If you go back into the Agonist's archives from the 2006 election, you'll find that there was only one candidate I pushed in any significant fashion - Jim Webb. There's been a fair bit of disappointment with a lot of netroots candidates since they got to Washington - they were elected as anti-war guys, or with expectations that they would be quite confrontational towards Bush, and a lot of them are dithering and going all week-kneed.

Not Jim Webb. Jim's not only against the war, hardcore, he's a populist railing against the concentration of wealth in the country. This, for example, from his SOTU rebuttal, is typical Webb:

There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The first relates to how we see the health of our economy - how we measure it, and how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The second regards our foreign policy - how we might bring the war in Iraq to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that our country faces around the world.

When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

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Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them.

In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy - that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.

But during the election I can't tell you how many times I heard "oh, he's a right wing Democrat".

And my answer was that I'd looked at his positions, and they certainly didn't put him anywhere near Lieberman, or the two Nelsons, or any of the Senate's so-called centrists.

I think the problem is social signifiers. In the US being right wing, or left wing, is associated with certain social signals. Being metropolitan, civilian, upper middle class, outwardly tolerant, a coastal dweller and so on are all associated with being "liberal".

What this is about, though, is about style - it's about the ability to act as a smooth courtier and not ruffle feathers. You're conciliatory, diplomatic, you are outwardly tolerant of people who aren't like you, especially in terms of race or sexual orientation.

You're smoothed around the edges. You're "sensitive". You don't give offense easily, and don't want to.

The right wing on the other hand is rougher, they ruffle feathers, they don't come from the major metropolitan centers, or the coast, they appear less tolerant and they give less of a damn about comity and good will and all that.

People read others as either "liberal" or "conservative", in short, based on how they present themselves - based on social signifiers.

This leads to a lot of confusion - with fools like the NY Times first public editor able to claim that the NY Times was a massively liberal organization. Any analysis of their news coverage wouldn't get you to that conclusion - especially in the 3 years after 9/11. They shilled for war, they covered up Bush's spying on American citizens, they were behind the Bush agenda much more than they stood against it. They were, and are, a conservative institution - based on the way they act.

But the editors and the journalists are almost all nice upper middle class and upper class types who are urbane and tolerant. Gays are fine with them. They wince at the thought of racism. They keep their sexism private. They're pro-choice in theory, but not in practice (the op-ed page has had far more pro-life op-eds than pro-choice ones.) They seem like such "nice" people - such good, smooth, courtiers. Surely that means they're liberal?

Webb confounded this - tough, no nonsense. Talks about honor and obligation all the time. Not willing to jump in the mud, but won't back down from a fight. Likes guns. Must be a right winger.

But when you look at what he believes in - progressive taxation, good jobs for people, ending the war, universal health care, you realize that when the rubber hits the road - in terms of what he really believes in, rather than in his style - he's more liberal than 3/4 of the Democratic caucus.

And because he believes in old-fashioned concepts like honor, integrity and an obligation to those who got him where he is - he can be trusted to carry through on what he said.

There's been a fair bit of disappointment in some of the netroots candidates. They got to Washington with netroots help, running against the war and against Bush - and suddenly a lot of them have nothing to really say about the war, don't think it's really worth confronting Bush, and so on.

That hasn't happened with Webb, and it hasn't happened because he's not a courtier - he doesn't hold as his primary value "getting along". He does believe in not dirtying himself, not lowering himself - but that's a different thing, and something people often confuse with the willingness to bend to the will of the court (ie. the current consensus in Washington) that is the hallmark of a courtier.

And most people from the metropolitan centers have been trained to be courtiers. They work in organizations where they have no power and where politics is the art of slipping a knife into someone so smoothly that they don't realize it's there till they're in the morgue. You never know who'll be in a position to do you a favor, help you out - or hurt you, and so you keep a smooth veneer up intended to never offend, and a ear to the ground meant to never put you on the wrong side of the pack when key decisions are made. Ostracism is death - in the Ancien Regime court, in the ancient hunter-gatherer band, and in the modern corporation.

Of course, most Republicans are courtiers too - but they ape the mannerisms of those who aren't, or who see themselves as not being courtiers. Since ordinary people instinctively (and correctly) distrust courtiers, because they fear a courtier really believes in nothing, and thus his promises will not be honored, those with rougher edges, those who seem to really believe what they're saying, have had an edge. And those people have more often been Republican. (There are, of course, Democratic counter-examples, and even a socialist one - Bernie Sanders.)

This confusion of substance and style - of social signifiers for core beliefs, is one of the bedeviling features of politics in general and American politics in particular. Without the ability to tell who is actually sincere, from those who are, as Woody Allen famously put it, faking sincerity - you're sunk.

But the first step is to stop using social signifiers to judge belief. They don't match up and haven't matched up except in the sense of a general willingness to pretend to be tolerant, for quite some time.