In 2005, few people were expecting the Democrats to take back the Senate in 2006.

The candidacy of Ned Lamont showed that an anti-war message resonates with the electorate. That message helped Jim Webb to win. He had the early support of Daily Kos. So did Jon Tester of Montana.

In spite of Democrats succeeding in taking back the Senate, with the help of the netroots in close races, Jarvis takes a topsy-turvy view that we should be angry at the netroots that Senate races were close.

For a guy who portends to be so wise, you continue to be stunningly clueless on these issues in order for it to fit into your silly narrative.

If we listen to you and David Brooks, the logical conclusion is that if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, folks in the netroots will be against her and turn to some Naderite character. Because of course, we are intolerable bullies far away from the center who want radical change like an end to the Iraq War, Universal Healthcare, and a working government to provide basic Homeland Security to America.

Oh, wait, that’s what every normal American wants. And whoever the Democratic nominee is will have the full support of us netroots crazies because all the Democratic candidates believe in making those things happen.

Loons, we are. Jesus. Nothing learned. Years and years and not a thing learned.

David Brooks, like you, also thought the Iraq War was a good idea. Morons like me thought otherwise.

The nut graf of the Brooks column you praise is this: “Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the ‘netroots.’”

Really?

You can learn almost nothing from them? And that’s true into the future?

You’ve changed your argument over the course of the thread. Now you are saying the media misses a lot in its coverage of net politics, which is true (as evidenced by Brooks himself).

Does the center matter? Sure, and Brooks does say that. I guess I just expect a guy with your web-cred to read the rest of his argument a bit more carefully.

So Howard Dean’s failed candidacy in 2004 helped establish the Democrats as the reliably anti-war party when the midterms of 2006 came around, even though most of its leadership — Kerry, Rodham Clinton, Edwards, Biden et al — had voted in favor of the war before it began. You say the Deanites’ influence nearly brought about defeat in the midterms because of their tactics in Connecticut; on the contrary, I say it enabled the Democrats to take advantage of the anti-war vote despite the fact that their leadership had been pro-war. Dean’s legacy was an essential fig leaf.

Brooks sees the Netroots’ role in the Democratic Party as influential and destructive; I am inclined to see it as marginal and useful. Just like the Born Agains are for the GOP.

Brooks criticizes “liberals and Republicans” for exaggerating the Netroots’ influence. But he, and you too Jarvis, are complicit in the same hype.

I thought it was clear — for many of the self-declared leaders of the self-declared movement, the latter.

As a centrist Democrat, part of my fear is that we can be led astray by listening to this vocal and well-publicized fringe — that is, led to defeat. They would have us nominate John Edwards. They wanted Howard Dean. They damned near lost the Senate for the Democrats with their anger-over-victory strategy in Connecticut.

As a blogger and net citizen myself, part of my fear that through sloppy coverage, as Jay points out, netroots and net will be conflated and we will all be assumed to be angry young turks. That’s clearly wrong but PR matters, especially in politics.

Now clearly, I am all for more voices and viewpoints. In the column I linked to above, I celebrated the net’s ability to help us coalesce around issues and interests and then to form coalitions that can take action and someday even win elections. So, of course, I treasure netroots as part of that ecosystem and discussion. I have no problem with that and if I did I’d be undemocratic. Instead, I think the danger is in how they and those watching them overinflate their significance. And I agree with Brooks that victory in the election will come from the center; that center is, indeed, shifting, but I don’t subscribe to the belief that netroots are responsible for that shift. And that’s where we started.

Do you see the Netroots as playing the useful — and intentionally marginal — role as the Democrats’ “attack dogs who can say things others cannot say”…

…or, as you approvingly quoted Brooks, do you concur with his characterization of the private detestation of the Netroots by many Democratic politicians for their “self-righteousness and bullying…drifting into cuckoo land”?

Andrew:
Another role for MoveOn and Kos is as attack dogs who can say things others can’t say.

Jay: “portion” and “key” are very different words.

Is it criticizing Huffington Post for hype, falsely inflating the power of Yearly Kos?

Or is it criticizing the Democratic Party for embracing Yearly Kos at its epicenter, an alignment accurately depicted by Huffington Post?

But let me understand this. Are you saying, contary to The Hill’s, “… form a key portion of Democrats’ political base…” that the Netroots are not an important portion of the party’s base?

The epicenter of Democratic politics can be found in downtown Chicago this weekend as 1,500 activists, the entire Congressional leadership, and all but one of the party’s presidential candidates converge at the Yearly Kos convention. The event is an outgrowth of the influential political blog the Daily Kos, a site started only five years ago by Army veteran Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. The presence of the Democratic establishment at the event is yet another sign of the centrality of the internet and its grassroots activists, the “netroots,” to the Democratic Party. Some, however, are saying it is an indication that the Democratic Party is tilting further and further to the left.

Epicenter.

Horse’s mouth, I’d say.

I didn’t demand a instant trove of links. I simply asked you who are you listening to when you write of the Netroots movement, “I just don’t believe it’s quite as powerful as it thinks it is.” Are you listening to the political press and its hype?

I’m sure you’re aware that over-covering and over-simplifying every new thing is necessary so the new thing can be debunked and deflated a few hundred news cycles later, making way for the next new thing. First you ignore it, then you celebrate it and make inflated claims for it, then you debunk those claims without really examining who made them in the first place. All three steps can be accomplished without studying the phenomena in question. If this has happened with the Netroots and its annoying, welcome to the club of the annoyed!

