I'm no stranger to meta. Usually I go for the laughs but this is a serious question.
I've a friend who is a poli sci professor; we just went a few rounds on whether or not now, what with the Democrats taking over Congress next month, if DailyKos and by extension the netroots movement will persist.
His view is that much of the impetus for the growth in net activism on the left has been outrage versus the Republicans, Bush in particular, that will subside now that unitary RepubliGovernance is done with.
My rejoinder: You have got to be kidding me. I asked him to name one substantive instance in which Bush showed a change of intent or resolve to do anything but continue being outrageous.
(More below)
The redirect: Yeah, but the Republican Congress enabled much of that outrage because it went along with it, while (presumably) a Democratic Congress will not.
Me again: Which is why the Pubs spent six years outsourcing as much Congressional power as possible down Pennsylvania Avenue, on the expectation that GOP control of Congress was the most vulnerable. Now it will take years to recapture what Bush has usurped, with or without impeachment.
Friend: They could only do that so long as there was unitary government.
Me: My point.
Friend: You can't discount that outrage against Bush is an important driver in the rise of the left-wing blogosphere.
Me: I don't. It's the combination of (1) outrage against Bush, (2) no official (or for much of the time, opposition) check against Bush's outrages and (3) not just refusal of the media to criticize Bush but active proliferation of Bush talking points to enable him even further. This created a vaccuum at a time, that the netroots very swiftly filled as a venue for opinion, research, discussion, and activism.
Friend: Exactly. And now that the Congress is Democratic, (a) Bush can't do as he pleases, (b) the outrage will diminish, and (c) the phenomenon of bloggers being influential in politics will diminish.
The conversation was diverted after that (mainly it was time for our respective families to go eat lunch), but I figured this is good stuff to share here.
So what do you guys think? Are we a rising tide, a force that will continue to (thanks, Kos) crash the gate and compel the Democratic Party to field more candidates and underwrite more primary races, challenges to raise the overall quality and ensure the overall efficacy of government of/by/for the people?
I never got to showcase the good stuff we've done and how we've done it, from virtual scratch. We're an army of researchers and campaigners and a portfolio of skills (think Buhdydharma's "Question" series) that isn't going anywhere.
Then there's jotter' and dmsilev's stats on membership growth. Sure, it spikes during election years...regardless, after 100,000 members we stopped being a blogger community and started to become a subculture...or a city that has no borders, only citizens.
I'll leave the rest for you guys. I'm in an airport, waiting to depart for Dallas. I've got an hour to kill, and I need your help with that, my fellow Kossacks. :)
Boarding Plane Be back in a couple o hours. Or not. I hate flying.
Update: 8:50 EST I'm back. Rec List. Whoa.