There, I said it. Finally. Before I begin to polemicize, let me define the “netroots.” The netroots, as they apply to Democratic politics, are a collection of “progressive” blogs and their followers. The most prominent among them is DailyKos, led by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Other leading “netroots” blogs include the pedantic ThinkProgress, Eschaton, TalkLeft and MoveOn.org, the infamous creators of the “General Betray Us?” ad.

The “netroots” really got started during the 2004 campaign, as the left’s “anger” at President Bush began to build. Most of the bloggers initially gravitated to former Governor Howard Dean of Vermont, who fundraised massive, record-breaking amounts from these online communities, spent all of it to come in third in Iowa, screamed, and now forever remains just a YouTube clip. So the bloggers grudgingly fell in step with eventual nominee John Kerry, but of the 15 other candidates supported by DailyKos, none won.

The subsequent 2006 Congressional midterms marked the triumph of the liberal bloggers, but it wasn’t pretty. The Democrats reclaimed Congress by tapping into blogger money, but only eight of the 17 DailyKos-endorsed candidates won. The netroots even funded moderates like Claire McCaskill and Harold Ford, who shied away from the netroots agenda in the course of their campaigns. Their crowning achievement was defeating sitting Senator Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary; egregious self-congratulation erupted before Lieberman roared back and defeated their pawn Ned Lamont by ten points in the general election.

The problem is that the netroots live in a kind of political vacuum. The writers read what they want, sort through all the articles and tidbits, cherry pick the ones they like the best, and post them. The readers, then, see something that is breathtaking in its ability to hammer home the same self-righteous message, day after day. The community is self-reinforcing. Some blogs even make the outrageous claim that they are “news” blogs, despite doing zero reporting or anything at all that even approaches fairness. Those who don’t hold the line — Republicans, centrist Democrats, academics — are discredited and slandered for being corrupt evil neoconservatives.

One fascinating example was an article posted on DailyKos entitled: “Why I Have a Little Crush on Ahmadinejad.” The piece argues that Ahmadinejad is right to criticize President Bush for his bad foreign policy and that we should listen to him, although the Iranian president is a bad person for denying the Holocaust, and so on. The blogger opens by observing, “He just looks cuddly,” juxtaposing the distinguished Holocaust denier with Kermit the Frog. The blogger goes on to comment: “Ahmadinejad, it would appear, cares more about American troops than President Bush.” Clearly this is so! Ahmadinejad is not funding and supplying insurgency cells in Iraq! Of course not!

In any other political forum, this would be ridiculed. It indeed was, but only after conservative blog Little Green Footballs picked it up. Looking at the comments on the post, most of the “progressives” try very hard — and succeed — in overcoming common sense to agree with this absurd post. One commenter has it right, however: “This is beyond parody. One of the reasons conservatives refuse to believe that the Left is committed to the defense of the United States is little paeans to fascism like this post.”

So. By now you must think I’m irrationally drunk on the Haterade. Not so.

This summer was an interesting juxtaposition: all of the presidential candidates, even Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, pandered to the bloggers at the “YearlyKos” convention, while not one (not one!) attended the convention of the Democratic Leadership Council — the policy group responsible for most of the ideas that marked the Clinton years. (President Clinton did attend, however.) Just reading about YearlyKos made me nauseous with the noxious self-satisfaction wafting from the page.

Matt Bai, in his new book, “The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics,” points out how the bloggers have contributed little to the long-term interests of the party. The Democratic Leadership Council generated dozens of new policy ideas that elected Bill Clinton twice; the rejection of those same principles contributed to defeats in 2000 and 2004. The “progressives” are pro-union when union membership is declining, protectionist and isolationist in foreign policy. Other than generic, populist demands for “universal health care” and “energy independence,” the bloggers have contributed nothing to the development of an issue set to govern on. The lesson the Democrats should have learned in the 1990s was that taking the political center, rather than pandering to the populist left, was what won elections.

The fact that these bloggers have so much clout makes it clear that the Democrats’ 2006 victory and likely 2008 follow-up are much more due to Republican failures than Democratic successes. No one in the party has been able to create a narrative other than “Republicans are bad. We’re better,” and the bloggers are the best at it, hence their current ascendancy within the party. But the party won’t be able to generate long-term success unless it can offer something different that also appeals to the mainstream. And it won’t be the bloggers that do it. I hear the DLC has some ideas, though. Maybe we should check them out.