Netroots to Obama: We've moved on.

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Who's winning, who's losing, and why.By David WeigelPosted Friday, June 17, 2011, at 11:36 AM ET

Netroots Nation conference 2011MINNEAPOLIS?The streets outside the spacious convention center and the massive downtown Hilton are filled with progressive bloggers, consultants, and hacks, walking from meetings and lunches, orange lanyards dangling around their necks. They occasionally walk past copies of Thursday's Star-Tribune, with headline in the sort of font usually reserved for celebrity deaths and declarations of small wars: "Governor Outlines 'Painful' Shutdown."

The governor is a Democrat, Mark Dayton. The legislature is run by Republicans who won control in 2010 and who want to balance a budget with cuts that the governor opposes. They're at war, but these days, who isn't? The tone at the sixth Netroots Nation conference of progressive bloggers is not resigned and doomed. It's combative and doomed.

There are big crowds for panels with titles like "Where Crazy Comes From: Reckless Republicans in State Legislatures," and "After Citizens United: Combating Corporate Power." These rooms are so full that bloggers sit cross-legged on the floor with laptops that fulfill their anatomical promise. Meanwhile, the crowd for a panel about how political groups should lobby Congress can be counted on three hands.

"I'm glad there's not a hyper-focus on Obama," says Matt Osborne, a videographer and blogger from Alabama. "I went down and filmed the new legislature in our state. It's the first Republican legislature since Reconstruction. They get power, OK. What do they do with it? They crack down on teacher's unions and pensions and they're debating an immigration law by asking whether they should 'save' the immigrants before they deport them."

He shakes his head. "It's down the ballot where the real crazy is happening. If people want to whine about Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama?just shut up."

Osborne speaks for most of the people here. This is a national politics conference without much focus on a national goal. There is no sponsorship or booth from President Obama's re-election campaign. The biggest elected stars taking the main stage are Rep. Keith Ellison and Sen. Al Franken. Previous conferences had the speaker of the House, the majority leader of the Senate, and, in 2007, every major Democratic candidate for president.

"We've had Pelosi or Reid two of the last three years," says Adam Bonin, chairman of the Netroots Nation board. "This year we wanted to have more issue-based plenary sessions, less ask-a-famous-person-a-question sessions."

In the past, Democratic candidates have flocked to this convention to meet potential staffers and donors. There are fewer now. The only one I see in person is Norman Solomon, the left-wing author who's now running for Congress if and when Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California retires.

"I'm running against an establishment, Obama Democrat," says Solomon.

His campaign literature points out that he was an Obama delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

"I was," he says. "And I disagree with much of what he's done."

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