This week Matt Gunterman of Ditch Mitch took issue with Markos and MyDD's Jonathan Singer promoting Crit Luallen over other potential KY Democrats considering a run against McConnell.  

Unfortunately, many of those big-name bloggers took the good news and managed to alienate needlessly a significant portion of the grassroots in Kentucky with it. Of particular note are Kos of DailyKos and Jonathan Singer of MyDD who ended their posts on the matter with nearly identical lines. To quote Singer, "If you want to help turn up the heat on McConnell, head over to DraftCrit.com -- which is seeking to get Democratic state Auditor Crit Luallen to run for the Senate -- to get involved."

Now, everybody here knows that Crit Luallen (D) isn't the only Democrat considering a run against Mitch McConnell. Attorney General Greg Stumbo (D) and Lt. Col. Andrew Horne (D) are actively doing so, as well. Everybody knows that; it's been talked about for months now.

And since everybody knows that, that's what makes the singular focus of Kos and Singer on the draft Luallen movement (which is by no means a bottom-up, grassroots effort; it's entirely driven by the Kentucky Democratic establishment) a blatant dissing of Stumbo, Horne, and their respective supporters.

This is the most recent example of tension between national and state bloggers, but it wasn't the first and won't be the last.  Back in August Chris Bowers wrote a post about his own experiences with that tension.  He'd received a lot of pushback from local bloggers over Blue Majority's pre-primary endorsement of Al Franken and the Bush Dogs campaign.  Chris took the position that you don't have to live in a state or congressional district to justify your interest and involvement in a race.  

As a state blogger I can understand where the pushback comes from.  State and local bloggers eat, sleep, and breathe local politics.  In covering the political process in our states we do gain a knowledge and insight into races that national bloggers just aren't likely to have.  Most local bloggers have probably had the experience of reading a well meaning post on a national blog where the author missed crucial points, or misunderstood what was going on at the ground level entirely.  It's frustrating, and figuring out how to respond isn't easy.  There's always the risk that rather than extinguishing a fire you'll cause it to spread.  

I'm interested in this tension because I'm certain we'll see more examples of it next year.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Bloggers, no matter what aspect of the political process we cover, are passionate about our areas of expertise.  Once in awhile those passions are going to collide and disagreements will surface.  How we handle those differences within the netroots community is more important than any isolated disagreements we may have.    

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LOL, OpenLeft gives the Open Diss to MyDD by not including this website in their blogroll, but I'm glad that Chris was able to come on MyDD to tout the launch. As Ari Melber writes, it's a partnership between someone that's been a player in the more traditional liberal groups, Mike Lux, and Bowers and Stoller, coming out of the blogosphere. As long as Stoller can self-edit himself of name-calling; the blog can resist ideological purity rants that claim moral authority; and PFAW will financially support it; it will be successful.

It seems that Lux is enaged in a bit of revisionist history, in claiming that the "birth of a movement" one which blogs like MyDD and DailyKos are involved in, actually has it's roots in the 1990's effort Lux and his "colleagues at PFAW and a few Clintonites like Carville and Stan Greenberg" were doing. Who knew!

The notion that Moveon's petition is the birth, which Stoller has also voiced, is less suspect, but needs a clarification and historical education. I  was online at the time, and remember the online petiton. It was decidingly non-partisan, as was the original slogan to "Censure and Moveon". It was presented with web pages that had moderate Republicans partnering with the effort. The Moveon that has evolved out of that time is a very different language.

The general gist of this, of people-powered politics and organizing outside of the traditional political structure, is much more accurate while talked about in 'waves' of involvement, rather than a birth. And each wave has things that were not involved previously.

I tire of all this "movement" language altogether; besides, move over, we are all beached; Obama owns the movement now.

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So, three weeks ago, Matt and I announced we were leaving MyDD to start a new project. Today, I am pleased to announce, that after a period that feels much longer than three weeks, a $250,000,000 budget that included the construction of a full-size replica of the Titanic, dozens of script re-writes from modern super-writer Stephen Bosco, a long-awaited soundtrack by Toto that precisely captures the mood of the galaxy eight thousand years in the future, a thirteen episode reality television show hosted by Tim Gunn to find our graphic designer, twelve simulations monitored by Gary Kaspaov and Deep Blue to work out the strategic kinks, an accelerated citizenship process for our ringer, Freddy Adu, and a worldwide race to find the Ark of the Covenant before Belloch and the Nazis, the new website from executive producers Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller and Mike Lux, the Open Left, is making its public launch today!

