Remember that in the 1990s, Democrats were told that retail politics is for suckers, and that the way you win is by pleasing the big corporations. Bill Clinton's success, especially in getting re-elected in 1996 after the disaster that was the 1994 election (which is itself similar to what's shaping up for 2010), convinced even reluctant Democrats that you won elections by raising a lot of money from corporations that you then spent on bland TV ads, and once elected, implementing pro-corporate policies to keep the money coming.

Obama showed that another way was possible, but as we now know without any doubt, he was never committed to the grassroots-supported model of political campaigns. And in return, the grassroots is starting to desert him. Even OFA (Organizing For America, the remnant of the 2008 Obama For America campaign organization that was absorbed into the DNC after the election) has seen a huge dropoff on the number of volunteers it gets for its activities and a big unsubscribe rate in its emails (they used to have a list of 13 million, but I'd be surprised if they get 1 million people regularly reading what they send out).

And that's because Obama revealed himself to be an acolyte of Reagan and Clinton, someone who believes deeply in the righteousness of the elite and who disdains populist concerns. Hopefully the wreckage of the November 2010 elections can become creative destruction instead of plain old destruction, and fuel some better and smarter progressive activism.

And the world will live as one