Chris Bowers at Open Left writes about what the netroots is and is not.

Jerome Armstrong (emphasis in orginal):

Now, I thought the 2003-2006 netroots was all about the ‘fighting dems’ that invigorated the Democratic Party with a strong sense of partisanship and Howard Dean’s “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” candidacy.

The “netroots” is not about one thing. Never was, never could be. Lacking in centralized leadership and with millions of participants, there were always going to be competing motives and goals. To even attempt to define it as one single thing is to speak for huge swaths of its participants about which we know little.

I have a lot of problems with the term “netroots,” stemming mostly from the way it used in alternatively expansive and contained ways to represent different constituencies.

I was at the Left Out in the Open panel last week, hosted by The Nation and MoveOn. The panel included Matt Stoller, Ari Melber, Zephyr Teachout, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Roberto Lovato. It focused primarily on defining the netroots and its capacities for effecting progressive change. What was immediately apparent is that each panelist had a different conception of what the term “netroots” meant. Also brought up were the sometimes overlapping blackroots, brownroots, and feminist blogospheres. The absence of an understanding of the netroots as large, inclusive collection as described by Bowers, lead to some panelists decrying the failures of a smaller, white, Democratic-oriented collection of including other people and issues.

The netroots, as a term, is something of a failure. It is often taken in a circumscribed way that refers to A-list, largely white, largely male, bloggers. But that’s a narrow view that makes it easier to attack. To that end, using a vague term with an even more vague definition is problematic.

In my view, again which I think is shared by Bowers, what is generally described as the netroots is really better described as the online progressive movement. In my eyes that would include all bloggers of varying prominence, commenters, diarists, blog readers, advocacy groups like MoveOn, Credo Action, Color of Change, Avaaz, EFF, and others, progressive politicians’ campaigns, and even, at times, elected officials like Russ Feingold, Rush Holt, Chris Dodd, and others. As a movement, different coalitions will form and disband within its boundaries. It will manifest itself in different constituencies in different ways. The commonalities are progressive individuals and organizations are building social connections and communicating online. The online progressive movement can be many things. There may be louder or quieter voices, but people operate in the same general direction: progressive change.

Now, I agree with Jerome that there is a common conception of the netroots as being a vessel for Democratic success. But that only works as a term as long as we subsume it under the mantle of the online progressive movement. Then we can shift attention from a the quality or nature of the term “netroots” and towards a broad movement that includes many factions working in different directions. Under the banner of a movement, there is little need to explicitly limit its particular purposes or constituencies.