In my latest for the Guardian, I review Eric Boehlert’s new book, “Bloggers on the Bus,” which introduces us to the liberal bloggers who’ve redefined Democratic politics in recent years — and who helped Barack Obama win the presidency even as he, wisely, kept his distance from them.
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When you are awash in cash like Obama was, you can afford to keep your distance. But Obama owes plenty to the blogs. He benefited from their infrastructure and their very strong antipathy for Hillary, that much of the Dem’ party did not have.
What might also be of interest to readers is that—unlike most of the liberal bloggers Mr. Boehlert describes—the organization that employs Mr. Boehlert is being funded by former Democratic Johnson White House Chief of Staff Bill Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation.In 2005, for example, Media Matters for America was given a $500,000 grant “for general efforts to monitor and analyze the U.S. media” by the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy according to that foundation’s Form 990-PF for 2005 (although tax-exempt foundations are not supposed to be involved in supporting politically partisan campaigns like the Democratic Party’s 2008 Obama presidential campaign).Ironically, if the Obama Administration’s failure to end the current U.S. historical “era of endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home” soon creates mass Democratic Party base support for a “Dump Obama In 2012” movement, it will probably end up being also initiated by some of the same bloggers that the Obama campaign distanced itself from in late 2008.