Assessing The Netroots, Warts and All

Henry Farrell writes a fabulous review of two of the latest books on the Netroots: Bloggers on the Bus
by Eric Boehlert and Netroots
by Matthew R. Kerbel. These books would be an excellent companion to a book, Netroots Rising, which I reviewed for Political Communication earlier this year.

Farrell asks why aren't the Netroots more excited about the Obama presidency. The reason is that they weren't invited to the party. 

As Eric Boehlert observes in the last (and best) chapter of his new book, Bloggers on the Bus,
the Obama campaign had little direct contact with netroots bloggers.
Although Obama's advisers were very interested indeed in learning from
the netroots, they had no interest in working with bloggers who might
disrupt their control over messaging and money. Instead, they built
their own blogging and online fundraising structures from scratch,
combining a traditional campaign organization with new network
capacities in what Matthew Kerbel describes in his book Netroots as a "hybrid" structure.

Yes, Feld and Wilcox briefly complain about Obama about that in their book, too. There is a great deal of bitterness about being the jilted prom date.

These three books fail to adequately deal with the rotten track record that the Netroots has in getting people elected. Kerbel is the most realistic and finds that when the Netroots works with traditional party apparatus, it is most successful. Farrell doesn't even seem to buy that. He does think that the Netroots is more influential than it used to be, because of it's supporters on cable, like Rachel Maddow.

If the only outcome is voting results, then there is no doubt that the Netroots have not delivered. I doubt they have seriously had impact on the national debate. They haven't pushed the Democrats further to the left. But maybe there are other outcomes that should be considered.

The Netroots has helped draft in a whole new contingent of political activists. Those individuals will work on more successful campaigns in the future. They will write articles for popular political journals. With their long history, they are well connected with each other. Their Netroots years were a significant training ground and now they're ready for the prime time.