Informed Speculation

Man oh man, the power of the Kossacks! The Roberts hearing continues to explode with the might of the progressive masses, as this sensational report indicates:

The only speculation in the halls outside the hearing today was how many, if any, Democrats on the committee would vote for Roberts en route to his all-but-certain confirmation.

Jane Roberts, the nominee’s wife, is so concerned about her husband’s fate that she was seen dozing off on camera yesterday as her husband answered questions.

Today, there hasn’t been much in the way of questions or answers. Roberts avoids any question on a topic that might come before the high court — which is to say most any question senators wish to ask. The result: Democrats and Republicans alike are using the bulk of their time for speechmaking rather than questioning.

Those Huff’n'Puffers really know how to mobilize opposition, don’t they?

Don’t tell Howard Fineman, though (he of the famous ‘blood in the water’ Roberts prediction). Fineman apparently hasn’t noticed that the Kos has no clothes, so to speak (ye gads! Bad visual!):

If I am hearing Simon Rosenberg right (and he is worth listening to), a nasty civil war is brewing within the Democratic Party, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—the party’s presumptive 2008 nominee—needs to avoid getting caught in the middle of it.

“It’s not a fight between liberals and conservatives,” Rosenberg told me the other day. “It’s between our ‘governing class’ here and activists everywhere else.”

In other words, it’s the Beltway versus the Blogosphere.

What’s interesting is that Rosenberg is himself a Beltway creature, a preternaturally self-assured young insider with a cherubic face and a cold smile. He heads a group called the New Democratic Network and ran his own campaign for DNC chair. But the names he utters with reverence are net-based: organizers such as Eli Pariser and bloggers such as Daily Kos and Atrios.

Rosenberg rejects that notion that the bloggers represent a new “Internet Left.” It’s not an ideological rift, he says, but a “narrative” of independence versus capitulation: too many Democrats here are too yielding to George W. Bush on the war in Iraq, on tax policy, you name it. “What the blogs have developed is a narrative,” he told me the other day,” and the narrative is that the official Washington party has become like Vichy France.”

Fineman goes on to talk about the problems the ‘activist’ a–holes like the Kos (the Double A’s, let’s call ‘em) have with the DLC (though not Kos’s seemingly forgotten pledge to take on the DLC and make them ‘radioactive’) before concluding with some astonishingly poor advice for Hillary:

Strategically, Clinton has no higher priority than reaching out to what Rosenberg calls “the emerging activist class” and word is that, through aides and advisors, she is doing just that: they have set up meetings with key bloggers.

I am waiting to see which, if any, of the crop of likely Democratic challengers tries to make himself the avatar of the “emerging activist class.” Dean did it without even knowing he was doing it. I don’t think Cindy Sheehan is running. Who will it be? Unless somehow it turns out to be Hillary—who voted for the prewar resolution on Iraq and in other ways has tried to burnish her “moderate” credentials.

But if Rosenberg is right, the key is not ideological purity but combativeness, and an appreciation of the power and tone of the Internet. Hillary must adapt—she has to “join the Resistance”—and her history has shown that she is nothing if not adaptable.

You know, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I used to like Fineman; this story seems like it was dictated by Markos himself (please don’t tell me THIS is the big plan – to have Fineman do a story for Newsweek).

If Hillary really wants to win (and I’m quite sure she does), getting close to the progressives should be the last move she would want to make. The only way the Kos could make the DLC ‘radioactive’ is to embrace them.