I went over and read it.  Not so much a "hoot" as just sad.   The implicit idea that the public, in general, or the netroots, in particular, are a uniform constituency wherein resides all wisdom is, ah...naive, which is pretty much how Stoller always struck me.    

And, for that matter, sometimes political guts, and political leadership, involves doing something that the public thinks is wrong at the time, rising above the ephemeral twists and currents of popular sentiment.

My senior thesis was "Cross-Pressures on Congressional Decision Making" and while it's been a day or two since it was written and the data cited is now obsolete and the writing itself would make me wince if I were confronted with it, the conclusions are just as true now as they were then.  Stripped of academicese:  it ain't as easy as it looks.

It's actually Bowers who promoted the post.

I did, and he's right as far as it goes. There's a definite disconnect between the type of activists in the blogosphere and what actually gets communicated through to legislators via staff. But the comments are also enlightening particularly that we have no power. No one fears out wrath and Obama certainly doesn't want anything to do with us--he bypassed us completely during the election.  

I don't see how you can disagree with statements like:
" Our politicians, who believe that the press is basically an honest mediator, and that expertise is honestly held within elite universities, do not consider the base particularly important.  And on the more difficult issues, the public is rarely considered a possible source of political support. "
OR
"Liberals have been correct about the war in Iraq, the financial meltdown, the Bankruptcy Bill, the deficit, the Patriot Act, and, well, pretty much everything.  What they haven't been is powerful enough to prevent the mistakes the country has made."
OR
"We need to be promoting and helping our leaders make the right decisions, pick the right policies, and surround themselves with individuals who will frame policy choices in real human terms, without the weak bromides that mask the cruel impact of bad policy decisions."

However statements like shifting leadership during the Lieberman primary are flat out lies. They exposed the Netroots as a paper tiger and Stoller's attempt to repaint history otherwise is nothing but a self-serving deception.

Hopefully he'll actually be able to see Congressional reality now and hopefully get a taste of how it looks from the other side. But for now this remains the most hilariously funny and accurate thing on Stoller I've ever seen:

"Barack Obama and his independent-of-the-netroots-campaign may have left Matt in the dust and sunk him into a deep funk but now?  Now's a new day!  He hasn't been this excited in months.  He's going to seize this economic crisis and not let go until he's seen for the leader he was meant to be and earned the respect that is rightfully his."