With the ascension of Barack Obama to the Democratic Party nomination, the Netroots find themselves in a quandary. Breakup with Obama stumps Netroots

It’s hard out there for a member of Netroots Nation. Crashing onto the national political scene not long after George W. Bush’s first inauguration, the Netroots — the angry left-wing Internet warriors who, from their keyboards, do daily battle with Republican warmongers and their Democratic enablers — have been the subject of endless study by the mainstream media, the very establishment force whose authority the Netroots collectively seek to undermine.

Press fascination with the Netroots has been matched by obsequiousness on the part of leading Democrats fearful of blogger wrath. At the 2006 YearlyKos convention — named after the website Daily Kos, whose founder, Markos Moulitsas, is the most prominent and intemperate member of the Netroots clan — former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner treated attendees to a $50,000 party, and a host of Democratic leaders made appearances.


But with the ascension of Barack Obama to the Democratic Party nomination, the Netroots find themselves in a quandary. They had originally supported John Edwards, who went from being a nice-guy moderate in his 2004 presidential campaign to a pandering populist the second time around. After Edwards dropped out, Obama — who ran to the left of Hillary Rodham Clinton on Iraq and whose promise to replace the Clintons’ “old” way of doing things with his “new” politics — soon became the Netroots favorite. Yet over the past month, Obama has dealt the Netroots a series of devastating blows by disavowing liberal pieties on a host of issues.

The breakup of the Netroots and Obama began with his decision last month to support a bill granting immunity to phone companies that provided records to the federal government in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This is an issue about which the vast majority of the American people couldn’t care less, but it’s of monumental importance to the Netroots, who see it as confirmation of their deepest and darkest fears that Vice President Cheney is out to get them. Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald exemplified the Netroots’ rage when he bemoaned “Obama’s willingness to embrace [this] rancid framework.”

Days later, to add insult to injury, Obama shifted his position on the signature cause of the Netroots — indeed, nothing less than its raison d’être: America’s presence in Iraq. After he visits the country this summer, Obama said two weeks ago, he plans to “refine” his position. In other words, Obama will listen to his generals and drop the original campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades within a period of 16 months. Richard Danzig, a senior Obama adviser on national security issues, went so far as to speculate that a President Obama might seek to retain Robert Gates as secretary of defense.

The pain didn’t stop there. Add Obama’s support for the Supreme Court’s gun rights decision, his opposition to its outlawing the death penalty for child rapists, his touting an Illinois welfare reform law, and his newfound love for the North American Free Trade Agreement, and you can understand why the activist, angry left of the Democratic Party is having such conniptions. As delightful as these moves have been for those of us who appreciate our leaders governing (and campaigning) from the center, a question lingers: Why, for so long, did so many Democrats even bother listening to these people?

Obama’s run to the center is hardly the first thing that’s broken the Netroots’ collective heart. From the Netroots’ inception, they have been constantly disappointed. Remember their first candidate — the man to whom they forever gave their hearts — Howard Dean? Wesley Clark, who entered the race thanks to a Netroots-driven “Draft Clark” movement, didn’t last particularly long. And since seizing Congress in 2006, the Democrats — supposedly emboldened by the power of the Netroots Nation — have repeatedly failed to subvert President Bush’s war policy.

To their credit, the Netroots have scored two, albeit minor, political victories. The first was forcing incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to step down from his leadership post after he praised the 1948 presidential campaign of segregationist Strom Thurmond. Mainstream media coverage — which at first downplayed the story — was later driven by liberal bloggers. For hastening the end of this man’s political career, the Netroots can be deservedly proud.

The only other discernable accomplishment of the Netroots was to get Dean elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Yet this supposed triumph has proven to be small beer, seeing that party bigwigs have kept him on an incredibly tight leash. His near-invisibility over the past three years is yet further evidence of the illusory “power” of the Netroots. Clinton understood the exaggerated influence of liberal bloggers when she said at a closed-door fundraiser in April, “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party.”

Netroots vitriol against Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) is the most visible example of their irrationality. Lieberman, who has an impeccably liberal voting record, barring his stance on the Iraq war, is a prime target of the Netroots, which brooks no deviation from leftist orthodoxy. The latest Netroots crusade is the website Liebermanmustgo.com, which hosts a petition calling upon Democratic Senate leaders to revoke Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. And at the annual convention of the Democratic Leadership Council last month, Daily Kos’ Moulitsas referred to “that a--hole Joe Lieberman” during a panel discussion.

That the ostensibly pragmatic, centrist voice of the Democratic Party would give a platform to Moulitsas, who has called the DLC a “divisive, fundamentalist organization willing to sell any and all progressive ideals to the altar of Big Business,” was likely attributable to the DLC’s desire to appease what it believes to be an irreversibly rising force in Democratic politics. Yet its fear is misplaced. For if there had been any doubt before, Obama has confirmed that, in cyberspace, no one can hear you scream.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic.