Nutroots Nation Under Cloud

[LogikAndReazon]

"Providence, R.I. — If elections are won partly on the enthusiasm of a candidate’s base, Barack Obama is in trouble. Netroots Nation, the annual left-wing conference for bloggers and activists, held its seventh annual rally here this weekend. The skies were sunny outside, but there was clearly a cloud hanging over attendees inside the cavernous Rhode Island Convention Center.

It wasn’t only last Tuesday’s jarring defeat of public-sector unions in Wisconsin, or President Obama’s refusal to campaign in person against Governor Scott Walker — or unease that the Supreme Court may be only weeks away from sweeping much or all of Obamacare onto the ash heap of history. On Friday, in the middle of the conference, President Obama famously declared that “the private sector is doing fine,” calling into question his campaign’s basic competence in getting out a coherent message.

Indeed, enthusiasm for Obama was decidedly absent from this year’s gathering. Administration officials weren’t invited to attend (Valerie Jarrett and others have appeared in the past), and President Obama limited his role to an unpublicized surprise video shown to delegates late on Saturday, when many people had already left. “Change is hard, but we’ve seen that it’s possible, as long as you’re willing to keep up that fight, I’ll be right there with you,” Obama offered. Not exactly a stirring call to arms, and the tepid applause his video garnered can’t have pleased Team Obama...."

Netroots Nation under a Cloud - John Fund - National Review Online

 

[American_Jihad]

Netroots Nation examines Rhode Island Democrats​

6/11/12 By JIM BARON

---

“Having a D (for Democrat) next to your name doesn’t mean all that much” in Rhode Island, Brock said. “Rhode Island is the second-largest Catholic state in the country, there are a lot of anti-choice Democrats. There are an awful lot of pro-voter ID Democrats in the state; there are a lot of anti-tax Democrats in the state, there are a lot of anti-LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered, queer) Democrats in the state.”
Steven Brown, executive director of the RI ACLU said the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly “acts to conserve relationships with much more conservative Democratic members in the legislature.”
Brown said legislative bosses received calls from national Democratic leaders about how bad it would be for Democrats if massively Democratic Rhode Island passed a voter ID bill. Democrats across the country had painted voter ID as a Republican effort to suppress voting among certain groups of people.”
Because Rhode Island has a reputation as heavily Democratic, “people sometimes get a little more comfortable than they should be with the idea that ‘it can’t happen here’” and the voter ID law is an example of why that can be a mistake.
Part of the problem, in Brown’s view, is that Democrats have such a “big tent” that it allows in people who don’t hold Democratic views.
Moderator Patrick played off Brown’s statement that the Democrats’ big tent “is so big it’s a circus tent. You know the reason why, that’s how you let the elephants in.”
Some of the big stars of the American left visited the Rhode Island Convention Center in the past four days for the 2012 Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of progressive activists, journalists, bloggers and politicians. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman gave a speech and sold his new book, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren participated in a panel discussion and whipped up some support for her campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Scott Brown, one of the U.S. Senate’s up-and-coming progressives, a fellow by the name of Sheldon Whitehouse, showed up with colleague Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and former “green jobs” advisor to President Barack Obama, Van Jones, gave the wrap-up keynote speech. President Obama himself had a few words of encouragement via video hook-up.

Netroots Nation examines Rhode Island Democrats | The Woonsocket Call