Our own Susie Madrak was quoted in their article as one of the original denizens of the political netroots:

Madrak’s example is typical. She blogs, she says, more than ever, up to 20 times per day. But traffic is a third of what it was at its peak, and instead of being able to make a living through ad dollars, she is forced to seek donations intermittently on her site.

“The days when people could be very influential in the blogosphere aren’t here anymore,” she said.

There are other quotes, but I invite you to read the entire article.There are some things right about that article and there are some things very, very wrong, in my opinion. The underlying premise seems to be that the netroots fractured in 2007-2008, as Democrats split into the Hillary/Obama/Edwards camps, and while anger at each other simmered under the surface, it was directed toward Obama:

“I supported John Edwards,” Madrak said. “And the Obama people were very vehement about what they thought about it. And they up and left the site if they thought you were being irrational about Obama. I still don’t know where they went. They just up and disappeared.”

Although the Obama campaign raised a record amount of money online, they never quite made common cause with online activists.

“It has been a very testy relationship,” said Peter Daou, a blogger in the early days of the movement and now a political consultant. “He didn’t reach out. That was complained about in 2008, and during his presidency there has been a very bad relationship. They have been dismissive, and you want to look for a reason why the progressive blogosphere has fractured, that is it.”

There's certainly some truth to that, though I would also point out that Susie blogs here as do I, and I'm one of the Obama supporters who disappeared from pro-Hillary and pro-Edwards blogs around March, 2008, but not because I didn't like them or respect their points of view. I simply did what most people do: I found an affinity group that included people who were supporting Barack Obama, and for me, that affinity group could be found on Obama's website and Twitter.

Continue reading »

It's already pretty well established that Jim Hoft is the wingnutosphere's most brazenly dishonest blogger, which really is saying something, considering the competition.

It's not just that he's been trying to characterize neo-Nazi killers as liberal Occupy types. After all, this is a guy who immediately claimed that Obama's birth certificate was a hoax, who heavily promoted the Kenneth Gladney "beaten by SEIU thugs" hoax, and who spins conspiracy theories out of groaningly stupid mistakes on his part.

So this past weekend he just continued the tradition of towering mendacity. He came out to Providence, RI, and invaded the Netroots Nation convention. He was seen hanging out with James O'Keefe, and they evidently wanted to dig up dirt on the Netroots folks. (You can judge for yourself the results of his "investigation", but we won't pay for the shower you'll want to take afterward.)

Our friend devtob saw Hoft walk over to the little cluster of Occupy protesters who had gathered across the street from the convention center. It was obvious that he wanted to get the Occupy folks to say something outrageous, so he pretended to be one of them, even going so far as to hold up a "Tax the 1%" sign and chant along. Witnesses who were there said Hoft was saying outrageous things and trying to get the Occupy folks to agree with him. They refused to take the bait.

Good on them. And shame on Hoft. Though of course he has no conception of that.

(Thanks to devtob for passing along this photo.)

Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks was filling in for Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC yesterday, and had on Sam Seder and conservative blogger Matt Lewis about Netroots 2010, Right Online, and media bias.

Lewis actually started arguing that the reason liberals don't have a Breitbart is because we don't need one -- we have the whole liberal media. No, really, he said that.

LEWIS: You don't need Andrew Breitbart. You have the Washington Post and the New York Times and three tv networks. The conservatives had to invent Andrew Breitbart because of the liberal bias in the media for decades. It's only been since the advent of the blogosphere the conservatives hope to keep up.

You don't need him. You've got networks. The Washington Post and the New York Times don't run any -- whatever the liberals want them to run.
It's obvious.

It seems like only yesterday when the Times ran that investigative series exposing false intelligence and urging President Bush not to invade Iraq, doesn't it?

Remember this confrontation?

Chris Matthews attacks Alan Grayson and accuses him of pandering to the netroots because he believes the reconciliation process can be used to get a health care bill passed.

Transcript:

MATTHEWS: This is the problem, Congressman. Every night we deal with two worlds, the real world of Congress that has to do things and get things passed, and this outside world represented by the netroots and people like yourself, who play this game.

GRAYSON: What are you talking about? I sit in meetings with the Democratic caucus with meetings every week! I’m telling you, this is what we’re talking about. This is what the leadership is telling us.

MATTHEWS: We’ll make a side bet that it’s not going to happen. Congressman Alan Grayson, a true believer that you can get things done by willing it to get done! [laughs]

The Mike Thomas Blog writes:

I would like to see Chris Matthews publicly concede that Grayson was right during their hotly contested exchange on Hardball in January.

Say it Chris: I was wrong. He was right.

Grayson argued that health care would pass through the reconciliation process. This caused Matthews to launch into a five-minute tirade berating Grayson as an amateur pandering to the netroots. It was classic I-can-yell-louder-than-you, I-can-talk-fast-than-you Matthews moment...read on

The bill hasn't been passed yet by the Senate, but it probably will and then we'll see what CM has to say. If anything.

