The Chicago Tribune, yesterday morning, couldn't stop beating on Barack Obama. They've been disenfranchised. They've been disappointed. They, as a collective whole, are thinking very seriously about spending the afternoon at home on the couch watching soap operas and eating Ben & Jerry's with a giant spoon. Barack Obama voted to protect telecom immunity, and it hurts. It hurts really really badly.

Most notably, for Barack Obama. His online community -- a fantastic social networking community that lets his followers communicate openly about how wonderful he is, plan events where they can meet to discuss how wonderful he is over subversive knitting projects, and blog excuses for Barack Obama when they realize that when he says he's for "change" he really means he's for "changing his mind as often as the polling indicates he should" -- is eating him alive.

The same Internet-fueled power that led to historic gains in organizing and fundraising for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is now providing a platform for fiery dissent in a most unlikely place: his own Web site.

Amid criticism from the left that he has eased toward the center on a number of issues in recent weeks, the presumptive Democratic nominee has angered some of his most ardent supporters while triggering something of an online mutiny. Thousands are using MyBarackObama.com to angrily organize against him because of a changed position on terrorist wiretap legislation that awaits Senate action as early as Wednesday.

The dispute has forced Obama to respond in ways never before seen in a presidential campaign, demonstrating the Internet's growing role in the democratic process and the live-by-the-click, die-by-the-click potential it holds for politicians.

I'm not going to lie. As someone on the opposing side, I kind of love seeing this happen, and not for the reason you'd expect. I love seeing these complex social networks fail miserably. Sure Republicans are, occasionally, technological idiots who form online communities solely for the purpose of self promotion and spreading talking points and faux outrage far and wide, and we can't manage to control, motivate and empower the base any more effectively than Captain America could control Gotham City (they'd eat him and his patriotic spandex alive), but...the great, horrible secret is that sometimes, neither can the Left, though its widely touted as the more technologically-advanced, technologically-savvy party.

In the end, people are independent minded, even if they tend to appear to the outside world as though they think with a single mind (both a good and bad thing in politics). The worst is when that single mind has a policy position that its elected representative doesn't manage to fall in line on -- particularly when the single mind is the one that's in the right. Barack Obama is a politician. In the end, its nearly impossible for him to avoid his fate, marked as a flip-flopping, wishy-washy wonk, whose entire world view is carefully crafted in a smoke-filled back room by 25-year-old Harvard grads. I was hoping that it would be in a speech, and the entire audience would faint together as one in a great wave of utter disappointment, but I'll take a social networking breakdown where the biggest group on the candidates own website is one that happens to be intensely critical of the candidate. You can't always count on people to immediately fall in line behind a decision that you believe is in your own best interests; voting for FISA was purely political -- a washout avoidance of the inevitable "soft on terror" mark -- and Barack Obama can't do anything purely political if he hopes to maintain his credibility. One false move and he's...John McCain.

Its beautiful. I almost feel like I should set the story up on the computer in a self-refreshing website and surround it with incandescent light bulbs and go through a motion of moving toward it like it was a shiny object and I was a small-brained bird.