Netroots Nation Notes

I think I have a particularly bad memory for events with huge groups of people where I meet hundreds of people at one time. So I'm going to rack my brain and put down everything here I can remember that I don't want to explore in a longer post.

• One of my favorite panels was the Iraq panel, which featured some of my favorite bloggers. Matt Yglesias gets the prize for the funniest insight when he talked about the White House's surprise at Hamas winning the Palestinian elections and said "You'd think Republicans would figure out that nationalism combined with excessive religiosity would be a powerful electoral strategy." Also that was the panel when I looked over and saw someone accessing my site in the middle of it. First time that's happened. I talked to him later at some bar, but didn't mention that.

• You've probably heard around the blogosphere about the final two keynotes, from Donna Edwards and Van Jones, but let me reiterate that they were quite amazing. This year the best keynotes were surely at the end. Here were two African-Americans stressing the need to stay true to principles, to work outside the system and take it on, to criticize our nominee when necessary and to work from the bottom up for change. Edwards is inside Washington as the newest US Representative, and despite being an early supporter of Sen. Obama she would not be silent in the face of his decisions that she didn't agree with.

And that's an important lesson. And it's a lesson that I learned, actually, when Bill Clinton became president. Because when Bill Clinton became president, many of us on the left, liberals and progressives, became very silent. And that was a mistake, because that mistake brought us some policies that were really not so great. And so we really can't make that same mistake with President Barack Obama.

But we need to be on the job today to make sure that he, and not John McCain, is elected as president of the United States. And don't be fooled about that.

... Finally, I want to share with you that not on any day, by any stretch of the imagination, do I believe that the United States Government should be listening to my phone calls. And if they do, and if they decide they want to listen to my phone calls, then they need to go to a real court and get a warrant.

And I want to tell you that just temporarily we lost that fight. But it's only temporary. Because it's going to come back. Because there is no way -- it's about the American public being smarter than the politicians in Washington.

• As for Van Jones, and I really knew little about him before this weekend, but his speech was stirring. He's an environmental justice activist who has keyed in on green jobs as a way to unite progressives and the poor ("when oil demand goes up, the price goes up; when solar demand goes up, the price goes down."), create a new post-carbon economy and save the planet for the next generation. Fresh off an 8-day trip to the Arctic with Jimmy Carter and other luminaries, he's seen the consequences of climate change and knows the need for action. But there's a danger, as Isaiah Poole notes:

But Jones also reminded the audience that Carter tried to rally the nation around a clean energy and conservation agenda in the late 1970s, only to see his popularity collapse in a lethal combination of inflation and stagnant economic growth—“stagflation.”

Jones said the same toxic economic brew—sharply rising inflation and sluggish economic growth—could quickly undo Sen. Barack Obama just as it did Carter if he wins the White House. Only this time, the consequences could be much more dire.

“If we are not careful, if we are not smart, this could be the precursor to a right-wing backlash that would make us miss John McCain, Make us miss George W. Bush,” Jones said.

The right is MUCH better at backlash than governing, and they'll certainly try to divide the disenfranchised and use Barack Obama "as a pinata," like Jones said. I don't think there's a lot of thought yet about how to deal with this because it's premature. I'm glad Jones brought it up, as it made me think.

• The "Larry Craig caucus" sign in front of the men's bathroom was priceless.

• Other notable panelists and speakers - Wes Clark (there's a TPM interview here), Florida Congressional candidate Annette Taddeo (a non-Cuban Hispanic Jew from South Florida), the always great Charlie Brown (CA-04), Hilda Sarkysian (the health care activist whose daughter died while waiting for a liver transplant), and of course Paul Krugman and Rick Perlstein. I'll have more on the health care panel and Don Siegelman at another point.

• The Rude Pundit went out to the conservative "competitor" to NN and had some fun with Mike Stark. They apparently accosted John Fund and Grover Norquist and accused both of having sex with each other. Classic. After Norquist told him to fuck off they apparently went over to TGIFridays. Hilarious. By the way, I'm publicly apologizing to the Rude One for getting in the way of his game on Friday night.

• It was awesome to personally meet Texas' greatest populist Jim Hightower, my new (or old) favorite blogger Jesse Taylor of Pandagon, and so many others. The Editors and the Sadlynauts have to show up at some point and then life will be complete. I'm sorry to have missed Jeremy Scahill and Mark Danner.

• Don't really know what to say about that Markos/Harold Ford discussion, but it was such a cavalcade of discredited conventional wisdom that I don't know how to put it. As I said, Ford essentially said that we should have ignored FISA because the Constitution doesn't poll well, which really assumes that we should be led around by the whims of the electorate instead of leading, an odd pose from the head of the Democratic Leadership Council. That said I think Markos did the right thing staying above the fray, as Ford was hanging himself with his own rope.

• We came in second in the pub quiz - basically one question away from beating the Daily Kos front-pagers. I missed the "Who Shot J.R." question, which in a way angered me the most.

• News coverage was generally good, although the Austin American-Statesmen came up with a terrible Page One story on Sunday that called Nancy Pelosi (D-Beijing) and injected all kinds of opinion into a straight news story. I didn't link it because the Statesman took it down and apologized today.

• I have to say this was the best conference yet. It was extremely well-managed, and better integrated with the city to allow for tourism as well as interaction with everyone in a social setting. I like the diversity of the panels that allowed you to customize your experience, and become exposed to all sorts of different viewpoints. It's a little overwhelming, and I think people ran out of gas by the end, so some midday break sessions might have been useful. Overall, I'm sure the organizers will continue to tweak it and improve it even more. And of course, just putting a couple thousand irreverent bloggers in the same space is bound to be a blast.