Revolting nutroots

Kristen Powers:

ASK passers-by on any street in America what their top issue is for the upcoming presidential election, and they'll all answer the same thing: the Foreign Service Intelligence Act.

Gas prices, home foreclosures, the Iraq war - all pale in comparison. Single mothers gathered at the laundromat are all talking about one thing: FISA.

And if you get them to stop yammering on about immunity for telecoms, you won't be able to shut them up about their next favorite outrage: Barack Obama's decision to opt out of public financing.

Don't believe it? Then - unlike many left-wing bloggers and activists, known as the "net roots" - you're in touch with reality.

One top liberal blogger opined last week that Obama's drop in a recent Newsweek poll resulted from his vote for a compromise on FISA, the intelligence surveillance law.

Ridiculous: The average American voter can't describe what FISA is.

Meanwhile, a virtual mutiny is taking place on Obama's campaign Web site, which is swamped with angry complaints that Obama has sold out his "base."

Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party.

Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites.

And every poll in existence confirms that what the folks in the party's actual base care about is the economy and the Iraq war.

It's high gas prices, not electronic snooping, that have most Americans on edge.

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It takes a good deal of paranoia to be worked up about intercepts of enemy communications. Can you just imagine an NSA analyst digging through thousands of documents just so they can find out what the Kos kids are saying in their private email as opposed to their public statements. Personally I could care less what they say to each other since I don't care what the say in their blogs. what I do care about is what the enemy is saying to his operatives who may be in this country. I want the government to read those communications and try to stop the enemy from killing Americans even if some of them are Kos kids.