We here at The Democratic Strategist are obviously thrilled to have earned coverage from David Broder in today's Washington Post. He is right to note that in our premiere issue, the contributions are not always based primarily on empirical evidence and data, but for our premiere we were more interested in providing the broad outlines of the various debates at the heart of intra-party disputes. Future issues will make much more prominent use of data and historical evidence, though as Broder notes, this issue was by no means devoid of such empiricism.

(Somehow, in the course of nearly 800 words, Broder neglected to mention the magazine's witty, irreverant, and data-heavy managing editor and his blog....)

At any rate, we are more concerned here with the contrast Broder wants to make between us and the netroots community, which he portrays as unproductive and irrelevant to intra-party debates over new ideas and strategy. Actually, I can't imagine Broder really believes that the blogosphere hasn't contributed significantly to strategic debates among Democrats. From their prominence in and around the Dean campaign's unorthodox surge to the front of the 2004 primary horserace to their virtual invention of online fundraising and grassroots activation, it is clear that the blogging community has powerfully shaped Democratic strategy. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, one can't visit any of the prominent blogs without immediately noticing their obsession with strategy. That's why we invited Jerome Armstrong (and actually a couple of other bloggers) to contribute to the premiere issue.

And even in the realm of ideas, bloggers such as Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias are at least as sophisticated in analyzing ideas as they are in evaluating strategy, and even Kos has laid out his own public philosophy.

It is fair to say that the Strategist intends to make empirical evidence a more central element than most blogs, and we reject advocacy of strategies that are weakly supported by evidence (if at all). But you know what? The netroots may very well be right on any number of questions where their answer differs from the Beltway conventional wisdom. And the latter, let's admit, isn't so evidence-based either. If it were, surely it would have learned from the past mistakes that have led to presidential losses in 7 of the last 10 elections. Too many times, Party insiders uncritically accept bad advice from "professionals", and it's not clear that the advice from those crashing the gates would be any worse. Bloggers, like professionals, come in both insightful and hack-y flavors.

The point is that all sides in these strategic debates make important points and have important roles to play. As for the Strategist, our role is to not take sides and to subject the claims being thrown around to rigorous examination. If we succeed, netroots and Beltway insiders alike will cohere around a set of strategies backed up by evidence, and we'll all be controlling the levers of government.