Today, Sir? Why, It's Netroots Day! (Or, Careful What You Wish For Day in Blogistan)

11:00 AM Aug 08, 2006

If the results of today's Connecticut primary vindicate blogland's elevation of the once-quixotic Lamont campaign, it's not entirely impossible that August 8 will become a sort of "Netroots Day" around which meetups at hipster watering holes and comradely exchanges of hyperlinks will be organized in future years, a much more fashionable midsummer observance than the likes of Hiroshima Day.

The day that would-be kingmaker Markos Moulitsas finally answered the riposte, "Show me the king!" No Howard Dean or Paul Hackett close-but-no-cigar ... but finally, the guy who receives the congratulatory phone call instead of making it. At some point, you cease being the promising youngster and either become a star or settle in as a journeyman.

But if neophyte antiware candidate Ned Lamont actually wrests the Democratic nomination away from three-term public scold Joe Lieberman -- and if other favorite sons and daughters of the blogs start winning elections in November -- the netroots will face a challenge that it is by no means certain to overcome.

It's not to be forgotten that the fructification of the liberal blogosphere has occurred during the era of liberals' near-total exclusion from actual governance, and that in the salad days of the Internet under the Clinton administration, the political fever swamp was not on the left but the right -- FreeRepublic.com.

Over the past four years, liberal-Democratic bloggers have enjoyed the perquisites of disenfranchisement: never faced with the inconvenient need to defend a fixed policy position, at liberty to exert every fiber in the electoral game.

This dynamic obscures a marriage of convenience that gives kos muscle today, and promises schism tomorrow: is it partisanship or ideology that thousands of "progressives" congregating in blogrolls desire? Kos glosses over the gap: elect a Democrat today -- any Democrat -- and you get liberal warhorses like Ted Kennedy chairing committees. Since Katrina, they've taken to speaking of "competence". Imperial Technocracy 15% more efficient or your ballot back!

The limitations and contradictions of that tack meet religious avoidance on the brand-name blogs, where Ralph Nader's 2000 election bid is read as some sort of self-immolating dirty trick rather than an expression of deep disaffection with Clintonian neoliberalism.

But it's ever bound to resurface, and has been on painful display in Lebanon, where Israel's butchery meets with whistling past the graveyards among Democrats and bloggers alike.*

That might hold up through November, but it can't hold up indefinitely. If Democrats realize their fantasy of capturing congressional majorities, they'll be instantly confronted with dangerous fissures even within their limited tactical scope. Someone will introduce articles of impeachment: quash them, or pursue them? Dare to use the power of the purse to force the military to quit Iraq, or harangue but vote the subsidies? And, uh, about that Israel? Some of that energy that's now pouring into FEC tabulations will turn to internecine conflict. Some of those asinine policie will suddenly become the netroots' responsibility. So will some of those mutilated children.

So carve the turkey and quaff the flagon, netroots. But you might want to hope for one last round of close-but-no-cigar come November.

*In fairness, the bloggers-not-writing-about-Lebanon phenomenon has itself been volleyed to the point of cliche in certain bloggy quarters, and the likes of Billmon have acquitted themselves nobly in their analysis and outrage.

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