ism. Take a look at this front-page post on the DailyKos about the bailout money, complete with beauties such as:

Obama needs for the kind of people who are waiting to steal this money to know that it’s still coming even though he’s going to be in charge of it.

Markos has taken to citing Sirota in his equally ill-informed and irresponsible posts, and very smart guys like Matt Yglesias feel compelled to respond to his rantings.

Well, Sirota is probably rejoicing now. The fact that someone like me is writing a post like this means he’s gotten his wish for greater notoriety. I mean, this is a guy who wrote a post recommending great holiday gifts for progressives and featured his own book. And I won’t dispute the notion that Sirota-ism has taken greater hold of the left-wing netroots. It absolutely has.

He would define the influence of Sirota-ism as a greater amount of “populism,” although I’ve never seen him actually define that word which he loves to use as his litmus test on everything. Does he know you can be a populist right-winger or a left-winger and that the term populism doesn’t actually have anything to do with political ideology? Probably not.

But as far as I can define Sirota-ism, it is the art of knee-jerk opposition writing that is bereft of intellect or even a fifth-grade level of historical knowledge – and it is a virus that is bringing down the netroots fast. He can rejoice in turning the left-wing netroots into an opposition party against Democrats, since it makes him king of that hill. It’s just too bad it’s a hill built on a base of total misinformation.

Congrats David, your work is being more and more widely read. And we are all the dumber for it.

I’m reading Jonathan Alter’s “Defining Moment” book now and I’m struck by the parallels and the differences between our Republicans and the Republicans of 1933. Then, the Republicans were equally out of touch, demanding tax increases and cuts in government spending – a balanced budget, economic consequences be damned.

But today’s Republicans are even more preposterous:

They demand tax cuts in the name of fiscal responsibility, but stop at that. In other words, it bears no resemblance to actual fiscal responsibility (which the Republicans of the 1930s at least truly believed in). Blackburn kept on using the refrain: “How are we going to pay for this spending?” Well, clearly she wasn’t concerned about paying for tax cuts, just paying for spending. Does she not know from a budgetary standpoint those are the same thing? Each represents money leaving the government. Each represents a deficit that will have to be paid off.

So that removes one objection from her argument: the deficit issue is there regardless. Then the other point she makes is the creation of jobs. She claims that cutting taxes for businesses will do a better job of creating jobs than money used to…well…actually create jobs. Odd.

What this made me realize is what a bullet we dodged by not electing McCain. Many of my friends continue to insist that despite his rhetoric, McCain would end up spending on a stimulus plan in this crisis because he had no choice. I disagree. These Republicans consider government spending a cancer, a poison, an anathema – and McCain fought against it his whole career.

If the reaction of Republicans’ thus far is any indication, McCain, like his congressional colleagues, would be just as out of touch as the Republicans in 1933, minus the actual fiscal conservatism.

Obama shouldn’t touch this argument with a ten-foot pole, but it’s time for some lower level Dems to point out how Republican ideology simply cannot handle an economic crisis because they can’t adapt their economic policies – whereas Democrats can adjust accordingly. It is just one of the many reasons that Republicanism is dying, and deserves to. Let’s see if we can help it along.

Sarah Palin sits down for a long interview to discuss how she was mistreated by the media. In it are such doozies as a personal attack on Katie Couric (“Katie, you’re not the center of everybody’s universe”), raising the point that she might have been discriminated against because of her class, her anger at SNL for a skit that aired before she went on the show…and her subsequently admitting that she would still have gone on the show had she seen it anyway, and more. If I’m not mistaken, this may be unprecedented:

Has a losing candidate for national office ever been so addicted to re-living the campaign over and over again on camera?  Is Palin’s subsequent behavior, in and of itself, unimpeachable proof that she wasn’t prepared for this role? 

I know that piling on Sarah Palin is supposed to be over by now.  But there are days I continue to think about it and I have to wonder about all the media figures who pretended as if she was a viable candidate.  I remember the Sunday morning after her appointment when George Will and Cokie Roberts praised her to the heavens on “This Week” and Sam Donaldson’s head almost exploded.  I may be mistaken, but I believe he may have actually said, “Are you people smoking f*cking crack?!”  

That represented the only time when I saw a media figure basically say that this whole Sarah Palin thing is a bad joke.   So despite Mark Halperin’s comments that media coverage of Obama was “disgusting,” the most shockingly disgusting thing about media coverage of this past election was the fact that so many supposedly accredited pundits failed to proclaim that this Sarah Palin thing was the joke that it was.   

I hope so many of them take a look at this sad, discredited camera-addict, who misses the spotlight so much she sits down with conspiracy-theorist documentarians to talk about how “mean” the media was to her.  

