The rise of blogofacism

Via TPMcafe [1]:

Barack Obama gave a speech [2] to bunch of fellow religious liberals gathered together to discuss the failure of progressives to connect with many religious voters-- and he actually analyzed what some liberals say and don't say that might be causing that failure.

And the blog reaction has been swift:
Chris Bowers [3]- "So thanks Senator Obama, for reifying this Republican-driven talking point about Democrats."

Pachacutec [4]- But this bullshit [5] from Barak Obama [6] is Bill Clinton’s fault.
And a furious backchannel debate among bloggers to boot.

I mean, honestly. So-called progressive bloggers clearly have less interest in ‘progress’ than they do in winning. I defy anyone to quote a single passage from Obama’s speech [5] that betrayed any single progressive value.

If you hang out on sites like DKos, you’ll find folks rife with righteous indignation over the ability to out-centrist one another and reach out to the opposition. I think this is, in principle, a healthy stance to take. The process of such an outreach does not have to involve a betrayal of one’s values (nor should it) but rather a sincere attempt to acknowledge the worth of others’ opinions and to frame the issues in such a way that we can work towards conversion or consensus.

Exactly how did Obama differ from this platform?

Why is the left simply repeating the meme that all discussions of religion definitively belong to Republicans?

If you want to be a partisan, bully for you. If you want to reach out and unite people, even better. But if you abandon the very people who are trying to make inroads and unite the country, the only lesson you are teaching politicians is to ignore your values because they will never be able to please you. Bloggers are making strident inroads in political clout, but if we want to maintain relevance then we can’t behave like a bunch of petulant children who stomp our feet and moan whenever we are actually getting exactly what we asked for.

[7]