The problem I have as a Liberal with the Liberal Blogosphere...

I do blame some of the lefty-bloggers for some of the atmosphere of depression around this Mid-Term. I blame Huffington Post, and more to the point, I blame some of the people that got to sit down with the President yesterday for the unenthusiastic state we're in. Why?

Cheerleading is a bit much to expect of anyone in this economic environment, but whenever I hear people say "I don't expect people to follow [The President] or anyone else blindly" I think that's a bull@#$% metric.

What I do expect from people in positions of responsibility is to answer the following six questions: Who, What, Where, When, How and Why.

What I think has happened is that the Media as a whole has abdicated its responsibility on the how and the why, because answering how and why takes more than the skills of a stenographer. Answering how and why takes actual work.

I'm sorry, but I include the Lefty Bloggers in this accusation.

I hold them responsible for depressing the enthusiasm gap by spending every other breath and word telling us how bad a job the President was doing. These were statements of opinion and not a discussion of fact.

Now, don't get me wrong. The "Professional Left" are universally a lot better on facts than their Rightward counterparts, but they are just as bad, if not worse on rhetoric.

I'm sorry, but rhetoric didn't get me health care. Understanding the breadth of the problem, and seeking legislative solutions (as boring as that sounds, did).

Now, I like reading the occasional Kos piece, I respect the hell out of Paul Krugman's numbers and economic knowledge. At the same, every day spent without Firedoglake is a happier one, and I try to click on Huffington Post as little as possible. Your opinions of these folks opinions may vary.

Still, as talented and popular as they all are, they seem to think that their "opinions" can somehow fill in for answers to how or why. Newsflash, they don't. It's just their opinions.

Any discussion of facts is going to address the pros and the cons of our respective side, including some of our most cherished beliefs. Opinion, by its very nature, leaves such challenges aside, assuming that the author of said opinion is already correct on the issue being discussed.

What I'm saying is sometimes Opinion pieces don't help you form an opinion.

Telling me Obama didn't go far enough, ironically...doesn't go far enough. Yelling and screaming over the Public Option didn't tell me how much money it was going to save, and it sure as hell didn't tell me that the Netherlands and Switzerland run their similar Health Care Systems without one. Both facts are needed to form an opinion.

We need a Public Option...okay, why?

The President isn't doing enough on Don't Ask, Don't Tell...okay, can we find out what could be preventing him from keeping that promise?

The President isn't fighting hard enough...are we really going to go through that bull@#$ again??

Nuance seemed to die in November of 2008, the need for it, didn't.

What I'm saying is that the Media in 2010 failed to inform me. I had to do more work on my own to find out what I needed to know. I blame the Lefty-Blogosphere for some of that too.