Jonah — I read the Chait story yesterday. It doesn’t have too much that’s new or interesting to anyone who has followed the lefty blogs. The bloggers think Democrats have been too nice for too long. They admire the structure of the “right-wing noise machine” and are trying to build their own. They’ve caught the attention of mainstream politicians. They’re really, really partisan. That sort of stuff.

What is somewhat interesting is that the New Republic cover bills the article as “Inside the Most Important Movement Since the Christian Right.” The “most important” part is correct, although it will be 10 or 15 years before we know whether the netroots turned out to be as important as the Christian right. The problem is the “inside” part. In Jonathan Chait’s story of the left-wing blogosphere, the one group we don’t hear from is…left-wing bloggers. I haven’t asked, but I suspect they — Markos Moulitsas, Duncan Black, Chris Bowers and others — refused to talk to Chait. They’ve declined the few interview requests I’ve made, which is not surprising, and they hate the New Republic, so talking to Chait would have been quite out of character. But they’re an important phenomenon, so writers do stories about them — just not “inside” stories.

Also, most blogs would talk about it a lot if they found themselves the subject of a big cover story in a national magazine. As far as I can tell, there’s almost complete radio silence about the article at DailyKos.