The fight for 2012 is here. Beltway media insiders rejoice!
Who's it going to be? Spunky Sarah? Moneyed Mitt? Holy Huckabee? Some dark-horse candidate flying under the radar? One thing is for sure: While the media clamors for every tiny detail in the looming battle for the Republican presidential nomination, the real fight for 2012 is taking place right before their very eyes.
The elite media struggles to capture the essence of the netroots. It's difficult to characterize this growing political phenomenon when the developments under scrutiny can't be pinned down. The movement draws its strength from its non-essentiality and remains one step ahead of easy categorization.
Surveying a few of the elite media take-outs on the netroots and the Yearly Kos convention, the answer is, they "write around" the problem. In other words, they fake it. We can see reporters hunting the elusive netroots in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and ABC News. They often get it wrong, but maybe that's a better thing than we think.
But rather than criticize the mainstream media's short-hand misrepresentations of internet-centered political organizing and information democratizing, the progressive movement should congratulate itself on its ability to escape definition and limitation. Shape-shifting is powerful magic.
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