It's possible that we've seriously underestimated the level of organizational cohesion in the Victory Caucus.

Perhaps this URL is a false site, and hordes of trusted VC bloggers have been privately contacted and provided the secret URL for the true VC site. So we hapless moonbats are fooled, distracted, and preoccupied by deriding the decoy site-- while actual VC affairs proceed freely, untroubled and unimpeded.

And then, when they're ready and we've been lulled into a false sense of security and sloth-- they'll attack!

I've stuck with Somerby, even though I find his bombastic style tiresome. I spend a lot of time hanging out at a popular progressive blog occasionally referenced by Somerby. I've defended him to detractors there, who in my opinion revert to a primitive "us vs. him" mentality on the occasions when Somerby has faulted the blogger for getting something wrong.

This is just to say that I have tried to explain Somerby's "voice" as comparable to an Old Testament prophet: usually unpleasant, self-righteous, shrill, angry, grating, curmudgeonly. For, like the OT prophets, he has a vision of a higher order which a wayward and wanton populace is unable or unwilling to face. Unlike some bloggers, Bob isn't trying to make friends. In short, he's indeed the Daily Howler, not the Daily Purrer.

And it's worth noting that during the Somerby dust-ups on that blog, I've also encountered Howleristas as zealously devoted to Bob as Bob is devoted to his mission. And they are just as exasperating and over-the-top as their hero when defending him-- both in explaining Bob's approach, and in echoing his judgements.

Besides Bob's flaws or shortcomings in style and tone-- bombast, repetition, seething contempt-- his true Achilles' Heel is that he routinely excludes the middle. This point has been effectively made by other writers here, and I'm coming to what may be a dead discussion, but I feel compelled to express agreement with those who admire Somerby, but take him with an expanding grain of salt.

It seems to me that those who most vociferously support Bob's view of Gore in the 2000 campaign are pretty much orthodox Democratic Party process wonks and technocrats bto begin with. Which is fine, except that this puts them in lockstep with the Howler's perspective. Those who aren't there already live in the middle Bob either doesn't see or rejects out of hand. Since I'm already droning on too much, I'll only pick one example from 2000: the disastrous choice of HoJo Lieberman as a running mate.

As a progressive independent who can't abide the "Lesser Evil" principle that governs "practical politics", that was a support-killer for me. And indeed, although I was prepared to hold my nose and vote for the Democratic candidate, I too found Gore too animatronic for my taste. Maybe it WAS based on sloppy observation or laziness, but the impression I formed wasn't based on reading the work of the heinous infotainwhores Somerby rightfully excoriates in his writing. I didn't read the papers then, still don't; I don't have cable TV. In fact, I only really know about these scoundrels through second-hand reports from critics like Somerby, Matt Taibbi, etc.

But Somerby and the Howleristas are SO strident in preaching the doctrine that the MSM reeled in a gullible and foolish public that they simply can't credit the idea that Gore failed to attract and energize enough voters to give him a definitive victory. (In fact, he did win; the SCOTUS elected Bush, etc. I know.) Most annoyingly, they will stick to Somerby's "script" and insist that if you don't acknowledge that Gore's 2000 campaign was a tour de force hamstrung and sabotaged by a corrupt media, you've either been subliminally co-opted by that media or are presumably just stoopid and unfit to participate in adult politics.

Returning to just the veep choice: it used to be that when this topic was argued on the blog, as soon as someone raised the Lieberman choice (and its attendant repugnant smarminess), the Democratic Bloc there would weigh in just as commenters here have: Poppycock! Who really cares who the veep is? To summarize their disagreement: you're either lying when you claim that the HoJo choice was off-putting, or your understanding of and approach to politics is so lame and warped that you're simply disqualified for being a dope!

But, guess what? Ever since HoJo and his Republic Party supporters outmaneuvered Ned Lamont, those bloggers aren't nearly as vociferous in denouncing those who considered HoJo an albatross around animatronic Gore's neck. (BTW, as one of those despicable renegades who indeed threw away his vote on Nader, I'd be glad to vote for Al Gore in 2008 if he was crazy enough to run.)

Anyway, I'm not especially a Joan Walsh fan, but I think she's correct in calling out Bob on his rigid nit-picking. I think the Howler is a hero of sorts, and is quite correct in the essentials of his critique of a compromised media on politics. But he and his disciples do routinely exclude the middle, and simply scorning and deriding protests from those of us who live in that excluded middle will not make us go away.