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 momentâa 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 Nationâand it's a pretty good excuse as far as excuses goâwas 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 classâcredited 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? 
