Yesterday, several bloggers including myself were invited to meet with President Bill Clinton in his Harlem office.

In picture above, I'm in the blue shirt on the left. Jessica Valenti of Feministing and Barbara O'Brien of Mahablog are on my right. Going around the table from my left are Duncan Black of Eschaton, Chris Bowers of MyDD, Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report, John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog, Jay Carson of the Clinton Foundation, and the former President.

The meeting was very casual and much of it off-the-record, but a transcript of the on-the-record portion should be available in a day or two.

Clinton has been getting into blogs over the past year or so. His aides have been including blog posts in his packet of daily news clips.

In particular, he was very impressed at how liberal bloggers were able to strip the legitimacy off of ABC's crockudrama "Path to 9/11," getting the facts out so quickly that even some conservatives felt they had little option but to concur.

And he dismissed criticism of liberal bloggers as counterproductive extremists.

This is a healthy development: for someone of Clinton's stature to recognize that blogs are more than potential ATMs to be talked down to, but can positively shape political discourse and create a more hospitable environment for Democrats to thrive.

Of course, he is not the first prominent Democrat to engage the blogosphere. But some of the outreach to date has felt more like "base maintenance" than two-way dialogue.

Most of my upcoming book "Wait! Don't Move To Canada!" (just six days to release!) discusses how our liberal vision for government at home and engagement abroad can best be articulated.

But towards the end, I turn to how individual Americans can go about articulating it. Blogging, as you dedicated LiberalOasis readers might expect, is part of the solution.

I quote Peter Daou (who now works for Sen. Hillary Clinton, and was present at yesterday's meeting), who counsels:

Join [a] blog or online community. Talk online and become part of this network, because the bigger this network grows, the more influence it will have ... When you have two million people online, it can be very different from when you have 10 million people online, all talking and chatting [and] put[ting] pressure on representatives and [the] media.

As more and more people already in positions of great influence become open to really hearing the substance that originates in the blogosphere, the influence of entrenched special interests wanes, and the voices of the grassroots get louder.

Yesterday was a step in that direction.

Check out other takes on the meeting from TalkLeft, Daily Kos, AmericaBlog, Seeing The Forest, Mahablog, MyDD and The Carpetbagger Report.