Katrina vanden Heuvel, Publisher and Editor of The Nation; Zephyr Teachout, Assistant Professor of Law, Duke University, and an architect of Howard Dean's Internet strategy; Matt Stoller, a founding blogger of OpenLeft and President of BlogPAC; Roberto Lovato, a writer at New America Media and blogger for Of America; and Ari Melber, a correspondent for The Nation and a contributing editor at Personal Democracy Forum.

Ari Melber: Does online activism actually offer an opportunity for egalitarian involvement in government?

Matt Stoller: the netroots, starting with MoveOn, was as cultural response to the Clinton impeachment and the 2000 recount. It's a response to a betrayal by the elites, which happens whenever there is such a betrayal.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: I get worried about the netroots when they refer to the place that politics actually get done is in the "meat space." There's a problem about defining the question around the Democratic party. That's why Donna Edwards' primary victory is important -- she's an actual progressive who can bring energy to House Progressive Caucus.

Roberto Lovato: The progressive movement is fundamentally a working class movement, but there seems to be a silence on working class issues in the netroots -- such as prison issues. Open Left is an exception, but that's true in the rest of the netroots.

Zephyr Teachout: The netroots has gotten something out of identifying themselves as a group, but it's an artifact that should probably be moved past. You wouldn't call a group the "telephoneroots." Without local organizing, a member of Congress is not going to be responsive to lobbying. What we're seeing [in the '08 presidential race] is that people who have already voted are contributing, building muscles in the electoral process that they can be used to then put up a sign saying "No on the Ag Bill."

Stoller: It's a challenge between unwanted "spam" politics and social politics. It's unclear why progressives are better are it and why their more comfortable with it. It's about the country finding its voice for the first time in 100 years.

vanden Heuvel: What excites me is the lone dissident not longer feeling atomized and finding a community online, but online has to meet offline. Where the netroots can take the lead is on net neutrality and pushing the Internet as a public good. But for me the precondition of a progressive movement is multiracial [and something else -- I missed it].

Teachout: There has to be a "habit of responsibility taking" that isn't encourage in modern society where their professional lives in corporations encourage them to not take responsibility.

Lavato: I don't see the revolutionary spirit on the Internet that I saw in South/Latin America or in the history of the left. How are Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton going to dismantle the Reagan project? Eric Massa is anti-immigrant and yet raises a lot of money on ActBlue. Terms like "progressive" need to be sacrosanct. If you're not religious, then your political values are what you've got.

Melber: What does the netroots stand for then?

vanden Heuvel: You have to look offline for values. The Internet isn't a place for journalism, with some exceptions. The web is more for fact checking. An area where bloggers can strengthen themselves with other activists around the world, the global left, like we saw with bloggers in Egypt who worked against torture.

Melber: [Reads Stoller a Stoller quote about "fear mongering politicians."]

Stoller: Criticisms of Clinton and Obama too are centered around the idea that guys like Ken Pollack, who is "not a good man," have influence.

Lovato: Our citizenship has been devalued by globalization on our own lack of response to things like stolen elections. We need to invent anew our notions of citizenship.

vanden Heuvel: Would we have seen a different response to the 2000 elections if the netroots had developed their response ability?

Melber: We did see the response to Fox hosting the Democratic debates this cycle. A bunch of bloggers had to "create a teachable moment," and were able to stop something that powerful people wanted.

Stoller: With Avaaz, we saw in Bali that kids from all over mobilized and strategized to put on a series of plays to embarrass the Canadian and Japanese for their support for the U.S. position on the Kyoto protocol -- with Canada become the 51st state and the Canadians writing the Japanese constitution -- which got picked up by their respective national presses.

Lovato: The kids who mobilized in the immigration movement is an example of organizing that looks more like Venezuela and Bolivia, those who took to the streets and said "today we march and tomorrow we vote" [in Spanish].

Melber (question from the audience): Is the netroots immune from the corruption of power?

Teachout: The threat isn't corruption, it's as Esther Dyson puts it, the "seduction." By there has been a self-correcting tendency on the political netroots.

Lovato: There's a potential Washington-ization of the web. I want more transparency. I want to know who the maquila workers of the Internet are.

Melber: But we have that data. Go to Fundrace, and you can see who gives money to whom, which the web makes possible.

vanden Heuvel: There is a risk, especially if there's a Democratic administration, for the seduction of the netroots.

Stoller: The difference between me and Tim Russert, or Markos and Tim Russert, is that he doesn't have to answer to anyone other than Jeff Immelt [the CEO of GE]. My legitimacy or Markos's legitimacy comes from the fact that people read us, without benefit of the public airwaves.

Stoller: This Obama thing is so much bigger than we are, and that's entirely new. It makes me feel a little irrelevant or insecure.

Lovato: Let's acknowledge that there's a white space and black space online.

Teachout: I think there are two main things that should be done. The media writes about the same prominent bloggers, which makes them the most prominent bloggers. Women might communicate in other ways, and not be recognized as leading voices. And we should actively encourage cross-race, cross-class activism on the Internet.