This past weekend, Cedwyn posted a diary here titled On Obama: The shallowness of the right and left criticism. It was based on an article by Albert Hunt: Obama Transcends Ideology by Riling Both Flanks.
The diary was interesting and started some "heated" conversation in the comments. But what is even more interesting to me are the ripple effects it created around the netroots.
The first to comment was Big Tent Democrat at "Talk Left." His response was to basically bemoan "the transformation of the once Left blogosphere into the Democratic blogosphere."
This vapid Broderite Beltway analysis would have once been mocked in the Left blogs. It means precisely nothing, other than the typical Beltway Media "if both sides hate you, I must be dong something right" silliness. Today, it is the height of insight in the Left Democratic blogosphere.
But boy, was BTD wrong. The conversation this article and diary spurred was fascinating indeed, whether you agree with the author's point of view or not.
Chris Bowers at "Open Left" responded to BTD by writing a diary titled The progressive Internet space changed because Obama convinced it to change. Chris starts off by saying he once felt the way BTD does...and then his thinking changed.
The progressive Internet space didn't change because it is filled with lobotomized sheeple, or veal pen online leaders craving access to power. It changed because President Obama persuaded it to change. Starting from virtually nothing online, President Obama quickly built the largest online progressive, political organization in existence. In late 2008, his email list had 13 million members, all of whom joined voluntarily. In two years (2007-2008), he nearly tripled what MoveOn.org did in a decade. He accomplished much of that long before he was the Democratic nominee, or even before he won Iowa.
The progressive Internet space changed because President Obama was more persuasive to the audience of the progressive blogosphere than even the most prominent progressive bloggers. It changed because his message was more persuasive to the membership of large progressive email organizations than the leaders of those organizations. President Obama took his message--and message is more than just policy, it includes all the cultural signification coming from a campaign--to the same online channels that are available to all of us, hired a bunch of smart online organizers, and ended up convincing many millions more people to voluntarily join him than any other online progressive organizational leader had ever done in the past.<...>
Now, just because President Obama persuaded more people so far does not necessarily mean he is right in every case, that he will win in every case, or that his persuasive power is total. And it certainly doesn't mean that, if you disagree with him from the left, you shouldn't try to fight back However, it is important to recognize that President Obama has in fact won the argument among the base so far, and not because of veal pens or sheeple. He convinced 13 million people to voluntarily join his online operation. In order for a more left-wing force to displace, or at least shift, Obama, they have to do something comparable.
Regular readers of Open Left might guess that a diary like this by Chris stirred up quite a storm there. You can check it out in the comments.
The next to weigh in was BooMan with a diary titled Obama and the New Netroots.
The simple fact is that the vast majority of progressives, having successfully toiled to elect one of their own president, are invested more in his success than in narrow ideological battles. A small minority of progressives prefer to judge the president's progressiveness entirely by what he does and not by what he says or who he is. Yet, there is nothing in Obama's personal history nor in his voting record to suggest that he is anything but a committed pragmatic progressive. Fortunately, he is smart enough to understand the political space for progressive policy in our country and the role of a president. Obama is the leader of the entire country and a shepherd for the Democratic Party. He is not in the White House to implement a wholly progressive set of policies, nor could he do that without his flock scattering to the winds.<...>
A lot of progressives convince themselves that their policies are popular and that a president who implements their policies will be rewarded in the end. I confess that I feel this way, too, on most issues. But a quick look at how the attempt to close Gitmo was stymied, or the attempt to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan was scuttled, or how the proliferation of myths about Obama have spread, should provide you with some prudent caution about what will and won't fly in our current political climate. The opposition has a say, too. A smart politician anticipates these attack and picks his fights wisely.<...>
For me, 'progressive' means 'committed to progress' which may be incremental or sweeping, but which doesn't get bogged down in ideological roadblocks. There is no such thing as 'noble failure' when failure means that the current incarnation of Republicans is restored to power. A wise president works with what he's got and doesn't add more burden than the beast can bear. That's different from triangulation. Triangulation is passing your opponent's agenda on your terms and then taking credit for it. Obama is passing his agenda on the terms the system will bear. And that is progressive enough for me. And I don't care who gets the credit.
And finally, Al Giordano at "The Field" weighed in with Changes: Turn and Face the Strain.
I would quibble with the absence of two words in Bowers’ reflection: Community organizing. It wasn’t mere persuasion or charisma (or technology) with which Obama reconstituted a multi-racial, multi-generational US left from the ruins of academic identity politics and their rubble. Nor was it the amassing of email lists or the hiring of "online organizers" that did it. Those were important but they were merely auxiliary tools and tactics.
The real game change happened (and continues to occur) door-to-door and neighborhood-to-neighborhood, through the resurrection of the all-important community organizing that happens outside of the Internet screen: the intensive training of tens of thousands of community organizers and a battle plan that put their newfound skills to work.<...>
The most transcendent (and dangerous, to those in power) thing about a community organizer is that the authentic ones have little interest in gaining a seat at the table of power for themselves. They don’t suffer from the illusions that plague aspiring brokers (including of "alternative" ilk) that any of what they do in politics is about them, much less about their "careers."
I suspect that those who seek the kind of power that exists up above will long continue to regard and attempt to treat community organizers as, comparatively, children, somehow naïve and not part of the club. It must be infuriating to so many that the organizers have no interest in joining in an illusion of centralized power that they make less relevant with every doorbell rung.
And as Bowie sang in Changes, "And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations, they’re quite aware of what they’re going through."
I'm not sure this lowly blogger can add anything to what these folks have said. There's a lot of meat there to chew on. But if you want to archive a discussion about the ongoing relationship of the Obama administration and the netroots, I expect you'd want to include this particular conversation for posterity.