In the New York Times, the 134,295th article ever written about why The Liberal Blogosphere is Mighty but still The Suck because The Liberal Blogosphere cannot all on its own anoint the next president of the United States of America.
The problem with the thesis of the article is that's it's stupid, but still, the writer makes some boring points.
During the last five years, no movement has had as great an impact on progressive politics as the liberal blogosphere. Built from grassroots anger over Democratic leadership support for the Iraq war in 2002, liberal bloggers have chastised party leaders who backed President Bush, causing many prominent Democrats to reverse — and even recant — their positions on the war. Just as impressively, the blog voices on the left have played a critical role in pushing less visible issues — like electronic voting machines, bankruptcy legislation and telephone companies’ liability in wiretapping programs — into the mainstream.
Thanks. None of this would have been possible if we weren't willing to say "fuck" a lot, though -- an important point which is often glossed over. Somebody had to say that the war was a stupid fucking idea, for instance. Because, you know, it was a stupid fucking idea (as was the bankruptcy bill and telecom immunity), and yet the media (including, shamefully, the NYT) just sort of forgot to point this out.
Anyway, a first paragraph like this, it's like teabagging a mountain goat; you just know there's a but coming.
The ultimate measure of this shift of influence came this summer, when virtually every Democratic candidate for president attended the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and skipped the annual convention of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Nashville.
EschaCon II will be even influentialer. And more fun.
OK, here's the but...
But notwithstanding this stunning success, this week’s withdrawal by John Edwards, coming a week after the departure of Dennis Kucinich, means that both of the preferred presidential candidates of the liberal blogosphere are now out of the race.
We agreed on "preferred candidates"? When? Was that before the vicious arguments over the nomination we're now having, where we all hate each other?
Instead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates who have drawn some of the sharpest criticism on progressive blogs, are the only ones who will make it to Super Tuesday.
Curses, foiled again. Anyway, I think myself, I've both criticized and defended both HRC and Obama. Molly I was more in the Edwards camp than I was; I've been uncommitted, but that's only because I've been in a terrible indecisive funk since Gus Hall died. More to the point, I don't think anyone over here has ever been deluded enough to think Liberal Bloggers could be kingmakers. Well, Maybe Aravosis, but he's been spoken to.
The blogosphere has had impressive electoral success in Senate and House races, especially in 2006. But at the presidential level, while the blogosphere has been effective in changing the political debate and the party’s direction, it has been less successful in helping its preferred candidates to victory. Why?
Because the point is building a long-term movement with a far different time frame (and parameters) for "victory" than this election cycle? (And by the way, I seem to remember a young fellow named "Obama" being talent spotted by the liberal blogs pretty damn early -- I sent him a modest donation myself, before it turned out that he didn't need it because his opponents for Senate hilariously self-destructed.)
The blogosphere is an outsider’s movement and the presidential nominating process favors “insider” candidates.
It might also be pointed out that the presidential nominating process as it stands is a fucking irrational anti-democratic national disgrace. See "long-term movement," above. As much as we all disagree over here, we all pretty much concur on that. (Incidentally, the right blogosphere is very much an "insider's movement"; it's the key difference between the two sides, besides the fact that they are fucking bugshit loony.)
The blogosphere advances confrontational politics, and winning presidential campaigns are exercises in uniting the country.
See "Rove, Karl." "Unity" is a media fetish.
Maybe the blogosphere has actually won, and it just can’t take “yes” for an answer. A final possibility is that the blogosphere’s preferred candidates have had trouble getting traction because the other candidates have moved in the blogosphere’s direction.
Ding! Overton's Window; Google it.
Indeed, given Hillary Clinton’s instinct for the fight, and Barack Obama’s success as an outsider, it is surprising that these candidates have not found more support from the leading blogs and their readers. But if the impassioned anti-Clinton, anti-Obama comments to my posting on John Edwards’s departure are representative, the leading Democratic candidates still have a long way to go before they harness these strong voices for their campaigns.
You're mistaking the commenters on your "posting" for "the liberal blogosphere," cretin. Among other issues.