Mickey Kaus notes this paragraph of a Politico article that probably should have raised more eyebrows:

“[CAP President John] Podesta’s and my experience was in the White House during the Clinton years, and we didn’t have a coordinated echo chamber on the outside backing us up,” she said. “There’s a real interest on the progressive side for groups to want to coordinate with each other and leverage each other’s work in a way I haven’t ever seen before.”

Bolding mine – and Mickey’s, for that matter. The article itself is dedicated to the completely unsurprising revelation that the Left side of the blogosphere coordinates its attacks on what it perceives to be enemies of the Democratic party. While this may surprise a few that weren’t paying attention, the only real newsworthy item here is that somebody’s willing to go on the record as calling it an “echo chamber.” Apparently, this is no longer an insult.

There are a couple of interesting things about this article, even if it isn’t very revelatory. The first is that it does look like individual members of the left blogosphere are finally starting to detach themselves from the unhealthy orbit of the Daily Kos. Unfortunately for them, the price for that is apparently to become official shills of the Democratic Party. If you’ll reread the article, you’ll note that nowhere does it say anything about the conference callers (who are carefully not named) being dedicated to pushing a progressive agenda; they’re there to push the parts of the progressive agenda that the Democratic Party is willing to pursue. I’ve been blogging for six, seven years by now, and based on my experience of the Other Side, I can guarantee you this: these people will never, ever coordinate on getting the Obama administration to end the war in Afghanistan. Or getting them to renounce rendition. Or ‘renegotiate’ our relationship with Israel. Or pursuing war crimes trials for Bush administration officials. Or any other cause that is nearer and dearer to progressive hearts than it would be to the Democratic Party’s. No, it’s all going to be about promoting the Party’s interests first for these people… which is probably why they aren’t naming who’s participating.

Second interesting bit: if you were ever wondering why the Left routinely accuses the Right of being in lockstep, this would be why: they assume that we do the same things that they do. I can speak with some authority that this is not the case, given that if we did I’d be one of the people on the invite list. I’d like to say that it’s because the rest of the Right agrees with me that the payoff on this doesn’t seem to be matching the effort*, but it’s probably much simpler: most of us have real jobs. 8:45 is an exceptionally inconvenient time to have a long phone call for most professions, including “stay at home father.”

Moe Lane

*It’s hard to tell, really. Of the examples in the Politico article, Betsy McCaughey seems to have shrugged the entire thing off entirely, it’s hard to tell about Rick Scott, given that I’ve never heard of him before (and probably neither have most of the people reading this), and Rush Limbaugh’s ratings have doubled since they first started going after him. In other words, these guys need a victory; one the size of making Daschle withdraw or wrecking Rather’s reputation for all time.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.