CMoore.com

Peter Daou has a great post up about the broken triangle of progressive politics in America today.

Last September, I published an essay laying out what I saw as the scope of blog influence, with ‘influence’ defined as the capacity to alter or create conventional wisdom. I used a triangle construct to set out the relationship between the netroots, the media, and the political establishment: “Looking at the political landscape, one proposition seems unambiguous: blog power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment. Forming a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment is an essential step … Simply put, without the participation of the media and the political establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom.”

I concluded that “if the netroots alone can’t change the political landscape without the participation of the media and Democratic establishment, then there’s no point wasting precious online space blasting away at Republicans while the other sides of the triangle stand idly by.”

And you know what? The other two sides of the triangle are standing idly by. But for a quiescent media and a historically inept Democratic leadership, we might actually be making progress towards becoming the country we all thought we were.

Long slogs are hard, wearying, and depressing. It’d be nice if the other members of our chain gang would start pulling their weight for a bit.