Something very good happened for all of us these last couple of days. I can see that now and we have you to thank for it sportybabe. Some of that appreciation is for how you have carried yourself over this short emotional span, and some of it is appreciation for who you have been for us over a much longer and more significant span. I know that from first appearances it seems like we all have been in some kind of damage control mode for a day or two, but now I see that there never was any damage to begin with, and there certainly isn't any now.

We just passed through a moment of virtual chaos together. The only possible negative that could have happened didn't, and that would have been if confusion led to any rifts among ourselves, and it did not. The internet is a remarkably "live" medium, so it highlights an immediate jumble of mixed emotions whenever anything significant seems to "happen". It can be kind of like our inside emotions get turned inside out and become visible to others immediately, before we really even have a chance to recognize what they really are ourselves. Usually within a day or so things settle down and we all get to figure out what is real and what is not, what is lasting and what was just an adrenaline reaction.

People here were highly appreciative to read your initial blog on the house meeting you attended, and a lot of old timers, those who immediately knew who you were, were thrilled to see you posting here. I guess I was in the first rather than second category, because though I knew of you from Clarkie lore, I never had a chance to personally interact with you before. So let me say this now. I am thrilled to have you here posting with us now on CNN. I feel like I've been reunited with a sister who I somehow got separated from and never got the chance to know before.

I don't mean to sound clicheist about this, but the fact that we all just had to weather a little emotional storm together, one that pushed our emotional boundaries in different ways, IS an important bonding experience, one that we are emerging out of together now.

What harm was done? None. The matter of the missing three month question, the seeming fire storm it created, was in hind sight really just a fire cracker exploding, momentarily startling but of no lasting significance. And the reason why it even was a fire cracker at all is because tensions have naturally been building, given the uncertainty of if and when Wes Clark will announce for the Presidency.

Those tensions have been building among us here, and they have been building elsewhere in the blogosphere, and in Democratic Party circles in general, so there was an explosive build up, including a lot of frustration with the uncertainty, waiting to be released. The semi-professional political junkies that many major bloggers have become "feel" jerked around by it, which is really their own issue to deal with, certainly not Wes Clark's, or even his core supporters. We know and trust our guy, and we will be there for him no matter what he decides and when he decides it.

So this all was just a story looking for an excuse to be written, by kos and Chris Bowers and others. One way or another they and those others would have found an excuse to "notice" that in their opinion General Clark is not meeting their expectations of how someone who has an interest in running for President should be behaving right now. That seems to be the root of it to me, not even a thoughtful discussion of what it might take for another candidate to now emerge to seriously compete with the two or three currently major media anointed ones. They've bought into the conventional wisdom, and we'll see how well it serves them, as self risen voices of the netroots, to have done so.

A storm cloud was gathering and it broke and the waters it released needed some place where they could flood, and your little personal Diary report ended up being the channel used for that emotional flood. If not that, it would have been something else, water may always take the path of least resistance, but it always finds a path, resistance or not. If we ourselves emerge from this particular flood unscathed, if in fact we emerge from it stronger than we went into it, then there was a blessing within this inevitable storm. I think we are emerging stronger and I think this is our blessing.

Let’s make use of the emotional deluge we all just went through to wash away our frustrations over timelines and horse races and starting gates and posted race times. Oh of course we'll still chatter about all of it, it is after all more interesting than discussing the weather, but we need not be consumed by it any longer. That storm cloud broke, and for Clark's true believers at least, it washed accumulated frustrations away. We are left here stronger among ourselves, focused on what really matters, our community and the mission we still have that binds us together, our mission to support Wes Clark's leadership in preventing a widening war in particular. If that mission expands into a Wes Clark quest for the Presidency, as I think we all hope that it still will, we must be ready for that also, but not driven by it obsessively now.

For me the tension is broken. I still have my opinions of course. If asked I will say that General Clark "should" enter the race in time to participate in the first New Hampshire candidate debate. I know some of you all agree with that and others do not. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change any thing. It is not our decision to make, and the timing of that decision by Wes Clark does not effect my decision to support Wes Clark in whatever he does decide to do.

sportybabe, please don't feel frustrated by what kos or anyone else did or does with what you wrote here. They all have their own agendas, and I don't think it petty to point out that their agendas may not always line up perfectly with our own, and their agendas exist independent of anything you have ever said or ever done, and it will stay that way no matter what you now say or now do. But collectively we can work to make our agenda change their agenda in what we believe are positive ways. That involves our work here together, and that revolves around Wes Clark's work to serve our nation. So if you, if I, if any of us or if all of us want to effect what kos or what anyone else puts on the front page of their blogs, we will do so through our own efforts. We will create that imperative.

In truth I look to you for leadership, but not solely to you. We all need to provide leadership each in our own ways. But I honor you for all the leadership you gave to Draft Clark 04, and of course I know you weren't alone then either. So I take strength from reading you posting here now among us, sincerely, I do. I know that you know what can be achieved when a dedicated group of people set their minds to achieve it. We are stronger for your presence. May the circle be unbroken.