Alan Grayson rules.

DOWNLOADS: (852)

PLAYS: (1436)

Embed

(h/t Heather)

Chris Matthews went on a rant against the 'netroots" yesterday when he was talking to John Heilemann from the New Yorker, saying that we're not real Democrats who vote and all we do is back-seat bitching because we're criticizing the LieberCare sellout health-care plan.

Think Progress:

When Heilemann noted that the “Democratic left” has been “trashing the health care bill” this week, Matthews said that those people were part of the “netroots” and not “regular grown-up Democrats”:

MATTHEWS: I don’t consider them Democrats, I consider them netroots, and they’re different. And if I see that they vote in every election or most elections, I’ll be worried. But I’m not sure that they’re regular grown-up Democrats. I think that a lot of those people are troublemakers who love to sit in the backseat and complain. They’re not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they’re not interested in working for somebody in public office. They get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.

I started blogging in 2004 because I was passionate about returning America to the great country it was before conservatives got their hands on the government in 2000 -- and it was because of the phony justifications that media elites like Chris Matthews sat back and used to persuade Americans to back such an outrageous position like the Iraq war that drove me into online activism.

We don't do anything? Really?

Atrios helped expose Trent Lott's love of Strom Thurmond back in 2002, which rocked the political world.

Macaca, anyone?

There are many excellent PAC's out there, but Blue America PAC/a> has raised over a million dollars since we started to do some governing, as we helped many great progressive politicians get elected like representatives Alan Grayson and Donna Edwards and Sen. Jeff Merkley, just to name a few.

The netroots have exposed FOX News to be the propaganda arm of the GOP when the MSM stood idly by and let them disseminate as manyLuntz-polled press releases masquerading as news as they could.

I've been asked to run against Jane Harman in CA-36, but I've held off making a decision until the New Year is upon us. We've broken stories like the scandal over the Bush administration firing seven U.S. Attorneys, and have given an incredible amount of content to news networks because of our commitment for truth. And they use that content without crediting many of us, while sneering at us as dirty f&*@king hippies.

I can go on and on, but I'll debate Chris Matthews anytime he wants about the things we actually do and we actually achieve in the real world -- both inside and outside the Beltway, too.

DOWNLOADS: (935)

PLAYS: (1444)

Embed

Chris Matthews is getting all hot and bothered because liberals in Congress and from the netroots are pushing hard to get a public option included in health care reform. That's called legislating, Chris. It's a long, hard process sometimes.

The Village really gets upset when dirty f*&king hippies get uppity and speak out on issues that matter. Villagers don't care that America voted in Obama with a mandate on health-care reform. Villagers don't care that America rejected conservatism, which practically caused the world to almost spin off its axis. It's getting to the point that Tweety is pulling stuff out of his pie hole because he hates us so much. And apparently Tweety forgot that "the left" was elected in droves in 2008. "The Left" is not a fringe teabagger, tax evading group, it dominates the House of Representatives. Here he is on Andrea Mitchell talking about Obama and Afghanistan and see where Tweety goes with it all.

Matthews: Everybody is doing their politics here. She represents San Francisco and she represents, I know the Speaker's role. you have to respond to the nosiest elements in your caucus, and the most passionate and apparently, I assume just knowing the Democratic House, the voices she's hearing from every single day are the left who want out. Now this president never promised to get out of Afghanistan. And he's not gonna...

He never promised to pull out, that was the good war, the necessary war. Oh, by the way he never ran on the public option. Somebody's got to tell these people on the left and the netroots and some of our colleagues, yeah, he might like the idea of a public option, he may prefer it. He didn't run on it. He didn't get elected for it. So this idea that he somehow betrayed a left wing mandate is nonsense.

Where to begin. Why is it OK to attack Nancy Pelosi for representing San Francisco? What did they ever do to Bill O'Reilly and Tweety? Aren't they part of the US of A too? That she is from the Bay Area somehow minimizes the fact that she's the Speaker. On Afghanistan, he's right. President Obama did not promises to withdraw from there. That's why we on the left have to put pressure on the administration or we could be there for decades.

But President Obama did campaign on the public option., It was part of his health-care plan that he unveiled in the primaries. I asked Ezra Klein to verify it for me and he did.

Berkeley's Jacob Hacker, who was the first to persuasively articulate it; to the Economic Policy Institute, which fleshed out the specifics; and to the Campaign for America's Future, which took the lead in selling it to advocacy groups and the presidential campaigns. John Edwards picked it up and made it central to his proposal, and the other candidates followed suit to protect their left flanks.

And I found that Paul Krugman has it also.

The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.

