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If you too are addicted to Balloon Juice, maybe you’ll have already seen last night’s posts there. John Cole, the main Juicer (from 2002 to 2005, a wingnut himself — thus the site’s Pajamas Media logo), got things rolling with Peak Wingnut, first proposing that Right Blogovia’s antic disposition is on its last fumes and about to sputter out — but then having to admit, via update, no-such-luck. Apparently Cole’s update came after co-blogger Tim F. set to work on Peak Wingnut? You. Have. No. Idea., disagreeing with his senior partner’s original thesis.

Both are fine reads, but after predicting ever greater, ever more-malevolent hooey from the Jonah Goldbergs of the world, Tim F. gets to something I too have been pondering for a while — What are we gonna do for an encore?

… It’s important for us lefties to remember that these points apply as much to ‘us’ as to ‘them.’ Laugh at me now, but at the same time that the online right is scraping bottom the online left is very likely somewhere near a peak in terms of influence, unity and enthusiasm. In a one-party state, it won’t take long before partisan leftwing blogs start chafing against principled activists like Greenwald and equal-opportunity muckrakers like Josh Marshall. It’s a serious mistake to think that unity in the leftwing blogosphere is more than an artifact of the political left’s profound powerlessness. Incoming counsel will be less coherent when the sausage factory of governing gets going while at the same time broad power will reduce the party’s need to listen to us.

I will grant that the online left should come out better than the online right for the simple reason that Democrats can govern. As long as the party does [its] damn job then at least we won’t have to play defense for disgraces like Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, the Schiavo bill and hurricane FEMA. …

I think Tim F. is right: we in Left Blogovia probably are down to our last 21 Salad Days of peak influence, unity, and enthusiasm. They’ll carry us through November 4, let us pray — but by November 5, as “Obama-Biden” segues to “the Administration-Elect” and Cabinet choices and other policy announcements start to appear, I know we’ll roll out of our post-celebratory hangovers right into the diverging opinions that are our traditional ornery wont.

“So much to fix, what first?!” will get us headed for division. The economic crisis, of course, is urgent, but simultaneously most of us will demand immediate moves to restore Constitutionality — to end the NSA/FBI’s warrantless eavesdropping, to stop torture and the torturers in their tracks, to make the Department of Justice live up to its name again at last . . . and so much more, in all spheres of this Bush-Cheney-poisoned government. All those willful miscreants should be punished, and we’ll expect vigorous pursuit of them ASAP — but first, get their toxic flow stopped.

How fascinating it’s going to be to behold, for the first time in so many, many years, governance by grownups. As the performance of all those working groups of Camp Obama, long-since busy figuring out transition matters, becomes more visible, we’ll know a lot by Christmas, won’t we? But surely the ethos that’s kept the Obama campaign so smooth and supple will be much harder to extend to birthing the whole Obama government.

For Left Blogovia, what will it mean? I have no clear idea, only hopes and intentions. I hope and intend that we stay as beady-eyed as ever monitoring the three Branches and raising hell as needed. I damn sure know the current Congress is chock-full of untrustworthy Dems (Reid, Schumer, Murtha, etc., etc.) and see no reason to think more power will improve their characters. Nor have I reason to think the occasional hack won’t turn up in the Administration too — none of Lurita Doan/Alberto Gonzales ewwwness, surely, but every crowd has its stinkers. (Appointees do tend to be, after all, pols, though this time we can look for much broader, non-partisan expertise.)

One of the best things about Barack Obama is that he clearly welcomes broad input from bright minds and has no time for Bushie yes-men (as his choice of Joe Biden, plus his constant use of the pronoun “you” and the “Google the Government” idea he mentioned in Oxford suggest).

I just hope we leftie bloggers manage not to fall gradually into complaisant wingnut-style stupidity but continue to provide the principled muckraking we’ve done during the Bush years. Even the best government we’ll see in our lifetimes won’t be perfect and will need us to stay sharp.