Pelosi, at least, I don't blame.  I genuinely think she is doing whatever she thinks she can to bring the war to an end.  There are institutional constraints.

Let's not get impatient, either.  Dems have held the Congress for about a month and a half.  IT shouldn't be that surprising that our troops are still there.  I'm willing to give them a little more time to find their footing.

on Sunday's Press the Meat. If I heard him correctly, and I'm pretty sure I did, he said that cutting off funding for the war--the Murtha and Feingold approach--was immoral. (Feingold, that immoral bastard.) Levin advanced the GOP line that trying to stop the war by defunding it would hurt the soldiers.

Congress, especially the Senate, is incapable of leading; they're always following public opinion by several months. It would be hard--if not impossible--at this point for Congress to go too far in trying to stop the war. Politically, I mean.

The cowardly bastards should get out of the way and let Feingold and Murtha lead. I know, I know, I'm dreaming.

In any case, isn't something seriously screwed up with Carl Levin is calling Feingold's approach immoral?

C'mon!  The Senate failed us on numerous occassions in 2005-2006, and there was generally only a transitory display of anger.  And those who lead the way were regarded as somewhat--how shall we say?--unsophisticated?

By all means, we should take this very seriously.  Not because it's a first.  But because it's partially a result of our not having been vigilant enough in the past.

   But I only disapproved of Reid.  I don't think he has the stomach for this.  I'd like to believe that Durbin does, but he has not been successful either.  I'm willing to give the Democrats in the Senate a little more time, but they do not evoke a lot of confidence in me.  I am disappointed by the new Senate Democrats - they should be taking more initiative.

Dean is hurting us in Nevada, Pelosi is not able to manage the mandate on Iraq, and Reid is a disaster in the Senate.

I'm 61 years old and have permanently lost all faith in the Democratic Party. What's happened since November proves the folly of voting. Not even as a majority party can the so-called opposition reflect the will of the American people.

Not one more cent.
Not one more vote.

I don't give a frigging damn who gets the nomination for President, either. This war belongs to the Democrats now, and may they all burn in hell.

I'd much rather see democrats control all three branches of government then have the Iraq war end after some kind of "constitutional" meltdown. It's good that the public supports the Murtha plan, but come on. Weren't we all complaining about people running the house like Tom Delay, or the "Nuclear option" in the senate? Reid can only do so much in the senate, with the republican ability to filibuster.

I say lighten up.

Short answer: hell yes.  Thanks for noticing.

That is, if by "netroots" you mean Kos, Atrios and other A-list bloggers.

On the other hand a lot of C-listers like myself and Down With Tyranny, and others have been screaming about this since the election.

All that matters to me, and to a majority of American voters as evidenced by the polls, is ending the immoral, counter-productive US occupation of Iraq and bringing the troops home ASAP.  Period.

Dems were voted in with a mandate to end the war, they are the majority now, so let's git er done.

I explain the reluctance of A-list lefty bloggers to criticize the Dem politicians' lack of results this way:

- Some might actually be caught up in the wonkety-wonk minutia of congressional process.  The Kabuki is meant to be convincing: the Dems really, really want to do the right thing but, alas, it's too darn complicated.  Or so it goes.  

- Some bloggers may feel that the last election proved they are very influential.  With great power comes great responsibility.  They feel that the #1 priority is to win the next election and any criticism of the Dem leadership will work against that goal.  Shit sandwich politics and all that.  

The problem with all this, the risk that the beltway Dems are taking, is that most voters -- who are not following the wonkety wonk -- will not buy the argument that the Democrats  were tactically unable to do anything substantial about Iraq.

The same voters who were pissed about the war will be doubly pissed at the Dems and elect fucking Rudy Giuliani or some other GOP fascist freakshow.  

A-list bloggers are at a crossroads too.  Is the blogosphere a bottom-up means of self expression and of pushing the politicians to do what the people want, or, like Matt says, just another interest group whose job is to support the Party and deliver votes, even if the Party goes against what their constituency wants.  

you know what i'd like to see? less focus on the kabuki of daily government and insider beltway baseball, and more focus on the money.

i was just reading that since 2003, FDA food safety testing dropped 75%. what does this have to do with the war? everything, because everything is being cut back to pay for it. one hell of a lot of money is flowing to a very shady group of players. how much of that is coming back and being applied behind the scenes, keeping some dem leaders quiet or worse yet, supportive of the war, or making it very difficult for others to "do the right thing?" if i had a billion dollars a month to play with, i'd be able to buy a lot of politicians and not even significantly reduce the size of the pot i get to keep.

i believe a lot of dems are stuck in the Good Old Days, and believe that now that they are in power, they can go back to playing by the rules and believing the republicans are just like them and will do the same. i also believe that so much of what we get to read about is little more than window dressing, and that as a political force, we need to focus on the subjects that will get their attention and effort.

as shy says, most americans aren't following the kabuki. but they would follow united democratic effort to demonstrate how they are being screwed out things like food safety and democratic government by a bunch of cronies who make money killing people with money stolen from american babies' mouths.

there's only one reason any democrat would resist answering questions about where the money is going. seeing as how they're now in charge, that reason cannot be "because i don't know."