Really, honey.  The economy is collapsing.  The Middle East is burning.  Things aren’t going so well out there.  Get out of the way so we can deal with them.  You just don’t matter anymore.

Is the left-wing Netroots as we know it dead?

As I lay out in this piece, the “celebrity” bloggers who helped build the first-wave of blogging infrastructure are finding themselves increasingly marginalized and left outside the power structure of our current government.  The size and scale of Obama’s victory was so overwhelming that the Netroots cannot credibly claim to be the sole driving force behind it – indeed, those those who frequent DailyKos and similar sites were but a tiny component of a much larger coalition that led to our new President’s victory.  These “celeb-bloggers,” so used to being lauded in political circles, saw their influence waning (not coincidentally with the rise of the Obama machine) well into the campaign season and before the November victory.  Their subsequent behavior tells you a lot about where they stand and how they are desperately trying to reclaim their influence – not to mention traffic to their sites.  Note: I’m specifically talking about the community/activist sites like DailyKos, MyDD, OpenLeft, etc – not bloggers, left-wing and otherwise, in general.

Combining the declining influence of these first-wave of bloggers with the void of a mostly politics-free transition period (which has left only a smaller sub-segment of the Netroots participating in discussions) has been a nasty recipe for the left-wing blogosphere as a whole – a vicious cycle further marginalizing it from any pragmatic position of influence.   Can these same sites and this same infrastructure recover?  Or is it time for a new infrastructure – a Netroots 2.0, to replace the old one?

The first hints of “celeb-blogger” marginalization came in 2006-2007 when Jerome Armstrong, aka “The Blogfather” and former co-author with Markos Moulitsas, returned to MyDD from his failed bid working for Mark Warner and found himself on the sidelines in an amazing primary race.  The resulting two years came with perhaps the most stupendous series of intellectually dishonest, poorly sourced, and comical non-stop slams against Barack Obama, including his infamous refrain that “Obama can’t win a general election” (sample here).  Up through the general, Armstrong would cite the worst pollsters to prove his point, ban any discussion he didn’t like and knock users off the site on a daily basis (particularly those who called him on his analysis, which was a lot of people).   Now he’s not posting much of anything anymore.

He was joined in his disillusionment over the Obama campaign by his colleagues Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers – who left halfway through the campaign season to launch OpenLeft.  I recall watching a behind-the-scenes video of one of the Netroots Nation conferences that featured a fiery Matt Stoller practically frothing at the mouth as he decried Obama and the notion that he was building a “movement.”  The anger really shocked me.  Why was he so furious about Obama?  Indeed, many bloggers spent endless posts debating what constitutes a “movement” and whether the Obama campaign qualified as one.

What is it about that “movement” notion and the Obama campaign in particular that really bothered them?  I’m not a mind-reader, but it doesn’t take an enormous leap of faith to imagine that these bloggers saw their own marginalization happening before their eyes.  Indeed, the Obama campaign may not have been a movement, but it certainly built its own infrastructure and didn’t need to rely on any of these “celeb bloggers” to get the message out.  

So, some of these bloggers were feeling marginalized, but what about their quality of writing and the leadership they provided for so many years?  Should that not earn them the benefit of the doubt?  After all, when someone like Markos Moulitsas posts something on his site, it still holds a lot of sway over thousands of readers.  But should it?  The “come to Jesus” moment for me, who mostly spent time on DailyKos, came in the fall during the financial bailout debate.  Markos started posting a series of angry posts slamming the bailout – which is fine, fair enough.  But, as I noted then, he never analyzed the actual economic/financial implications of the issue, just slammed it politically.  It was at that moment that I first truly thought to myself: “Who are these bloggers that we put so much trust in?  Are they really the responsible people we want building and leading our insfrastructure?” 

It is since November 4th that things have really gone off the rails.  Part of it comes from the community nature of these sites: many of the participants were clearly there for the election.  Once it was over, many (if not most) didn’t return, leaving a small core group of people – many of them serious liberal activists who are incredibly passionate about their issues.

The “celeb-bloggers,” however, have found themselves even more marginalized than ever during the Obama transition, and many of their posts represent a real lashing out – a temper tantrum that essentially screams, “Don’t forget about me!  I’m still relevant!  I’m still a political force, listen to me!”  For Markos, it has been his never-ending crusade to prevent Caroline Kennedy from being appointed Senator from New York (one less spot for him to pick his “Netroots” candidate, a la Ned Lamont, and star in that candidate’s advertising perhaps?).  For Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, et al, they decided to go on a label-fest, scoring each of Obama’s cabinet appointments as “progressive,” “center-right,” “conservative,” etc.  To their credit, at least, they could see their own influence waning long before the election and they knew they were on the outside looking in.  So they engaged in this essentially meaningless exercise as one last gasp of proving their relevancy.  Stoller finally gave up, leaving Open Left for a House staffer position (a decision, in a fit of grandeur, he described not as accepting a simple job opportunity, but as a means to solving a larger “progressive movement” problem he dubbed the “Rootsgap” – dude, congrats on the new job, there’s nothing wrong getting work in this economy).

