Don't duck, now, or we'll know it's you! Reports Think Progress:

DAVID BROOKS: Whoever the Democratic candidate, that is the weakness of the Democratic party, they’ve got the blogs and the netroots who are semi-nuts and they insist on a Stalinist line of discipline.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I love your objectivity.

DAVID BROOKS: It’s objectively true. I did a psychoanalytic test.

Could this be in reference to the "big tent" advocates who want everyone who disagrees with them to STFU? ("We'll take care of you little people later, after we rise to power!")

Considering Brooks' sycophantic admiration of the Republicans, and lightweight analysis -- especially for a New York Times columnist -- of politics in general, I can't say I treat anything he says with any sort of credulous attention. After all, this is the guy who argues ad nauseam that the Republicans have a winning hand with government spying on Americans. If we want to talk about "Stalinist," why don't we start there?

Still, if Brooks' observation came from, say, Katrina vanden Heuvel or Victor Navasky, there'd be a sting to it. Because if there is a weakness to the Democratic Party, it's the wholesale endorsement by A-list bloggers of the stand-for-nothing-sit-for-everything-and-hope-nobody-notices strategy that the DLC has been waging to underwhelming (non-)success for years and years.

Until the purported party of "progressive" politics actually embraces progressive values -- and their progressive constituents -- they will be playing in the GOP court, according to GOP rules, evaluated by GOP values and funded by GOP funders.

And the progressives hoping for change will stay home on election day, joining the largest voting bloc in America: the disgusted non-voters.

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