Presidential Leadership Forum, originally uploaded by MNicoleM.

Next year there will be no YearlyKos Convention. It’s being renamed Netroots Nation, a term organizers feel is more appropriate for their burgeoning movement. It also illustrates the realization of liberal activists that they must move beyond Bush bashing on blogs like DailyKos to a longer-term vision about their beliefs.

I’ve withheld commenting about YearlyKos over the past few days because I wasn’t there to see it firsthand. But I’ve read enough about it that I feel it deserves another mention on my blog.

For starters, check out Patrick Ruffini’s post from last week about the leaky pipes in the rightosphere. An excellent piece by one of our best thinkers. Here’s an excerpt:

My co-blogger Hugh Hewitt refers to the “lead pipes” of the left-wing blogosphere that are slowly but surely contaminating the groundwater in the Democratic Party. But if their pipes are dirty, ours are leaky and badly in need of an overhaul. (At least if one wants to do more than just pass along positive information about the war.)

It would be one thing if we didn’t have any of these institutions, and could start from scratch just as the netroots did. My fear is that we have a bunch of institutions that still function somewhat well, but are long past their prime. With that, there is the danger we will slowly die without knowing it, as our techniques gradually lose effectiveness year after year. Just like newspaper circulation numbers. And there are a number of people on the right who are still complacent about this.

Mark Tapscott weighed in with his two cents. And I was quoted by Jose Antonio Vargas on the Washington Post’s Trail blog and by Lisa De Pasquale on Townhall about how the left copied the right, and why we shouldn’t try to mimic YearlyKos.

But that was all before the conference got under way. Now that it’s over, I would direct you to a few pieces that offer some interesting analysis about what took place, but more importantly, what it means for conservatives. Amanda Carpenter writes at Townhall that “the extreme left has grown into an organized, radical 21st century online force, more interested in raising taxes to fund universal broadband than donning hippy headbands.” (It should also be noted that it’s mostly a white male army.)

Soren Dayton responds to Amanda’s article with this spot-on analysis:

The left thought that it was a broad-based movement that covered the entire Democratic coalition. Nope. It really was just a bunch of recent college grads and late boomers. The statistics were right. Mid-forties, kids, $90k, white, etc. Somehow a project created by these guys didn’t have broadbased appeal. Who woulda thunk?

These individuals have been motivated by their hatred for President Bush and pretty much everyone who subscribes to conservative principles. Soren’s right that their movement “is self-conscious enough to know that it has to evolve,” but it’s anyone’s guess where it will go from here.

But for conservatives, the picture is clearer. More from Soren:

For the right, the lesson is that this isn’t just about technology. It is also about actual constituencies and voters and activists. The power of the (second generation, as opposed to the FreeRepublic generation, of the) online right won’t really come together until we find either a new set of people we can activate either financially or on the ground. (the netroots has done both) This will probably take an idea. (the netroots had partisanship and Bush-hating, which are not long-term, but effective in the short-term, and they might yet come out with policy ideas attached to the New Democratic Network)

It’s not an easy problem to solve, and one that will not take shape until after the 2008 presidential election when Hillary Clinton is preparing to be sworn in as president. Remember, the first rise of the online right (Drudge Report, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, Cybercast News Service, etc.) came about during President Bill Cinton’s tenure in office. Another Clinton presidency would take a steep toll on our nation, but it would almost certainly serve as the motivation necessary for the right to advance online.