And the most amusing figure to emerge in this post-election period has been David Sirota.  Now, I have slammed him previously for his shoddy work, his historical ignorance, and his intellectual dishonesty.  But I have to praise him as someone very savvy at making a name for himself and promoting his own brand.  Indeed, he has filled the void of this quiet political period with some of the most ridiculous work I’ve ever seen, almost all of it aiming his fire at Democrats.   If there is a conflict to be found within his own party, Sirota will find it.  Most recently he has found his latest shtick, slamming political “aristocracy,” by taking on the relative unknown Senate appointment Michael Bennett from Colorado.  Why is he an aristocrat?  Because he doesn’t have a lot of years in elected office and he went to Ivy League schools!  Elite!  Even Markos jumped on the Sirota bandwagon (he went from crashing-the-gates to slamming outsiders for not being insiders – yikes).

But give Sirota credit – from the second Obama started making appointments, he started screaming the loudest.  His posts have been the blogger equivalent of someone waving their arms and saying, “Hey!  Look at me!”  Not much going on in the world?  Enter David Sirota with his manufactured outrage – gins up his name recognition even more.  Gets him on TV more during this political dead-zone period.  He’s played this card very well for himself – using the void of real news to create his own.

So that’s where we’re left: a group of “celeb-bloggers” who see their own influence waning and lash out with written temper-tantrums, or a new wave of bloggers who use classic traditional media techniques of ginning up fake outrage and creating conflict to get ratings.  Add in a community of die-hard liberal activists who remain hanging around the blogs while so many others have left, subjecting every move Obama makes to a liberal purity test, and the result is a vicious cycle which feeds off each other, leading to a precipitous decline in the Netroots.  For every post of someone screaming “Obama isn’t listening to us!” all I can think is, “But why should he?”   It’s certainly not because he owes his victory to us.

I suppose it’s possible that things will improve once Obama gets inaugurated.  That DailyKos members will not, for example, slam his healthcare plan for not being progressive enough, but instead will train their fire on Republicans who will want to block any chance of reform.  It’s possible.  Possible.

Someone wrote on my “farewell” diary from DailyKos, “If not here, where?”  In other words, that blogger was saying: DailyKos is the only option for the left-wing blogosphere, so you’re stuck here.  I thought a lot about that.  And that strikes me as a very un-American notion.  Whatever happened to competition?  Innovation?  Why shouldn’t a new generation of bloggers emerge building a new infrastructure?  Bloggers who aren’t as beholden to their years of “influence” during the Bush administration and are looking to operate in the new reality without any baggage?  Is there an opportunity for a new left-wing Netroots?  Is one necessary?

It still may be premature, but I am increasingly of the belief that the first generation of bloggers and their sites have seen their best days.  And I hope something new emerges in their stead.

In the diary, I mentioned that I would be blogging elsewhere, and this is going to be the more “minor” of my two new blogs.  This one is specifically going to be focused on politics (and political blogs).  The other will involve other authors and topics will be more varied and hopefully more interesting.   Yet I still will need an outlet for my political thoughts, and here’s where this site comes in.

Why the name, “Strategy for Progress?” (which, as a friend pointed out, sounds creepily Communist, not at all how I intended)

I wanted something that captured the goal of this blog and my writing: that goal is to help President Obama pass as much of his legislation as possible and to help realize the vision he laid out in the course of the campaign.  My goal is NOT to parse the legislation, classify cabinet appointments, or subject the new administration to a liberal purity test.  There are plenty of other sites where you can get that.  Some is even productive (when done honestly).  But I just find it boring.  

I want to revel in the fact that we have a Democratic administration AND congress.  I want to enjoy being on the winning team and push for more victories.  Compromise will be necessary, and not everything will be to everyone’s liking.  The perfect is often the enemy of the good, and I’m not sure that people without health care, for example, will care if they get it using through legislation that uses the particular mechanism a liberal blogger wants.

Whether my work will be interesting or not remains to be seen.  I have no grand ambitions for the site or for its growth, and why should I?  I’m no one of importance.  If the site grows it will do so in an organic sense and then, great.  If not, so be it.  

My one goal: try to write well.  I may not post frequently, but I will try to communicate my thoughts effectively.  If I can accomplish that, I will be happy.  

In time, if things grow, more authors may join the site and contribute.  But time will tell.

In the meantime, any and all feedback is welcome.  Thank you for reading.