Well said, Chris.

This Netroots activist will soon be a grandparent and shortly thereafter turn 62 and has been active in Democrats Abroad since 1996. As International Vice Chair of Democrats Abroad (2002-2004), I had the opportunity to participate in DNC and ASDC meetings and became altogether too familiar with the loser ways of beltway insiders more concerned with their consulting practices and being seen as buddies by powers in the party to put off the blinders of conventional wisdom.

That said, next step for the netroots is figuring out how better to support and interact with the state and local party ground game.  We have come a ways since BestoftheBlogs' Jerry Bowles pointed out (back in 2004) that what the Dean campaign demonstrated is that the blogosphere was, at most, 13% of the electorate. But we stll have a way to go.

On a personal note I will say that the most satisfying political gesture of the year for me was the couple of hundred bucks I pitched in to help the folks from Raising Kaine buy yard signs to put up in Southwestern Virginia. Tim Kaine's victory was very sweet, indeed.

There are two major errors here that void this entire post

1. The statement and restatement that "they hold all the cards" - this is a common myth. They don't.

2. George Lakoff's view of nurture vs. discipline: this is nowhere near correct. Lakoff's view regarding conservatives vs. liberal is much more simple - a liberal can be counted on to give their all in a fight - a conservative is a bully, someone who picks fights and can't finish them - a weak, cowardly creature who continually gets into things that he or she can't finish and is only interested in the shallow, visceral face of the problem but can't go deep.

A personal point: raising children is an art form - not a science. Politics, on the other hand, is the maximum utilization of available resources. Its the way massive numbers of interests can combine, and the vocal, and frankly stupid - special interests get reigned in for the good of everyone - its the magna carta, the constitution, the battle of good vs. evil.

There are children living at home with their mother and father, children who still don't have jobs. Yesterday was a great example - to see the flood of immigrants just stop, and America continue on as normal. The gaps would have been filled by teenagers in a normal world. Their work would have been done by 17 year olds.

Instead, it simply wasn't done. A massive protest organized completely without union management - millions wide.  The work simply stopped.

So, what would the government do? Be stern, and punish them for illegally entering the country - or be nurturing, and grant them citizenship.

Well, first thing: raising a kid, the question becomes much more difficult and much easier to solve if you go back to the fact that people have been successfully raising children for over 20,000 years.

But modern politics, complicated by media strategy, special interests, lobbies, corruption, greed, international pressure - now thats a different row to hoe. So back to the question - what do you do?

The answer is, you compromise: you give them a chance to qualify, as citizens - but you make them go back if they entered in less than two years. Give the people who are established the chance to make it, but clip the wings of the guys who come over to take the job, send the money away - and disappear.

So, the work stops. They get replaced. America goes on. Like a teenager throwing a tantrum, the best thing a parent can do is just smile - because you're holding more than the teenager thinks you've got, two aces in your sleeve - and they know it. You give them no traction. You let them complain, you say "yes, I would too."

And in the end, the love you give. Is equal to . the love. You take.

I know what you meant...

reminds me of that joke:  dyslexics of the world, untie!

I'd ignore all the snarky asides like "huffing and puffing." (although, remember -- huffing and puffing worked!  Also, Mike posted this outburst on the HUFFINGton Post -- Freudian slip?)  That's the sort of thing people say when you've caught them with their hand in the cookie jar.

The troublesome thing is the sneer that accompanies "young."  (For the record, I'm 50 myself.)  Aren't career Dems supposed to be courting the young?  McCurry seems to want to do more than stuff the Web genie back into the bottle.  He wants to turn the clock back to a time when the young were not seen, not heard, certainly not heeded -- all they were supposed to do was do gopher work and knock on doors for campaigns, run by the grownups.

Is that any way for a Democrat to talk?

When McCurry works for a President who actually wins more than 50% of the popular vote then he can give tips on how to win an election with more than 50% of the vote.  To my knowledge he hasn't done that yet.

McCurry isn't referring to everyone in the net activist community - only those who oppose him. I'm guessing he wants us to believe that the 40 year old informed and civil net users are all on his side.  

