The Netroots and Lamont

~ Laura

OK, so maybe I’m being a worry wart about the long term impact of the Lieberman loss. Please continue giving your excellent feedback.

I’ve always had my reservations about whether or not dumping Lieberman was a good long term strategy, but this interview of Kos and posts by other bloggers distancing themselves from this race made me even more nervous. The netroots was working very hard to say that they had little to do with the Lamont candidancy. Next stop, I’m over to Kos to see what’s he’s saying today.

This Lamont victory is being spun, rightly or wrongly, as a victory for the netroots. See this excellent article by Noam Scheiber and post by Garance Franke-Ruta.

UPDATE: Kos is a happy, happy blogger today. Wow, this is fun stuff.

UPDATE2: Wow. You’ve got to read the Plank. Start here and flip around. Back to being a worry wart. Democrats v. Democrats, Kos v. the New Republic is bad for business.

Published by Laura

6 thoughts on “The Netroots and Lamont”

  1. I don’t get it. What’s the big deal with The Plank? I don’t think that Atrios’s or Kos’s annoyance with TNR is going to make one whit of a difference to anyone. I think the possibility of getting anyone and everyone excited about politics again after 8 years of a heavy, wet blanket smothering our country is a good thing.

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  2. it’s not that the atrios/kos v. plank fight is important in and of itself. It just shows that there is a rift between the netroots and more traditional Democrats. That is important.

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  3. Given that the New Republic endorsed Lieberman FOR PRESIDENT in 2004, given that TNR editor Martin Peretz was a vocal Lieberman backer this year, given the “blogofascism” comment at TNR.com a few months ago — considering all that, The Plank today is pretty restrained.

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  4. It has been a long time since The New Republic represented the opinions and positions of “traditional Democrats”–I think the opposition between such Democrats and the netroots is a false one. The opposition is really between a Democratic party increasingly swayed by corporate interests on one hand, and Democratic voters on the other. Lamont and Kos and the Democratic voters of CT represent the latter; Lieberman and TNR and the DNC represent the former. This is really a victory of the grassroots, helped along by the netroots.

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  5. As someone who is routinely described as a communist by her husband, I am quite happy to jettison corporate interests. But is that a smart long term goal? I’m just not sure that the grassroots supported by the networks, but lacking the organizational structure of a party and the funds of the interest groups really has a shot at doing anything beyond a primary race in CT. I also think that it’s impossible to win major elections by decreasing your numbers. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m sort of just taking the pulse of the blogosphere today.
    ooh. missed the “blogofascism” comment. got to google. hee-hee.

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  6. The trouble with the conventional wisdom about Joe winning a three-way race this fall is that it IS the conventional wisdom — a nostalgic look in the rear-view mirror. Back to a time when Joe was a VP candidate, his party’s standard-bearer, not the pathetic joke and spoiler wannabe whose rapidly shrinking support is melting further day by day. And there won’t be much left after the comics get through with him. A lot of Stewart shows — or perhaps more important, given his demographics, Leno shows — between now and November.
    After he gets over the shock of defeat, we can hope that Joe sees this is really all about generational change. Some actors are leaving the stage, while others are just starting to play their parts. Joe can accept that and walk off the stage gracefully, or he’ll most likely just end up taking an even bigger pratfall.

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