In the post, I was trying to make two points. First, I see a pattern from the Obama campaign where, instead of reaching out to new and progressive media figures, it attacks those figures when they step out of line. The opposite seems to be the case in the Obama campaign's dealings with establishment media figures, to whom it warmly reaches out.
The second point is that the above pattern is particularly odd and confusing given that Obama has excellent media reform policies, probably the best in the field, and that he seems to have the most supporters among those who consume and participate in new progressive media.
The end result is a mixed, contradictory, and even schizophrenic relationship of the Obama campaign with new progressive media. I am not sure what to make of this relationship, since Obama is simultaneously the best and worst on many of the ways a campaign can relate to new progressive media.
This isn't about kissing blogosphere ass, Joe Anthony, the tone that Obama takes on the campaign, the specifics of the Krugman fight, the use of left-wing strawmen, how to change Republican behavior in Congress, or that Obama doesn't have a right to disagree with progressives. Or at least, isn't about the specifics of any of those cases, but instead about the broad and contradictory pattern to which they point. This is about trying to make sense of a strange and contradictory relationship that contains so many good things and so many bad things all at the same time.
If I cared about the specifics of the Krugman attack, I would have written about it when it first came up, rather than after waiting three days. I didn't write about it at first, because it only became really interesting to me when I thought it fit into a larger pattern. The notion that bloggers are upset because their asses aren't being kissed or because someone is disagreeing with them is nonsense. There are few people in America who are more regularly criticized in public than bloggers. We are used to that sort of thing, even coming from other Democrats. The problem arises when a candidate attacks specific members of new and progressive media from the right, and does not do the same to establishment media figures, since it presents a worrying pattern. The problem gets worse when that same candidate also happens to be the person who seems to have the best chance of enacting our desired new, progressive media policies into actual legislation. To top it off, that candidate seems to have the most support among the members of the new progressive media community. What is a new progressive media figure to do in that circumstance? It isn't an easy question to answer. I feel personally stumped.
With only 24 days until Iowa, I care more about what to do when faced with the broader question posed by this schizophrenia than with the specifics of any of the cases that form the larger pattern I identified. Nearly a year into what has become a very close campaign, it seems very clear to me that Barack Obama presents new progressive media with both tremendous potential upsides and downsides. I don't want to see either side of the equation dismissed. What I want to figure out is if one matters more than the other, because the time to make a decision is very near.