What can you expect on Open Left? Well, overall, we are dedicated to building a sustainable, progressive governing majority, not just a Democratic one. In some ways we are quite familiar, in that you know our names and in that we run on Soapblox. In other ways, we are an experiment, trying to bring progressive activists and professionals from "inside" and "outside" the political establishment into regular, thoughtful, and active connection with one another. There will be a wide variety of progressive people and organizations posting content, some of whom will introduce themselves as we roll out many of our soon-to-be regular features this week. We have innovative new posting protocol, epitomized by the "Right To Respond", where, in the interests of openness and a desire to foster more conversation among progressives, any progressive individual or organization we blog about in a front-page post will have the opportunity to respond with a front page post of their own. With both Matt Stoller and myself, you can expect much of what we provided at MyDD, only expanded into other areas. Mike Lux will be able to provide a wealth of professional political experience and an inside viewpoint rarely seen in our previous work. Also, there will be more topics we write about both for an extended period of time and in great detail, rather than relying on singular posts and off-the-cuff analysis. We will write more about legislative policy, as well as strategy on how to pass progressive policy. Further, there will also a lot of talk about progressive culture and lifestyle, since there will never be a sustainable progressive governing majority in America unless that governing majority is accurately representing a more progressive America.

Anyway, enough talk about what we are going to do, since it is by our fruits that ye shall know us. Rather than gradually rolling out our first few articles this morning, we have instead loaded up the site of with lots of new content so you have plenty to dig through right away. Already, with much more on the way for this afternoon, you can check out the following articles and permanent pages:

• The Birth of a Movement, where Mike Lux gives an inside view of what it was like to be part of the Clinton impeachment fight. Spoiler alert: the Democratic and progressive advocacy group establishment was not very helpful.
  
  
• What Is OpenLeft.com?, where Matt Stoller offers some perspective on why we chose the name Open Left for our new website, and on where our contemporary movement of left-wing activism fits into a broader historical picture of American politics. This article will be permanently linked in our About section.
  
  
• New Establishment Rising? The End of the Flat Blogosphere, is my opening, lengthy theoretical piece for Open Left. If I may be so bold to say so, it is one of the best, if not the very best, piece I have ever written on the progressive, political blogosphere. It is also the first step in a collaborative project with JONI: Journal of Netroots ideas, which will take place over the next weeks and months on Open Left.
  
  
• Towards A Universal Neutral Internet, where Matt Stoller offers a broad perspective on the progress of the fight for Net Neutrality. It ties directly into, among other things, the primary challenge Donna Edwards is running against Al Wynn in MD-04, and to the political interplay between labor unions and the Democratic Congress.
  
  
• The Self-Identified Progressive Candidate, where I look at how often each of the eight Democratic campaigns for President use the ideological term "progressive." Content warning: this post might cause you to conjure up images of me dancing at home in my underwear.
  
  
• In the Nomination at a glance page, you can find the latest national and early state polling averages, along with fundraising numbers, primary calendar info, and general analysis, for both the Democratic and Republican nominations.

And that is just for starters--if you sign up now, you can still secure a low user ID! Not a day goes by when I don't derive a smug sense of satisfied, superiority from having user ID of 217 on MyDD, and 123 on Dailykos (I'm #9 on Open Left). Now, you too can be one of the user ID elite!

So, please, keep reading MyDD every day, but also visit Open Left. Bookmark Open Left. Tell your friends, family and co-workers about Open Left. Purchase billboard space on behalf of Open Left. Start another blog to triangulate against Open Left. Whatever you do, please stop by. I miss you guys, and it would be nice to see you all again.

Something amazing is happening in Philadelphia, which will have repercussions far beyond our fair city. As the result of a remarkable confluence of the progressive movement / open left, an extremely smart and hard working campaign, local media endorsements, and even some local business interests, Michael Nutter is on the verge of becoming the next mayor of Philadelphia. In the course of just six weeks, every single poll shows him rising from the back of the pack into at least a statistical tie. Now, with only six days until the election, the most recent poll actually shows him in command:

May 9th, 385 RVs, April 5th results in parenthesis
Nutter: 31 (12)
Knox: 21 (24)
Fattah: 13 (17)
Brady: 11 (16)
Evans: 3 (10)

Now that is some rapid poll movement. It is so rapid, that one would be mistaken to assume that Nutter had the race locked up. Still, there is a huge amount of momentum at Nutter's back. It has been fueled by great campaign ads, an extremely hard working candidate, a large volunteer base, the endorsement of every single major local media source that has made an endorsement, the endorsement every single local progressive / reformer organization that has made an endorsement, and even by (!) by many members of the local chamber of commerce. In the last few weeks, everything in the campaign seems to be coalescing in Nutter's favor. Consider the following paragraph from the latest poll memo:

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