Based on recent developments, the Progressive Blogasphere Defense Department has changed the PBAS (Progressive Blogasphere Advisory System) from PROTEIN BAR, as it was on the day Senator John McCain was leading in the Rassmussen daily tracking poll, back down to the less critical ARUGULA.

Many of you remember my original Daily Kos Bingo diary from March. Well, get out those orange daubers, because the primaries are over and the new card is here!

"Political efficacy," defined roughly, is the feeling that a person can effect the system.  That their voice matters in the large scheme of things.  Political efficacy matters because if people don't feel that they have much, they become increasingly unlikely to participate, vote, attend meetings, volunteer, and so on.  This is what I think DailyKos is about.

DailyKos is important to Democratic political efficacy because it is a channel by which an otherwise untapped and once-disaffected LARGE group of citizens can gather to share information about races and effect those races.  If the reader follows the larger narrative of this website, it started with Kos blogging and slowly coalescing a group of people who care about progressive politics.  

More...

Yesterday a snarky Vice President Dick praised Obama here for supporting Dick's agenda on these issues:

   * endorse and continue our Global War On Terror
   * vow to expand the US military and our Middle East presence
   * firmly oppose doctors' and patients' calls for single payer health care
   * point out that anti-war liberals like to spit on veterans
   * praise and quote Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter
   * oppose Freedom to Marry and cast it as a state's rights issue
   * reject impeachment and war crimes prosecution
   * endorse warrantless domestic surveillance
   * keep all the executive power I've amassed for the US President

In a blizzard of over 5 dozen comments, only one (praise Elise) aimed to make an Obama policy sound reasonable.  The rest resembled panicky responses to a taboo violation - and wound up making Obama's policies sound indefensible.  Why isn't that beneath us?

This is a blanket response to all of those diaries that begin with "Obama will lose unless..." or "Obama has to stop doing what he's doing and start...".

It's a blanket response to every armchair, Monday Morning Quarterback who feels their vast political experience of writing on blogs gives them some insight that escapes the notice of a successful national politician.

And it's a blanket response to everyone who is in full on Hand Wringing Mode, worried that unless their wisdom is heeded, we'll have 8 years of McBush to continue fucking up the country:

Shocked aren't you!?  Yes, I'm saying something dramatic, controversial, and perhaps even dangerous.  You should be stunned that this diary would even appear here at DailyKos.  Outraged even!  Follow me after the jump and find out more about my shocking statements!

Okay, so the answer is, of course, no but there does seem to be a level of psychological trauma that we are working through as a party. It manifests itself in different ways but it does seem to be a real phenomenon. In Congress we see a number of Dems that will not force the issue whether it is funding for the war in Iraq, contempt or FISA. They all have some version of "If we vote the way the public wants (based on polls) we will be voted out of office" as their excuse. The fact that polling does contradict this assertion does not seem to make an impact. They are acting on fear and a feeling of helplessness that has been pounded into them, and they can not see the truth, they still are dealing with the fear.

Hey folks, yesterday we did something awesome.

You remember that FABULOUS video of Barack's interview in Las Vegas, where he PWNED the living hell out of the Hannity/Tweety wannabe who was interviewing him? The video in my diary that was rec listed for a big chunk of the day yesterday?

Well, thanks to all of you, we got that video onto the front page of Digg.com -- where it still sits at this moment.

As of this writing, it has over 2500 Diggs and over 600 comments. Although there is the usual crop of inconceivably ignorant and racist comments, there are others written by people who felt they had really learned something about Obama by viewing the video, were feeling more comfortable about voting for him, were seeing that he isn't really a flip-flopper, etc.

That's great news, but it isn't the point of this diary. PLEASE, follow me below the fold. This is important.

Your regularly scheduled forum for asking questions about how this place functions (or, at times, doesn't function), and get them answered. I'd say "no question too stupid", but I've put in enough time as a TA that I know that indeed there is such a thing as a too-stupid question.

No seriously, that's my site ID and I don't think I've ever really discussed anything that makes me feel I'm worthy of such a low site ID number.

It's true, I've been here since the really early days.  I can remember the "Mercenary" comment and stayed (okay, I also agreed), despite the call for Kos' head.  I remember the pie fight, and personally thought it was ridiculous.  And, OH the primary diaries that had all of us at each others throats.  

