I do believe I understand an important piece of it. Part of that is a hard won understanding I've been developing as a result of my research for the Earthquake series. Some of my earlier research (which I will present more fully in the next installment) was a series of interviews I did with Millennial voters who have all been elected as delegates during this year's primaries.

A recurring, and admittedly surprising theme was the attitude towards political blogging that nearly 100% of those I interviewed expressed. In the next installment of Earthquake I'll go into it in more detail, but for now I can report that very few of them even read the major political blogs, and none I interviewed actively participate in them.

But what is striking is that Barack Obama has used a social networking strategy which Millennials have taken to like so many ducklings to a summer pond.

On Facebook alone he has attracted more than half a million members to his Facebook group Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack) not to mention his now famous presence on Myspace. Add to this the social networking application he has embedded within his Campaign website which appeals to the same youth demographic as Facebook and it's clear that there is a pattern.

It's obvious that Obama understands that the new democratic majority will be based on the Millennial generation in large measure and he has effectivley both courted and tapped into them. From this perspective it's easy to see that the Netroots is but a subcomponent of his strategy. His real focus is on the youth of today, not on the middle aged pontificating bloggers who rule the progressive blog world.

Now I can't speak for the campaign, but my guess is that Obama recognizes that we in the blogosphere are opinion leaders and we do have influence, but that we are not the be-all end-all of all progressive thought. We are a component, a useful, perhaps even helpful one, but we are not the only one.

At some point, he probably feels that he must show his independence from us. We care passionately about issues regarding civil liberties, but it's rare to see us debating economic policy or education issues with equal vigor. Millennials on the other hand are acutely concerned with how they are going to pay for their college education and whether there will be a job at the end of it. FISA, Civil Liberties, Constitutional Integrity? Not so much.

Sure we have our points of confluence with them, the war, the environmnet, impeachment. But we are not driving this bus, we don't get to pick all the stops. There will be times when Obama has to do what is politically expedient, despite our feelings about it. It's clear that his heart does lie in large measure with us, but it's clearer still that he has to get elected before he can do us any good.

That means he will have to make compromises from time to time that don't sit well with us. We'll have to learn to live with that. So, I for one, while deeply disappointed in his support for the current incarnation of FISA, am willing to cut him this slack on this.

I said last week that I would not donate any more money, nor do any more campaign work. Well, I've slept on it a few days and given it a lot of thought. My own decision is that I'm going to have to take this lump in stride. The train is leaving the station and I want to be on it. So I for one am back in. Who's with me?