I'm seeing a trend among the most recent Lamont blogging. Armando has highly recommended diary at dKos today all about how bloggers did nothing for Lamont and how it was all about people like ctkeith who worked hard and long for Lamont on the ground. Atrios has chimed in along the same lines. T-Rex has the best (and funniest) Who, Us? post because he hits on the reason why the establishment Dems will want to elevate the bloggers' role in any Lieberman loss:
It isn’t really true, of course. If Ned is victorious, it will be
because the people of Connecticut, the regular non-blogging voting
people, were dissatisfied, and when offered an alternative, they took
it. But, of course, the tone-deaf Washington elite will be quick to
assume that bloggers were the magical X-factor who made the race
possible. Why? Because that’s a hell of a lot easier than accepting
that everything they know about doing business and shaping policy is
wrong.
He's right, after sending in every gun they could find from the big ones of Bill Clinton to the small ones of Lanny Davis, who is recognizable only because "Clinton" is in his resume, the ruling class Dems will be looking for a villain if their guy loses and they'll settle on the bloggers who supported Lamont early and often. We're an easy target. The public has no idea what blogging is except on the fringes. Bloggers can be characterized as a kind of lefty talk radio, which, thanks to the RWMN's destruction of that particular medium, serves as shorthand for angry, unhinged and inaccurate. We're easily marginalized. So I get what the establishment Dems are doing. I don't get why the bloggers who threw so much energy into giving
Lamont's campaign the oxygen it needed to break the politcal surface
want to distance themselves from the effort now.
Atrios suggests that reporters interested in the whys behind Lamont's success so far should look at the people on the ground. Now, I'm all about the ground game. Nobody appreciates the importance of precinct organizing and hitting the streets more than I do. Ask any candidate I've managed to buttonhole for ten mintues. But is that really the story here? I'm not saying the story is the one that the establishment Dems want to tell about the mean cabal of bloggers who distorted poor Joe's record. And it's not the one the RWNM wants to pimp about god knows what their nasty collective mind can conjure. But surely the role of the blogs in the Lamont campaign, beginning with the hiring of the visionary Tim Tagaris, warrants some attention here.
I'd like to know what exactly inspired the Lamont zeitgeist that swept through blogtopia (hail skippy) I'd like to know why, for instance, the Dem Sen primary in PA was ignored. That was a primary that showcased perfectly the struggle for the soul of party, pitting, as it did, an anti-choice, anti-stem cell, corporatist, establishment Dem and an anti-choice, anti-stem cell, corporatist establishment Republican against two progressive alternatives, neither of whom could have won but whose ideas were left struggling for air - air that could have been provided with some attention from blotopia's royalty. Despite the protestations, there is a good story about the role of blogs in all of this.
Related: Chris is right. It's everyone in the D.C. establishment against Lamont. That's been clear for a while now. That's why when he writes this, I get nervous:
In the end, that seems to me to be the biggest signal that can be sent
in this race. The ultimate reason, bar none, that the progressive movement has formed and that the activist base has grown angry with Democrats in DC is that Democrats keep losing. This goes beyond
partisanship, beyond ideology, beyond anything. If Democrats were winning, netroots anger at the establishment would significantly dissipate. Almost every major increase in the progressive movement came in response to further setbacks by Democrats against the conservative movement. What we really want, above all else, is to stop losing ...
Of course we want to stop losing. A person with a serious stab wound really wants, above all else, to stop bleeding. But as surgeons say, all bleeding stops eventually. If we have to stop losing by electing Democrats like Bill Clinton, I'm not sure what we gain. That said, now that we're in this truly incredible morass, thanks in large part to the Lieberman-loving DLC who paved the way with their infuriating politics of capitulation and corporatization, we are in a position where even another DLC corporatist, third-way shill would be marginally better than another Republican. But if we're going to talk about what we can learn from this race in CT, I hope we learn who our friends really are. So far the list is Maxine Waters.
Also related: To the people in Connecticut working on the ground, one of whom is my mom in Norwalk: rock on.
UPDATE: Kos weighs in with his tribute to the heroes.
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