A few days back, a Corrente Senior Fellow popped in to suggest that many of the posts here in recent months haven't been, as advertised, "objective media critique or part of a campaign to defeat sexism," rather they're "a symptom of tribal warfare within the internet-enabled progressive social network that is being fueled by the Corporate Media and exploited by the Republicans."

In other words, we're pissing in the Democratic pool to vent our petty online grudges... because we've been tricked by the GOP into doing so.

I don't know the life expectancy of the hamsters that make the Mighty Corrente Building's server disks go round and round, but I do wonder how all this will look a couple of years from now.

If it's President Obama, we'll get to see whose "I told you sos" are in order. (And they called me petty!)

If it's President McCain, we'll get to start even sooner, playing out whether it was an ill-chosen candidate (i.e., they should have listened to us about a different candidate, vote fraud, and disreputable media and blogging) running on an ill-chosen platform (shoulda listened to us about partisanship) or the Judean People's Front disunity of Hillary holdouts or some other sin of the notorious party-destroyer. Odds are, the genius solution in 2012 will be for a Democrat to run as similarly to a Republican as possible. Fourth time's a charm.

Well, with the campaign kicking into its ultimate phase, I wanted to front-page (from comments in shystee's thread) my reasons for doing what I do, when I'm stealing time from real life:

My reasons for Obama-critical blogging:

1. To the extent it might have once been possible, help the Dems get a better (more progressive, more grounded, higher-character, more electable, more-effective Overton-window-leftward-moving, stronger-governing, prouder-to-be-a-Democrat) nominee.

2. To the extent (now 100%) that it isn't, encourage Obama to build the Democratic brand instead of constantly throwing its constituencies and brand equity under the bus. For one thing, getting him to stop leveraging his campaign on what a great man once called "the absolute fabrication that the problem with Washington is excessive partisanship." His convention speech last week -- if also backsliding on this issue -- showed the first signs of promise that pressure from his base may be yielding dividends, and for some of us our "I might vote for Obama" meter inched toward the green.

My reasons for criticism of lame or inappropriate anti-GOP blogging:

Truthiness rots everything, and so does sleaze. Shame on the Obama campaign and the leftysphere if we can't and won't build a solid case about what's wrong with John McCain and his party, and we instead become poo slingers who turn jokes into gotcha quotes and slime our way up candidates' uteri. For seven years, the progressive blogosphere knew how to pound these guys where they deserve it, and now it's gravitating to fake and trivial issues in what's an insult to an American public that wised up much better than the media did, and voted for hope and change in 2006 and got fucked... and just wanted someone to tell them straight what it's going to take for things to get better.

As to complaints about obnoxious Obama fans, almost every corner of progressive discourse became overrun early this year with truthy, starry-eyed bullies. Some of us find that concerning and quite of a piece with some things that have come directly from the Obama campaign.

Note: Title origin.