Akkam’s Razor

The Village (established DC beltway insiders) despises the bloggers, aka the netroots, and will take any chance to cut them down, especially since every word of Brooks, Broder, Cohen, Freidman, and the rest, gets eviscerated with each publishing of their latest sage advice. 

Let's examine Brook's latest (9/25):

Now it's evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the "netroots." You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups - high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.

He then offers the three reasons as to why Clinton will be the likely nominee:

1. The favored netroots candidates (Edwards, Obama) are losing in the polls.
2. Those favored candidates are championed by the affluent, educated ones, therefore whoever everyone-else backs, the one with the poorer, less educated ones, suggests Hillary wins.
3. And lastly, Clinton has wisely ignored the netroots, choosing instead to gather up centrists and Democrats. 

Here's the problem with his sentiment.  By boldly stating that the center holds - what exactly does that mean?  Who is the center?  Whoever the pundits agree is "the center"?  Whoever is pro-war?  Everything I've read illustrates a 'center' that has broken hard left, far-more aligned with liberal causes rather than conservative ones.  So why ignore the obvious?

Clinton is getting the right-nods and the right-messaging from these very serious people, and those same very serious people are going to want her to shun the netroots, and the activists who helped make 2006 possible, and cater towards the same capitulation and centrism that brought us the current quagmire in Iraq. Why?  For what gains?

Who are these far-left, crazy, communist-socialist-islamofacists who make up the netroots?  The same wealthy, educated elite that Bai "takes on" in his book look increasingly like most of America, the sanes ones, at least… like the 64% who disapprove of the President's performance, or the more than half who view him unfavorably, or 75% who want abortion available, or the 69% who view the economy is only fair to poor, or the 67% who state the country is on the wrong track.  Most telling, however, is the public's policy on Iraq - as Atrios points out - we're all the left now.  Yet still, gasbags like Brooks continue to maintain that most people favor centrism, whatever that means.

As the president has framed his ENTIRETY in office, we are either "with him or against him".  The divisive wedge politics employed by the GOP and specifically Karl Rove has made the rhetoric operational, with any deviation from "the script" punished viciously, just like we've seen with Senator Hagel.  So of course, the punditry elite defers to the President.  And just like with every other venture in his life, someone else will be cleaning up boy-kings mess.

Of course, Greenwald already has a rebuttal…

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