This piece on Russ Feingold's netroots popularity is a fascinating interplay of tired D.C. conventional wisdown and, well, Russ Feingold and Chris Bowers.
We get the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet's (IPDI) Carol Darr, fresh off her efforts to destroy the political blogosphere, labelling us as "extreme".
"Even though these people may tend to be more extreme and it's a tiny segment of the population . . . they tend to be opinion leaders and tend to be activists. So I think they have a disproportionate influence," Darr said of bloggers and blog readers.
And she loved that "extreme" talking point.
Darr, of George Washington University, said that if "you think of these blogs as little online tribes of like-minded people . . . they can feed off each other. So I think the blog activity is going to drive each party more toward its ideological extreme."
It's clear that'll be the talking point of the establishment class.
"It's great, because it creates a lot of energy and helps broaden a movement, but the downside is you can also get pulled in a more extreme direction," said Erik Smith, who worked in the 2004 race for both Dick Gephardt and a multimillion-dollar independent Democratic ad campaign.
But it's this idiotic theme that most infuriates me, this time courtesy of "internet strategist" Jonah Seiger (who heads up Carol Darr's IPDI board of advisors):
Referring to Dean and others, Seiger said, "The best success stories of Internet candidates on the national scene aren't president."
Um. There has been one -- count 'em -- ONE presidential election since the emergence of the netroots. People might want to wait for a larger sample size before they spew that sort of crap.
Or, better yet, perhaps it's best they keep thinking this way. Let the institutional players keep thinking that we're "extremists" and that "no internet candidate has been elected president" so that they stay away these parts.
There are too many good players who get this whole netroots thing -- like Feingold and Warner -- to worry about the rest.