Two years ago, I was at the first-ever national gathering of liberal
bloggers and their followers, held in a worse-for-wear hotel on the Las
Vegas Strip. It was called YearlyKos, a name that grew out of the
popular liberal blog Daily Kos, and it was a remarkable moment—a
coming-out party for a new force that was reshaping politics on the
left. I went to the second YearlyKos, too, held last year in Chicago,
and again saw a remarkable moment: Bloggers were suddenly so accepted
as power brokers in the Democratic Party that every major Democratic
presidential candidate showed up for a debate.
I wish I could have gone to this year’s conference, called Netroots
Nation. But, alas, the stars didn’t align for me. I was forced to skip
the event. Kind of like Barack Obama.
Except, you know, Obama has a little more flexibility in his travel
plans. He can basically be anywhere he wants, any time he wants. The
excuse for him missing Netroots Nation—and it’s a pretty good
excuse as far as excuses go—was that he was in Afghanistan on the
first leg of his week-long globetrotathon. One has to think, however,
that if Obama saw wooing the netroots as essential to winning the
presidency, he would have been there in Austin.
And since he wasn’t, he obviously didn’t.
What’s changed since Obama showed up in Chicago last summer courting
the liberal bloggers? For one thing, he’s won the Democratic
nomination. As a result, his target audience has grown far beyond the
base of political junkies and committed activists these bloggers tend
to reach. But more importantly, Obama has learned to how to create his
own netroots.
His web presence is the envy of the political class—credited
for much of his success so far and boasting far more hardcore
participants than all of the last three liberal blogger confabs
combined. He has more friends on Facebook, more online donors, and, one
assumes (because such things are generally kept secret), more people on
his e-mail list than any candidate in history. When lefties wanted to
shout at Obama about his recent support for the FISA bill, many did it
on blogs, but many also did it on the official campaign site
MyBarack
Obama.com, where over a
million volunteers have congregated, planned house parties, and
discussed campaign issues since the site was launched. And when Obama
wanted to respond to his FISA critics, where did he go? MyBarackObama.com.
Given all of this, one might reasonably ask, why does Obama even
need the netroots?
The answer is, he really doesn’t. Not in a way that would cause him
to cancel other travel plans, anyway. Barack Obama is now the biggest,
richest, and most successful liberal netizen out there. YearlyBO,
anyone? 