I am disappointed in the seeming reluctance of Democratic leaders in Congress to take decisive action to end the war, but I am not at all surprised.  I think we (the netroots) have figured out how to have an impact around election time--use blogs and other web-based entities to raise money, recruit volunteers, promote stories missed by the MSM, etc.  But I think we're still finding our way in terms of learning how to have an impact on how the Democratic majority governs, which is understandable given that this is new territory for us.

One idea--we should use the netroots/blogosphere to raise money and build support for a campaign to put an organizer in every Congressional District and have the organizers work to build local pressure on the Representative to get us out of Iraq.  That would be awesome and have a big impact.  Now, we probably couldn't raise enough $ and find enough organizers to put somebody in every Congressional District, but even 30-50 key districts would make a big difference.

Follow the money. Follow the money. Follow the money.

Three times I tell you this, because forget often you do.

It's like Krugman sez. We're dealing with right wing corporatist revolutionaries in power, and our leaders are still fighting the last war.

What's going on in Washington now is nothing more than a power struggle to lead the Company. Does Neo Liberalism work better than Neo Conservatism? Is an Empire that calls itself an Empire more profitable than a trade alliance?

The Democrats better stop playing footsie with the Sith Lords' bankrolls while the majority of Americans still remember concepts like "Republic" and "Democracy" and "The Constitution".

Or become forgotten in the dustbin of history they will be.

Excuse me? If not pandering to the let's-just-shoot-more-A-rabs crowd is hurting us in NV, then TFB. One thing the 50-state solution has uncovered is - surprise! - there are plenty of folks even(!) in NV who get it. The Wild West ain't no more, at least outside of a shrinking handful of yahoos that thankfully are starting to get drowned out.

Hurting us in Nevada? Try bringing Nevada - with key help from Nevadans - into the post-Bush mindset.

Given the Democrats' margin in the House, it might make sense to go after some Blue Dogs -- get rid of them by running a third party candidate coming at them from the left.  Doing so in a couple of districts wouldn't run the risk of getting Republican committee chairs.  

Getting a Blue Dog or two out of office this way will, at least, get rid of a Democrat mouthing Republican talking points.  Make the Republicans mouth their own talking points.  And it will make it clear to Blue Dogs, even in conservative districts, that they thumb their noses at us at their peril.

Here in CA-1 we did this back in 1988, getting rid of corrupto Democrat Doug Bosco.  The Peace and Freedom Party candidate took 15% of the vote.  The Republican, Frank Riggs was in office one term, then we elected a much more liberal Democrat, Dan Hamburg, in 1992.

And if we are not careful, we will become just another calculating interest group to be placated with occasional red meat rhetoric, beholden to the soulless rhythms of the DC media machine as we delude ourselves into believing we are principled and somehow different from all the outsiders-turned-insiders who have come before us.

Strong words, man. Don't let DC get to you too badly.

IMHO this isn't something terribly new. The shift towards following establishment politics and the 24-hour cable news cycle was already underway in 2004. I have more or less given up on blogs as an insurgent force in politics, although I still appreciate them as a filter for opinion, a source of context for news, and (hopefully) a driver of accountability among the traditional press.

Tactically we've been able to bring some things to the table, but in terms of what government is really for... well, those questions were always swept under the rug because we didn't have any influence over the government. Now we've discovered that "we" won, and yet we still have very little influence. Kind of a bummer.

Your central point about "being ahead of the public" is highly resonant though. The way forward is to lead. Our elected representatives (and the candidates for president) are all severely anemic in this capacity. It seems to me that the most powerful thing the netroots can do is continue to galvanize public opinion, distribute progressive information, and organize citizens to take action on the issues.

If we lead, and we're able to remain ahead of the public rather than going off-track, electeds will follow. Not all of them, but hopefully enough.

I think the clear lesson here is that we do not rest until we've totally reformed the Democratic Party. The 2006 election victories were a step in the right direction, but too many in the netroots seem to have gotten the impression that was also a victory for our efforts to reform the party. It really wasn't. It was something that in certain ways helped our cause, but we make a huge mistake to let up the pressure on the system to undertake the reforms that are badly needed.

Too many in the netroots have gotten too close to the Democratic establishment in the wrong ways. We need to remember our role - as revolutionaries of a sort, not as new consultants.

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