Reply #56: ruggerson, I am not missing the point. I am disagreeing with kos.

[saltpoint]

I don't especially agree with his take on a lot of things, by the way, so this is just one more in the bucket of things I feel differently about.

In Las Vegas this weekend, kos touted the pragmatic beauty of liberal blogs and lumped "new Democrats" like Tester into a "new" group. I find that to be a baseless claim. Kos is leading a very exciting charge right now of people who want meaningful reform in Democratic Party politics, but they are also doing an end-run around the establishmentarian, day-to-day, here-for-30-years workers who've seen a LOT more election campaigns come and go, and who frankly, know a hell of a lot more about it than kos.

The celebrity he enjoys gives him the platform and medium to rebrand anything he wishes, but I don't have to agree with it.

As for the average American voter, in this day and age, any Democrat who lacks the wherewithal to communicate with his or her constituents, is going to face difficulties at the polls. Barbara Boxer is on the ballot in Bakersfield as well as Berkeley. But those voters aren't necessarily the same kind of voters, nor do they have the same degrees of concern over the issues. In some cases they may violently disagree, and Boxer has to ask for ALL of their votes.

Progressive bloggers sense that they don't have to do that sleeves-rolled-up hard work of appealing to a mass constituency, because they're preaching to kindred spirits in cyberspace. Rebranding the problem isn't going to help if the medium is a liberal blog.

I'm not against what kos has accomplished -- I'm a part of it -- but I don't like the breezy "we're it now" attitude that it sometimes fosters, and I think proceeding apace with that attitude is not likely to gain us much ground.

Speaking strictly for myself, I'm really repelled by the term "Libertarian Democrat." Yuck.