Tweety needs to apologize to President Obama, the netroots and the liberals in Congress who he just smeared in this clip. We are fighting for real health-care reform in America and not some mythical-bipartisan Beltway compromise bill that is completely useless to all the real working families that the Villagers like to pretend they speak for all the time.

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe)

Dkos released yesterday the first public polling numbers on Ballot Question 1 in Maine, which asks voters if they want to repeal the marriage equality law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

We are up by the narrowest of margins: 46 YES, 48 NO. That is essentially were we were at this point in the Prop 8 campaign, prior to the Yes side's devastating ad campaign.

The other side is excited about these results. From a Yes on 1 press release:

We are encouraged by the results of a poll released today by Daily Kos which shows that Mainers support protecting marriage between a man and a woman over legalizing homosexual marriage by a 48-to-46 margin.

Our lead is particularly significant given that the poll was conducted after our opponents had the television airwaves to themselves for two-and-a-half weeks and our ad had aired for just two days. It is clear that their message of fairness and equality do not compel voters to support homosexual marriage, particularly against the backdrop of the serious, real consequences to individuals, small businesses and religious organizations that we raise.

They are right. We are yet to see the effects of their messaging on the polling and that makes me really freaking nervous. We have never won a marriage fight at the ballot box. Losing in Maine would really set back the marriage equality movement, particularly after all of the momentum post-Prop 8.

But we all have the power influence the outcome of the race.

Maine is small. (For us out in California, it is really freaking small.) They are only expecting about 500k voters and have a budget of $3 million. They are as they like to say, "a cheap date".

That means we, the netroots can have a huge impact on this race.

I'm proud to announce that Blue America's 2010 ActBlue page is now live and No on 1 Maine is the first campaign to be list. They need your help to make sure unlike the Prop 8 campaign can stay up strongly on the air and continue to build their robust field program.

Give whatever you can. Early money is much more useful than late money, especially when so much of the vote will come in through the mail.

If you have some airline miles to spare, you can donate them here to fund volunteers traveling to Maine for a week, as part of their volunteer vacation program.

I'm headed to Maine myself in a week, on loan from the Courage Campaign. I can't wait to work beside the wonderful volunteers featured in this video:

DOWNLOADS: (762)

PLAYS: (2026)

Embed

Well, you can't say Andrew Breitbart doesn't have an active imagination.

The Hollywood right-winger went on Glenn Beck's Fox News show yesterday -- guest-hosted by Judge Napolitano -- and proposed the following conspiracy theory: The White House is collecting e-mail addresses so it can send out "netroots gangs" to physically attack and intimidate its critics.

Breitbart: Well, what people need to understand here is that they're being community organized. And the White House absolutely understands how the Internet works, and understands that there are countless blogs, Media Matters, the Daily Kos, which are collecting information and putting out the disinformation.

What the White House wants to do is create a hierarchy of who its enemies are. Every week, or periodically, they meet with the netroots. And the netroots acts as an action gang that can go out there and attack the enemies of the president and attack the enemies -- the, the, the people who would attack his plan.

So it is vital for this White House to find out who its enemies are, and then to sic its gang of netroots people on the American people.

Breitbart goes on to contend that the non-prosecution of two Black Panthers for polling-place violations was connected to this conspiracy:

Breitbart: That sends a direct message to the netroots people out there: Don't worry, this administration has our back. Those people that would community organize on behalf of the president and his initiatives will be protected.

Yeah, I should have guessed that black-radicals/liberal geek connection from the Black Panthers booth at Netroots Nation last week.

Wotta maroon.

This was a really productive discussion, and I'd like your thoughts. I talked to Joe Sestak (PA-7) backstage after the panel, and he told me he would start a netroots caucus in the House - and one in the Senate if he wins!

It might be the answer we're looking for; I believe it could increase our clout. (As someone commented to me today, politicians just don't care about one $20 contributor. But a few thousand $20 contributors can inspire a little respect.)

If Joe makes this happen, it means that caucus members will keep us informed on developments regarding our issues, and it means that caucus members who respond to our issues will be able to use us as attack dogs more effectively. This seems like a win/win.

Rep. Pat Murphy (PA-8), an early netroots favorite who joined the Blue Dogs after his election, approached me in the convention center lobby and quite enthusiastically told me if there was a netroots caucus, he would "absolutely" join. (This was after I first called him a few rude names over his FISA vote. But we kissed and made up, and he told me to call him any time I had a question. The fact is, he is with us on most of the issues. Not all, but most.)

DOWNLOADS: (788)

PLAYS: (1427)

Embed

I grabbed Darcy Burner for a quick minute to say hi to C&L's readers at the 2009 Netroots Nation shindig. She was recently named to serve on the board of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. It's been an amazing time and just before she did this video, Darcy was named to give the keynote speech Saturday night. Good times.