Oddly enough I remember meeting people at Yearlykos who no longer come round these parts, people like Fabooj and Nathan Newman.

More on the flip.

You expect this from the "Right".  But, do we expect this from the "Left".

It's an ugly world out there.    

Onward... to the cesspit...

A brief thought as we enter the last 90 days of the campaign season, and look forward (pleasepleaseohsweetlordwecanttakeanymorepleaseplease) to a political situation wherein much of the Netroots will likely be more focused on pushing our guys towards us than on pushing back against the right wing:

We've got to clean up our Meta.

Over on MyDD, they're going through another round of meta posts about the nature of the site vis a vis moderation and rec list thresholds.  Every community site does this from time to time (anyone want some pie?).  But such conversations are invariably site-specific: sure, they might reference how [whatever topic] is handled on [whatever other site], but it's all aimed at changing site functionality in that specific corner of Blogania.

On the other side, we have the sort of meta posts that I once did during my tantrum-cum-protest over the primary war here--what I like to style "Netroots theory"--focusing more on how online political activism may transform over time and how we should approach such transitions.

Are these really such closely related topics as to both fall under the same header of "Meta"?

Kossacks, we have an easily implemented but largely unused weapon available to fight against the curtain of darkness and obfuscation that has become the raison d'etre of the Traditional Media (TM).

Please join me after the jump, and also join me in the effort to make better use of the resources at hand.

So I am just continuing the flamewar.  This was addressed in my local(Triangle,NC) arts weekly (The Independent) by essayist Hal Crowther, who was attacking White Denial, but unfortunately began by endorsing a prime example of it:

The late, recently departed George Garrett, a white Southern writer of wide range and liberal sentiment, included this emphatic statement of principle in his memoir Whistling in the Dark: "I, too, must bear my burden of contemporary guilt like a student's obligatory backpack. But I flatly refuse to add to it one ounce, one feather's weight of historical guilt for anything. I am not guilty of or for the actions of anyone but myself."

Amen. Garrett, descendant of Confederate (and Union) veterans and the son of a Klan-busting Florida lawyer, wrote his disclaimer in reference to the Civil War. But in this year of Barack Obama when America's decency and honesty will be sorely tested, Garrett's rejection of historical guilt should be published and posted where every liberal—and especially every conservative—can see it and think about it.

This morning I received an email reminder about something great the DailyKos community did for itself last year: we bought ourselves the sordid keyboarded soul of Bill in Portland Maine and a full year of Cheers and Jeers.

It's time to renew the warranty on lasting quality in our C&J goodness. We have only a few weeks left on our current warranty.

Who would like to ensure continuity with our infusions of frivolity and fun?

I accidentally ruined my modem about a month ago.  The FedEx man brought me a new one a few hours ago.  It is so good to be back.  I want to post a little diary here to tell those who like to read my stuff what I have been up to.  I will write a comment at the Grieving Room, with a link to this diary.  If you stumbled on this, and have no clue about the Grieving Room, read on, and I can lead you there.  It is better than The Young and the Restless.  Because real life soap operas are more powerful than fiction.

Around 6:30pm, Monday, I wrote a diary with the title "OK.  Who's the Racist?".  I can not link to it because, I am ashamed to admit, I deleted it around 6:45pm.  

I deleted the diary because the comments which the diary was generating made two thing clear to me.

One, I had not expressed myself clearly.  My thoughts were incomplete, and not well developed.

Two, I was unable and unwilling to respond to legitimate criticism of my failure with either clarity, or a rational defense of the thesis I had proposed.  I refused to untangle the ideas I had presented.  I demonstrated an absence of any intellectual grace.

I had a hissy fit.

Politics, in the last couple of decades I remember, has been like a game of catch. One party throws something out to the public and the other party runs either to catch it or to block it. Then that party throws something out and the game continues. It is an endless feedback loop that focuses on reacting in a way that makes the other side look bad, no matter what has been proposed or how worthwhile or enhancing it may be. Meanwhile, the good ideas rarely get a fair public hearing and not much gets better.

And we have bought into that same type of feedback loop. We play catch with the politicians. And we play a version of catch that has been almost all one way. They throw, we catch.