ABC News' insider Beltway tip sheet today prominently highlights this passage from A-list liberal blogger Jane Hamsher at her site FDL. It's part of The Note's larger overview of where the health care reform debate currently stands:

Unless it isn't: “If your progressive Democratic member of Congress decides to support the corporatist agenda and vote for a health care bill that makes the insurance companies say 'we won,' they probably need to be challenged,” Jane Hamsher writes at FireDogLake.com.

On the one hand, it's good to see liberal bloggers like Hamsher on the radar of the often elitist editors at The Note. There's no question that Hamsher today represents a key voice among progressive, as activists continue to push for a public option in the health care debate. And Hamsher's voice most definitely should be featured by The Note, as should other netroot players.

On the other hand, I can't help but notice the irony of The Note only now discovering the FDL voice; of only now deciding Hamsher is an important voice in the pundit pool when the liberal blogger is battling a Democratic administration from the left. It's ironic because Hamsher and the FDL community, of course, was born during the Bush years and served as an outlet for angry liberals and Democrats who railed against the Bush administration policy. The netroots exploded as a political and media movement precisely because Beltway insiders like the ones who run The Note refused to speak the truth about the Bush White House.

And back then, Hamsher, as well as the rest of the emerging liberal blogosphere, was definitely not part of the ABC in crowd. Instead, liberal bloggers who attacked the Republican administration were dismissed as shrill and un-serious and radical. For instance, I checked the online archives at ABC's The Note and I could not find a single example during the Bush years when the insider editors at ABC News linked to a Hamsher post that knocked down the Bush White House.

But today, as Hamsher and FDL often give a Democratic president fits from the left, suddenly The Note is very interested in that point of view and the Note has been regularly highlighting Hamsher's work. But when Hamsher and others gave Bush fits from the left, those voices were uniformly ignored.

Like I said, the fact that The Note if featuring Hamsher as part of the influential Beltway mix is a good thing. It's just that The Note is about five years late to the game.