So Welcome to my world!  All the nonsense and twisted logic that McCurry throws at "net neuts" is what gets thrown at anyone who oppposes (really opposes as in "won't vote for") people like Bob Casey.  Human beings only have about half a dozen ways to argue anyway - including throwing stuff.  The disingenuous and bullying tactics of McCurry and the Party over Principle Dems (coincidently straight out of the DLC and the Clinton White House) are identical.  Next up in McCurry's arsenol: "Pragmatism."  

Certainly, the internet is a relatively new technology (though much older than, say, I-Pods or hybrid cars),

I'll Give you the I-pod, but lets not forget the 1917 Woods: http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/18/Autos/al ternative_fuel_history/index.htm

-Proud to be part of that 3or 4%

I mean, hell, you usually can keep it to a low roar.  Very few explicit death threats -- none, some days!

Let's face it: these guys wouldn't be shooting at the blogs if they didn't think you were a target.

[Just a very minor point, but...

The Rethugs are the "aristocrats"? (boggles briefly)  On one side of my family they were farmers, on the other side, a long line of some kind of minor aristocracy stretching back to the Crusades.  I'm somewhat familiar with aristocrats in their selfish, inbred, and idealistic versions.  The Rethugs are not any kind of aristocrats.  They're just thugs.  Successful thugs are where aristocrats originate, but they're not the same thing any more than conquering a country is the same as governing it.]

...a teenager (though without the Angst). I wish I were even the average in that Blogads survey.

The netroots are rabid. See "frothing," "malicious," and "huffing and puffing" in the above articles. There will never be any way for the netroots to entirely combat this charge. Whenever you draw three million people together, it is doubtful that you can get them all to stay on message and look like reasonable people. Within any large group, it will always be easy to be offended by, and to remember, the most vocally anti-social elements of that large group. Those elements exist within any large group, and it is all too simple a form of character assassination to characterize an entire group as exhibiting the traits of a small minority within that group. It is also easy for a large group of people who feel they are on the outside looking in to get a little aggressive at times. Finally, it is really easy for a small group of people in power to view the hordes massing at their doorstep (and the servants in their house) as rabid and overly aggressive. It is important to remember that characterizing the entire three million strong progressive netroots community as all containing identical that characterizing the entire three million strong progressive netroots community as all containing identical personality traits is at best crude generalization, and at worst grotesque, chauvinistic stereotype.

Quite right, Chris.

Moreover, "frothing," "malicious" and "huffing and puffing" are foolish spins on the quite large number of us in the netroots who are irked that so many of the "adults" in the higher reaches of the Democratic Party have enabled through cowardice (and, sadly, cooperation) the Bush Administration in its efforts to dismantle the FDR legacy, 60 years of internationalism and the Constitution.

That anger, which each of us displays in her or his own way is not something to be ashamed of. On the contrary. those who aren't angry at the Administration and who continue to let it trample what we hold dear as Americans are the ones who should be ashamed. If such sentiments make me a frother, so be it.

This is eerily similar to the narratives that regular Republicans had of conservatives in the 1960s. Better for them, the Howard Dean of that time -- Barry Goldwater -- had been hammered in 1964.

Thus the winners of 1966 were, on the whole, moderate Republicans -- Chuck Percy, Edward Brooke, George Romney. The activist message was ignored.

Had Howard Dean won the 2004 nomination, and not been able to become DNC chair, we might be in similar straits today.

We're not. We have a great opportunity here because our main objection to the establishment involves strategies, not principles.

Our path to power, in other words, is shorter.

But when you listen to the McCurrys et. at., just remember the names, so that when the time comes they can be left where they are. Outside.

The netroots are not "teenagers" in any literal sense, but we are "teenagers" in a symbolic one, and that is that we are the Heirs of the Party. We are the ones who will be here when the Consultants are gone, and this is what they simply cannot forgive.

Damn Chris -- I'm so glad you are out there, applying Marx as he ought to be applied to contemporary reality.

Yes, that is a complement.

