Ta-Nehisi Coates writes for the Atlantic, that liberal activists and bloggers have made a tremendous mistake in past years by blaming others for their own defeats at the polls. According to Coates, the Barack Obama campaign proves that when liberals get their stuff together, organize, refuse to lose and use technology to the fullest, they can win elections, and by quite a landslide as well. As such, Coates argues, liberal activists will have to continue traveling down the path of this year’s campaign.

Although many liberal activists are currently celebrating the success of the Democratic Party and especially of the Obama campaign, Coates argues that they can still do a lot to improve themselves. In order to do so, Coates believes, they will have to learn to articulate their message more clearly.

“No one has conspired to deprive us of power over the past few decades. The American people aren’t stupid. We’ve sucked at articulating our message. If you have any interest in a more progressive country, we need to be honest. At the presidential level, at least, conservatives have hammered us. Give them their due. Don’t blame Rush. Don’t blame Kristol. Don’t denigrate states you’ve never visited. Give them their due. Give them their respect. Study them, and then get better,” he writes.

“Liberals are the wimp at the end of the bar. There is a gorgeous red-head, just down the way, working on her third vodka gimlet. Some herb-ass dude is blustering  in her ear, but she’s winking at you. She walks over and buys you a drink. She’s waiting on you to ask for the math. But you want to talk her head off about how things like this never happen to you. About how you always spill your drink, or trip and fall trying to get off your bar-stool. It makes her want to go back and talk to the blustery herb just on GP. And she would–if the herb had any GP to speak of.”

He then calls on his fellow liberals to recognize what is happening in the United States right now, to stop nagging and fearing they may still lose, but to work on improving themselves nonetheless. “Folks, we are watching a revoloution. I’m talking about the technology, the GOTV effort, the historic numbers for black voters, a sick, sick edge among young voters. Are we going to spend the next days trying to concoct exotic scenarios in which the dastardly Republicans steal this one? Are black folks going to sit around wondering if white people will revert back to their Yacubic nature? Or are we going to start thinking about the change taking place right before our eyes, and what it means for our agenda? What will we do? I’m not asking for self-congratulation–just some self-confidence,” Coates writes.

At a time when conservatives are contemplating what to do after this year’s elections, fearing a massive Democratic landslide, liberals too are looking to the future, knowing that in order to keep on winning, they will have to improve themselves constantly.

And so we see both sides increasingly realizing that politics is a never-ending process, in which one has to beat ‘the other side’ year in, year out.

It seems quite possible that we will see two major machines a couple of years from now, one conservative one liberal, influencing politicians, working to get allied politicians and candidates elected, and trying to influence the future of the U.S. Meanwhile, American moderates and independent-minded voters are increasingly in the danger of being left out.