The Texas Observer

Van Jones, founder of Green For All, brought a much needed breath of fresh air into the stale atmosphere of Austin’s convention center, which contained the hung-over, sparse remains of the Netroots Nation blogger crowd Sunday morning.

“Wake up. And stay up!” Jones commanded the subdued audience upon taking the stage.

More than his jokes or energy, it was his forward-looking message — a challenge to the progressive bloggers to move beyond their like-minded critiques toward positions of action and leadership — that stirred things up.

“You all got a problem, because y’all are about to win,” Jones said. “Now, you have to prove your ideas are good for governing, not just protesting.”

Jones also issued a warning. Using the Carter presidency as an example, he said the Left must be careful about its excitement over the Obama presidency.

“You can probably get him elected, but not reelected,” said Jones. “Not unless we get really smart about his reelection right now.”

A Democratic president and Congress will leave conservatives with nothing to do but run their mouths, at a time when the new leadership will be inheriting a country that’s heading for stagflation, just as when Carter took office, Jones said.

And Jones fears the result will be a right-wing backlash and years of conservative rule, just like after Carter left office.

To beat stagflation, energy prices must come down, Jones said. The conservatives’ solution is drill and burn, and “we are getting our butts whupped by this drill, drill, drill mantra.” This, he says, is because the green movement is and will continue to be a target of conservatives who label it an elitist movement that leaves the working classes behind.

“It is up to us to say ‘this is not a movement we are going to do to poor people, it is a movement we are doing for poor people,’ he said.

The movement is not dependent upon new technology or new policy, but politics, Jones said. To win, green advocates must change the nature of the debate by promoting the positive aspects of energy reform, like job growth, rather than accentuating the negative, like global warming.

Winning also requires action, not just talk about the problem, said Jones—Action like advocating for the Green Jobs Act and Green Block Grant, and participating in the nationwide green jobs mobilization campaign he’s launching September 27.

As the national landscape changes, the role of the blogosphere is changing. And, as the final keynote speaker, Jones told bloggers their future task requires increasing inclusivity. “You can’t save the polar bear without saving the poor children too. It is one movement,” he said.

To say that former VP Al Gore stole the show from Speaker Nancy Pelosi at this morning’s Netroots Nation convocation would be a lonely understatement in a weekend of hyperbole. Pelosi, despite her bona fides as the first female Speaker of the House and a lot of talk about progressive alliance-making, has failed to deliver on the promise of the Democratic class of 2006. We’re still at war. Karl Rove remains a free man. Etc. None of this may be precisely Pelosi’s fault, and Lord knows she did her best to deflect the blame, but both the tone and content of this morning’s questioning and the pink-clad protesters shouting for Pelosi to “use your power” to bring the troops home made clear that Madame Speaker still engenders significant disappointment, if not outright distrust, among the blogging classes.

Not so Al Gore, who received a rock star’s welcome, and looked the part in a blue blazer over a tie-less black shirt. There would arguably be no Netroots Nation without Gore (as Pelosi pandered), and the assembled lapped that kudo up, though Gore deflected the praise with an obligatory crack about thinking it unwise to claim any credit.

Gore preferred to spend his time in the limelight promoting his call for a 100%-renewable American electrity portfolio in 10 years, and plugging the non-partisan wecansolveit.org as an avenue for change.

Gore’s pitch was inspiring and universal, no way around it, and that made for a sometimes awkward juxtaposition with the Pelosi agenda. For every non-partisan appeal of Gore’s, there was Pelosi to insist that no change is possible without a Democrat in the White House and healthy Democratic margins in Congress. But when a questioner asked Pelosi whether her Congress would accept Gore’s 100%-in-10-years challenge, her long-way-around answer couldn’t quite conceal the fact that she never did say yes.

And that was as good a marker as any of the difference between these two “leaders,” as several questioners addressed them. It was a difference hammered home most interestingly when someone asked Gore the inevitable question about whether he would consider a post in an Obama administration to help further the climate-change agenda.

Without quite ruling that possibility out, Gore made it clear that he feels he’s more useful as a driver of public opinion, influencing the debate by getting the word out, and helping to build a climate of support within which politicians can feel both safe and compelled to create policy.

One can hardly blame him. Gore no longer has to tighten the nuts and bolts of actual lawmaking that so hinder Pelosi. Where she has to take the heat for the complex machinations of Congress, attempting in good grace to face down the disgruntlement of faceless bloggers with out-sized egos and a growing electoral influence to match, Gore can swoop in, engage the room’s inchoate idealism, and go home.

It’s a good gig. And it was a good idea to structure this morning’s Q&A that way, using Gore’s popularity as Pelosi’s escape hatch. And the roomful of bloggers — who do so love to equate commentary with the heavy lifting of actual governance — loved every minute of it.

Prompted by a question about Al Gore’s call for advances in renewable energy, Al Gore does indeed come onstage to join Pelosi to thunderous applause. “We ought to take this show on the road, Nancy,” he says. “We are on the road,” Pelosi responds. “Boy I feel right at home here,” Gore shoots back.