Matt Bai's Book Cost Me 99 Cents on Amazon.com

But after reading it, I've decided that I would have paid a lot more.  Beyond my enjoyment of his detailed caricatures of well-known political figures, I found it to be a compelling analysis of a small bit of political history.  It not only demanded  a need for a solid progressive argument, but also suggested that the the people themselves should be contributors in shaping this argument (as has been the case in past movements.)  The Internet has allowed us to speed the process up, and has allowed numerous people to partake in the discussion that, otherwise, might not have been able to.

A running theme throughout the book referred to the overall chaos brought about by any and all attempts to redefine (or, perhaps, define) the new progressivism.  There was chaos among the Washington insiders, there was chaos among the billionnaire funders, and there was chaos among the bloggers.  The Democracy Alliance seemed the least able to identify a coherent argument of progressive America.  While they were floundering about, however, the bloggers took it upon themselves to engage one another in serious discourse, so as to define an agenda that needed to be accomplished.

What the blogosphere didn't solve, of course, was the culture of Washington insider-ness.  Bai acknowledged the echo chamber that the top bloggers (Kos, etc.) lived (live) in.  Yet still, their existence is a step in the right direction.  Rahm Emmanuel, brilliantly characterized in this book with his no-nonsense, "you don't know shit about politics" rants seemed particularly frustrated by methods (by Dean and the bloggers) to re-establish the Democratic party as a national party.  I think this tension between Emmanuel and Dean (and the bloggers to an extent) came fairly close to summarizing the heart of book's central theme -- that though the blogosphere has done quite a bit in terms of injecting alternate or varying viewpoints into Beltway discourse about politics, etc., it is not necessarily the best or most realistic means by which to reinvigorate a party on a nationwide level.  The establishment of a solid progressive argument could do this, but the chaos created by the blogosphere, which in a sense relies heavily on dissenting opinion (even between members of the same party), makes this establishment difficult.