[Jon] Chait claims the blogosphere is paranoid and sectarian and he worries what it will do to liberalism. I'm frankly worried about the paranoia and sectarianism at The New Republic, a magazine I've been reading for 30 years. This notion that Kos is some sort of commander of the blogofascist empire is ridiculous. Kos is a successful, respected blogger, but believe me, I don't take orders from anybody and I don't know any other bloggers who do. The blogosphere is a kind of organism. To the extent there's a hierarchy, it's not manufactured, it's organic, and there is no recognized leadership --- there's readership. This idea of a Stalinist comintern is a misunderstanding of epic proportions. The blogosphere has the most open distribution of power of any human endeavor I've ever participated in. If a certain amount of groupthink occurs, it's certainly no more than what you see at the DLC --- or The New Republic.

People in Washington need to wrap their minds around the fact that this stuff really is bubbling up from below and it's real. Bloggers are merely in the vanguard of a rising leftwing populist sentiment around the country. It is a predictable reaction when a party ceases to be responsive to its voters. Liberalism has been moribund for some time now. This is a chance to at least begin the process of resuscitation and could be used by the political establishment as a useful counter-weight to help drag the country back from the brink of rightwing extremism.(If that's what they want, that is.) Smart politicians will accept this and find a way to use its strength strategically, not fight it.

[...]

I would just again point out that the characterization of the "Kos Townhouse" orbit as being a group of "unbelievably crude, overheated and totally unsavvy ... activist-loudmouths" is only partially correct. (I proudly wear the labels, others may not.) But to the extent you believe it's true, keep in mind that it reflects the frustration of millions of politically active progressive citizens who have been scapegoated and derided for decades by the political insiders who now find themselves on the other end of the attack. These people are the base of the Democratic Party. If people think the party can prevail in this modern hyper-partisan era by continuing to insult its most active and ardent supporters, then have at it. But no one should be surprised then when those supporters decide to take matters into their own hands. Democracy is untidy that way.

That the Right-Wing Establishment disdains and derides us was to be expected, but it rather hurts to have people who are supposedly on our side both misunderstand what's going on and at the same time disparage it. Still, it makes some sense. Not only is the rise of influential bloggers a threat to the status of the liberal old media pundits, but I suspect that many of them are on the verge of truly understanding that in the new political era brought on by Republican hegemony, there isn't going to be any sharing of power, no bipartisanship, no working across the aisle, no reasonable pathway to re-establishing a Democratic power base in Washington -- and that New Political Order scares them, as well it should.

Our frustration is that with a few notable exceptions (Krugman, Rich) it has taken them so long to see what we've understand for years now, since the stolen election of 2000.