This week Matt Gunterman of Ditch Mitch took issue with Markos and MyDD's Jonathan Singer promoting Crit Luallen over other potential KY Democrats considering a run against McConnell.  

Unfortunately, many of those big-name bloggers took the good news and managed to alienate needlessly a significant portion of the grassroots in Kentucky with it. Of particular note are Kos of DailyKos and Jonathan Singer of MyDD who ended their posts on the matter with nearly identical lines. To quote Singer, "If you want to help turn up the heat on McConnell, head over to DraftCrit.com -- which is seeking to get Democratic state Auditor Crit Luallen to run for the Senate -- to get involved."

Now, everybody here knows that Crit Luallen (D) isn't the only Democrat considering a run against Mitch McConnell. Attorney General Greg Stumbo (D) and Lt. Col. Andrew Horne (D) are actively doing so, as well. Everybody knows that; it's been talked about for months now.

And since everybody knows that, that's what makes the singular focus of Kos and Singer on the draft Luallen movement (which is by no means a bottom-up, grassroots effort; it's entirely driven by the Kentucky Democratic establishment) a blatant dissing of Stumbo, Horne, and their respective supporters.

This is the most recent example of tension between national and state bloggers, but it wasn't the first and won't be the last.  Back in August Chris Bowers wrote a post about his own experiences with that tension.  He'd received a lot of pushback from local bloggers over Blue Majority's pre-primary endorsement of Al Franken and the Bush Dogs campaign.  Chris took the position that you don't have to live in a state or congressional district to justify your interest and involvement in a race.  

As a state blogger I can understand where the pushback comes from.  State and local bloggers eat, sleep, and breathe local politics.  In covering the political process in our states we do gain a knowledge and insight into races that national bloggers just aren't likely to have.  Most local bloggers have probably had the experience of reading a well meaning post on a national blog where the author missed crucial points, or misunderstood what was going on at the ground level entirely.  It's frustrating, and figuring out how to respond isn't easy.  There's always the risk that rather than extinguishing a fire you'll cause it to spread.  

I'm interested in this tension because I'm certain we'll see more examples of it next year.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Bloggers, no matter what aspect of the political process we cover, are passionate about our areas of expertise.  Once in awhile those passions are going to collide and disagreements will surface.  How we handle those differences within the netroots community is more important than any isolated disagreements we may have.