Who knows more about building a house?  Professional architects and carpenters, or someone who reads the real estate section of the paper every day?  Who would you prefer to perform neurosurgery on you? A professional neurosurgeon who has spent the last 20 years of his life studying and practicing this one thing, or someone who just spent months researching brain cancer because their father was diagnosed recently?  

While enthusiasts are almost always more devoted and better informed, specialists with experience are almost always more qualified to make decisions about what should actually be done.  

That's not to say that the netroots aren't an important, dynamic part of politics in America.  Politics is different from carpentry - as citizens, everyone has a right and a duty to hold their elected leaders accountable.  I like to think of the netroots as democracy's housing inspector.  Sure, they don't know the best way to build a house, or where to buy the supplies for the house, or who to hire to get the job done right.  But they can certainly see when the foundation is rotting, and raise an alarm about it until something is done to fix it.  

I think the Netroots are arrogant. To imagine you can change a crooked system is arrogant. Is it wrong? It is necessary if you wish to dream of the impossible. And before you can do something others think impossible, you must dream large.

Hey, don't rag on the teenagers. It's not bad to be a teenager, nor are teenagers ineffective in the way they mean. Idealism and big dreams are important too.

Unfortunately, I could be described as young (late 20's - early 30's), but hardly inexperienced, just nothing at the majors (to use a bad baseball metaphor), or in other words, nothing at the national or state level.  That said, I had two thoughts.

First, Mike McCurry and Joe Klein aren't exactly the gurus of political thought.  The fact is that the DC group of Dems haven't won anything in over 20 years.  Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 were the result of newcomers/outsiders -- Carville, et al. Klein has never run a campaign, and McCurry was either on a losing campaign, or too low on the totem pole to really make a difference.  In other words, McCurry isn't an adult, Carville (along with guys like Bob Muholland) are the adults.  

Second, the technology, and the impact of this technology is less than 10 years old.  Everyone is an amateur in the internet.  Ten years ago, we all laughed at Bob Dole for mentioning his website during the debates.  No one knew that you could raise money with a website until Dean did it 3 years ago.  Does the netroots participation lead to votes?  I don't know, but only an idiot would write off the technology.

The "adults" who "understand how things are done in Washington" have given us:

 -- an all-time record fiscal deficit
  -- an all-time record trade deficit
  -- a destructive, divisive war based on false pretenses that has cost 2,400 Americans their lives
  -- two radical wingnut judges on the Supreme Court
  -- two massive, sweeping losses in extremely winnable elections
  -- the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment
  -- a disastrous Medicare bill
  -- record oil prices
  -- a complete disregard for the rule of law
  -- massive corruption
  -- the gutting of the greatest middle class in history through unchecked outsourcing
  -- the compromising of our national security through politically-motivated leaks and a resource-sapping bogus war
  -- the ruination of our international reputation as a positive moral force in the world

 That's what the "adult approach" of the "Dems playing nice" has gotten us.

 America can't afford any more "adults". I think it's time for the teenagers to take the stage.
 

The problem with Klein and McCurry is they understand how damaging the netroots are for the professionals but they have no idea what to do about  them.

If you are trying to run brokerage politics you can't have a bunch of crazy kids who don't understand the limits of the possible operating in parallel. 'Cause if you do then you have no choice but to pay attention. Worse, they have way more time than you do so they will follow up on what you say.

For machine guys like Kerry having people pay attention to what he is saying is literally the kiss of death. How can a guy be expected to run for President with both the GOP and the activist Dems noticing when he contradicts himself.

The problem is just as acute on the right where movement conservatives get rather pissed at trimmers who say different things to different audiences.

Of course, the solution is for politicians to say what they mean and ignore polls which suggest that this might be a losing strategy.

At the moment, in the US, if you count the various folks who are precluded from voting, a relatively small fraction of the population participates in elections and an even small one actually cast winning votes. The huge threat the netroots pose for pros is that they will expand the actual electorate. And with that expansion will come increasingly less predicatable races. And a rather simplistic demand that politicians not lie to the people they purport to represent.

Teenagers want people to actually mean what they say....sometimes they grow out of it, sometimes they don't.