The Netroots' Shallow Roots

Praising Joe Lieberman's opposition to the bankruptcy bill when Joe Lieberman is only pretending to oppose the bankruptcy bill is just about the height of absurdity, but I'll assume it's an honest mistake. Certainly the Lieberman press release was a good one, and well-worth quoting. It's just the voting record that's problematic. Ed Kilgore, meanwhile, more insightfully reminds us that the only thing real people care about nowadays is the Jacko trial. My colleague Sam Rosenfeld says he hasn't been following this closely, but he's been following it at least a bit more closely than I have, and persuasively argued to me the other night that Jackson is innocent. I also meant to link to the Monday Kilgore on how the vast majority of people don't read blogs, and also add that many of those who do probably don't read much in the way of political blogs. This thing of ours is a good way of trying to influence elite opinion and maybe alter the media climate, but it's an enormous mistake to confuse it with anything like a viable basis for a mass political movement. Now, one assumes that the internet will only grow in ubiquity in the future, that today's old people will be tomorrow's dead people, and that hopefully the country will continue to become better educated and so at some point that may no longer be the case. But one must live in the now, at least for now.