Reply #130: actually, I've gleaned that from the lack of responses threads about getting involved locally get,

[NoodleBoy]

among other things.

One very notable time was right after the 2006 election, I posted something asking people what they're going to do on the local level now that there was a Democratic congress. The thread dropped like a rock, with a couple "I dunno" replies, and one guy actually posted a bunch of stuff about how he was going to push for impeachment of the entire bush administration, ending the war in iraq, universal health care, etc-- none of which have anything to do with community organizing.

And in several threads where people have complained, I've countered them and ended my response asking them what they did in the 2006 elections-- and usually got no responses. One guy who was complaining alot and was talking about starting his own party replied that he'd gone "to a couple of assembly district meetings," and basically nothing else.

From what I've seen based on the thread topics, and the relative popularity of GD and GD: P forums to state-specific forums and the Precinct-level Politics forum, most people who post here are more concerned with making jokes about how Bush is stupid, complaining about Rove, and trashing the Democratic leadership, than they are about what their local city hall, county boards, or even state legislatures do, things which, with great ease, they can get involved with and be somewhat influential in-- more influential, then, say, just someone who complains that the 51 Dem Senate isn't acting like they're a 100 Dem Senate, or trashing people in the news who may or may not be conservative.

Now on the other end of things, the things I see as a semi-professional political operative (yes, I'm actually getting paid for it, but it's not much), a great deal of the dedicated activists and staff on all the campaigns I've seen have rarely also been part of the supposed "netroots," with the exception, maybe, to read local political blogs.

I have worked very hard for years as a volunteer, as volunteer staff, and now at my current (but still low) level. So when I see people, who usually have admittedly done very little to help their professed political party or ideology win elections, whine when the people who are elected with very little of their help apply their ideological stance to the hard realities of government, I get astonished at how naive they are to think that once elected all of the world's problems are going to be solved and in some cases downright angry that they can't accept compromise as a very necessary choice to make in the governance of hundreds of millions of people, and not just the people who elected them.

So when this Democratic Congress forges compromises, I'm proud of them. The willingness to compromise and listen to the concerns of the minority in this country has been severely lacking for years, and elected officials acting as though they're only accountable to the narrow pluralities which put them in office is a practice that this administration has legitimized for too long, and would further divide America into a place I definitely would not want to live in.