Any doubt about the growing influence of the liberal blogosphere, aka the netroots, on the Democratic Party was laid to rest in August. At the Yearly Kos blogapalooza, the bloggers were flanked by a who’s-who of the party’s New Order (who have rallied behind the new kids on the block) and Old Order (who are now jumping on the bandwagon). Most tellingly, all the major presidential candidates showed up for a debate — including Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose vote authorizing the war on Iraq has rendered her almost persona non grata to the netroots community. And moderating the debate was Matt Bai, a reporter for the New York Times magazine whose unsparing, incisive and altogether engaging book is a must read for anyone unaware of the seismic shift that’s afoot among the Democrats.

And The Hill says: “…netroots that form a key portion of Democrats’ political base…”

That’s from just a three-minute search during a break in class…

Fair enough, I offer no links either.

Still I am confused…

…is the argument about whether media coverage inaccurately inflates the truly marginal influence of social activist Netroots vis a vis a powerful center (in other words a media criticism argument)?

or…

…is the argument about the actual power of the Netroots in the body politic (a political science argument)?

According to the Tyndall Report’s work on the most mainstream of the MainStreamMedia — the broadcast networks’ nightly newscasts — I have to provide a lack of links to demonstrate my argument that the Netroots’ true existence is at the margins (not that that is a bad thing). None of the network newscasts considered Yearly Kos to be newsworthy enough to warrant a correspondent to cover it — although Markos himself was invited onto the political talk circuit (Russert, Rose, Stephanopoulos et al) to publicize his simultaneous book.

The fact that the Netroots (or the Born Agains for that matter) exert what influence they have from the margins towards the power center — rather than from the center itself — seems self evident. That is why I called arguments such as the one by Brooks that you quoted a Straw Man.

My reading of the crass “General Bertay Us” ad, for example, was that it can be a Netroot badge of honor — and tool for fundraising and organizing — to use rhetoric that is inadmissable in polite political society.

The proper discussion here, in my opinion, is how much salutary influence activist pressure from the margins can have on the political center — and whether journalists are portraying that influence in an accurate fashion, without resorting to Straw Men.

I’d say the level of coverage of the Yearly Kos alone is one indication. I’m also referring to reporters who’ve interviewed me and the narrative I’ve heard from them, conflating netroots with internet.

And, yes, Andrew, I do believe that the influence of born-agains is inflated (witness my reporting on the supposed outcry over indecency on TV that turned out to be manufactured by one organization).

You are implying that I have no basis for my observation and you are demanding links. Fair enough except that I don’t have those links in my back pocket; they were additive. But that, too, is a rhetorical technique and I will turn that around: If you say that coverage does downsize or properly size the coverage of netroots, show me the coverage that does that.

You quote Brooks as saying: “Both liberals and Republicans have an interest in exaggerating the netroots’ influence, but in reality that influence is surprisingly marginal…”

It seems you and Brooks belong to a third group that has the same interest in exaggeration. Let’s call you Straw Man Anti-Activists–centrists who are in the business of claiming power for their own already powerful position by imagining inflated claims of power by the activist Netroots in order to minimize those claims.

This is Hall of Mirrors arguing. Of course the Netroots are more marginal than the power centers. The margins are the location where social activist movements organize.

Substitute Born Again Christians for Netroots and Republicans for Democrats and a symmetrical argument could be recapitulated.

I just don’t believe it’s quite as powerful as it thinks it is.

Fair enough. But who are you listening to that’s claiming all this power for the Netroots? Who are you refuting? I think it has significance, because it’s a shift in pattern for the Democratic Party, but I don’t think the movement has a lot of power yet.

If you looked at coverage of netroots vs. its actual impact on politics and its ability to sense the political will of the nation, I think you’d see that its importance is overblown. I think you’d also see that the center of the nation is wiser than you and Matthew are giving it credit for. I’ll take that populist high road.

I absolutely agree that we need to find the means to use the internet to coalesce around movements and issues. I wrote about that in this column on the question of the political nature of the internet and my conclusion that it has none; it enables us to coalesce. And our political system needs to figure out how to adapt to the parliamentary nature of the internet, the adding up of coalitions to equal political victory.

Don’t presume that because I dare to question the power of netroots I don’t believe in the power of social movements. I even believe in the power of netroots. I just don’t believe it’s quite as powerful as it thinks it is.

(Wish I could read Chait’s piece but I can’t; it’s behind a pay wall. Being just a poor prof and blogger, I’m not paying. If even the NY Times knows that paying doesn’t pay, the New Republic should get the message.)

I have a link and an idea for you.

The Link.

See Jonathan Chait, New Republic, “How the netroots became the most important mass movement in U.S. politics,” I would love to know your take on it . From the heart of the everything-they-know-is-wrong press comes an analysis of some things the Netroots had very right. The Netroots did not care for much of what Chait was saying, but I am curious how you would see it.

The Idea.

If the very clumsy two party system we have is going to work at all, we need the parties plus social movements. That’s the only way they become responsive to the people who aren’t represented professionally at the capital. Social movements force responses and even though the parties may only co-opt and not truly accept the movement’s ideas and war cries, it is exactly these approximations that shift political space about and get the blood flowing again. You need social movements, which live off participation from outraged and inspired people, and you need stable parties that cool some of that down and try to govern with it. The parties calcify without movements. They become captive to their full time professionals. Movements need the parties to complete their act on the political stage.