But it's true, the New Left netroots movement---or whatever you want to call it---is somewhat more dispirited and less optimistic than it was four years ago. It has certainly lost a great deal of influence in the clubhouse of Team Democrat over the last four years. Speaking personally, I started up this blog a little late in the game---a little over five years ago---to make a big splash, but in the netroots community I saw a group of smart and perceptive thinkers engaging in an freewheeling exchange of ideas, and I wanted to get in on the game. I came out early for Obama, not so much because I terribly "preferred him" over Clinton and Edwards---I simply thought that he was the most electable of the three, and that given his biography and rhetorical skills, he'd be the most likely to work with the incoming wave of netroots-backed legislators to enact an agenda that resembled a Second New Deal, which was exactly what the country needed, and still obviously does.
Oh well. I guess one out of two ain't horrible on the prediction scale, and it just goes to show just how resistant the culture of Official Washington is substantive change of any kind. Which is not to let the Obama people off the hook, either. They've done a lousy job with the feeding and care of the beasts of burden who toiled for them most diligently in the general election campaign, and they're going to pay the price for that---if they haven't already, in fundraising terms---a couple of weeks from now with lower expected voter turnout and (best case) a narrower margin of victory.
It would also have been of help to the Democratic Party if it had been headed in the interim by someone who understood the netroots' importance as organizers and foot soldiers, and by not some party hack who also happens to be an imbecile.
Whither from here? Well, the disappointment over the last four years has caused a number of us to lower our sights just a bit, and that's probably a wise course of action: Namely, to re-focus our efforts on the state and local/municipal level, building coalitions with like-minded groups---unions, nonprofits, advocacy groups, even Occupy, if possible---to recapture as many state houses as possible for the rest of the decade. (What made the 2010 election such a disaster wasn't so much the Teabilly Massacre itself as it was to the fact that it occurred in a redistricting year.) As for presidential politics, I suspect that quite a few of us won't be quite so invested in them for some time to come. I know I won't. Some of us will simply not have the time, or the money, or even the interest when we remind ourselves that political power really does emanate in this country from the ground up; that city-council and county school-board elections are arguably as consequential for your community as whoever the person is who's living in the White House; and that he/she who controls Congressional reapportionment controls the legislative agenda in Washington for the next ten years. So let's get cracking!
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