Pro-Clinton Writer "Strikes" at DKos

If you can't take the heat... (4.75 / 4)

I tend to think as Hillary's inevitability campaign has gone sour and she has become much more negative, the blogosphere, which was never gonna be for the establishment front-runner, has responded in kind, in ways that a candidate can't.  

Blogging is cathartic.  It gives you a venue to unload your frustrations on your political opponents and given the fact that this primary fight has been so tight and gotten progressively nastier, the blog-rage was inevitable.  

I've had editors here accuse me of crying because I took issue with their regular anti-Obama posts.  The great thing is, I can go someplace else if I want to.  That I choose not to is because I like the manageable size and quality of debate here at BMG even when I am regularly told off.  It keeps me sharp and makes me think.  

Kos is a hotbed of anti-Hillary sentiment.  But, partisans are always harsher to those within their party who they feel wronged by.  Look at the effort the netroots made to oust Joe Lieberman.  Civil wars are always more nasty and brutal.  

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by: lanugo @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 15:39:30 PM CDT

To be precise, (0.00 / 0)

I think it's actually "an editor" here, not "editors."  No need to lump in the others with my own shenanigans!  ;-)

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by: David @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 15:42:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Bob beat me to it! (5.83 / 6)

I was just about to do a post on this interesting development, stepped out for lunch, and then bang!  You snooze, you lose, in this fast-paced 24/7 media culture we've helped to create!

Anyway, my sense is that the glamor blogs are rapidly devolving into a pissing match -- contrast Alegre's post, quoted by Bob, with this one over at MyDD by someone who is upset about Alegre's "strike," and who sees darker forces at work.  Note, also, the incredibly unpleasant tone of many of the over 1200 (!) comments on Alegre's post -- and there would be many more had one of the admins not closed the comment thread.

Personally, I find reading DKos and other glamor blogs to be incredibly unpleasant these days, so I rarely do it.  And there does come a time when all of us in the blogosphere need to ask ourselves what, exactly, is the point of what we're doing.  DKos is no longer particularly useful as a news source now that TPM and other less angry places serve the same purpose (and in fact are better at it).  Political candidates are far more savvy about the internet than they were only a year or two ago, so they don't really need DKos and similar sites the way they once did.  

I guess national blogs like DKos continue to serve a valuable function in bringing nationwide attention to what otherwise would probably be local races like Darcy Burner in Washington state.  But, really, what is the point of all the yakkity yak about the presidential race at Kos (or at BMG, for that matter)?  Does anyone really care?  Is anyone ever persuaded of anything?  Is a megasite like Kos anything more than an ATM for certain favored candidates?

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by: David @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 15:41:06 PM CDT

I would agree about some of the front page posts (6.00 / 3)

But there are diaries at both DKos and MYDD that are not available anywhere else. TPM is great for what it does but isn't a platform for the progressive on-line journalism that can only be found at what you dismissively call the glamor blogs.

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by: Marc Davidson @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 16:04:55 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

dKos problems (5.67 / 3)

Until the primary season took off, Daily Kos was an excellent source of information one couldn't find elsewhere. Every visit turned up something useful on the recommended list.

In 2008, the primary pissing contest has overwhelmed it. The recommended list can no longer be recommended. The front page has grown too verbose. Long, elaborate analyses bloat it. Nothing is ever tucked below the fold. The sharp zing of that once great blog has gone.

When this all ends, we can hope that Daily Kos will return to being sharp, terse, and substantial.

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by: KBusch @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 23:50:14 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

glamor blogs - (6.00 / 2)

spot on. They really do need to have a reality check if they want to stay relevant in today. The reality is (and we're all a part of the reality-based community, after all, right?) that there are other blogs that do what Kos does much better. FDL for analysis. TPM for the horse race stuff. OpenLeft for progressive movement building. Etc.

Dkos front page posting is never ahead of the media anymore, and it's really become no better than most right-wing blogs in that it's mostly just one-sided crazy ranting nowadays.  

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 16:13:16 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I disagree (5.67 / 3)

I find that DKos front page has just the right mix of news, insider-Dem "news", and commentary for my tastes, and it's rarely slow to an important story [though it may not scoop other sources].

I use DKos as my news aggregator.  It's not my only rss feed, but I find it to be the best general liberal politics feed around.

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by: stomv @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:50:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

well, (0.00 / 0)

I'm not about to tell you how to find your news sources. Certainly, there are still decent diarists and front-pagers on Kos, and certainly almost all of their frequent writers come up with decent blogs fairly frequently, even if I don't think they're particularly great bloggers. I'm not about to deny that, just as I wouldn't deny that Keith Olberman is still probably addressing most of the important constitutional issues of the day and hitting other stories that Americans need to hear more frequently, yet most MSM sources aren't covering them. There's a reason why people started to go to Kos, and why Keith Olberman is a rising star in broadcast journalism; but that doesn't make them right, and that doesn't mean they've been doing the American people a true disservice lately that shouldn't go unpunished (at least until they reverse course).

I've always been of the belief that if someone is continually making the same mistake over and over again, you don't reward them by staying a costumer. Let the ratings dip and the hits decline, until things change, and then come back. That's my motto anyway, especially with so many other great national blogs that can serve the same purpose (Americablog, FDL, Atrios, etc.). Like I said, though, ultimately your choice in media is yours alone - though I hope you choose wisely.

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 03:33:15 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Absolutely right. (6.00 / 3)

And this is where Kos and megasites like it will stumble:

DKos is no longer particularly useful as a news source now that TPM and other less angry places serve the same purpose (and in fact are better at it).

Years ago Kos was my homepage.  I'm one of the oldtimers over there with a very low 4 digit user ID and even have one that's even lower that I don't use.  I was in at the beginning, and I have to say that what has happened there is pretty sad.  

My homepage for the past two years has been Think Progress.  My next stop after TP is TPM.  There is no news on Kos.  What passes for news is so bizarre that I cannot even believe at times that these people are lucid.  There are a few frontpagers over there who still have their wits about them.  Dana Houle, imho, is the best of the bunch but he certainly casts his insightful pearls before some pretty unappreciative swine.

At any rate, I rarely go over there these days because the environment is downright toxic.  It's DU for the slightly more articulate.  It's People for political fans.  
Sadly, Daily Kos is exactly what Kos wants it to be. It's just not what a lot of other people hoped it would be, and that fact is becoming more and more obvious.  

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by: lightiris @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 16:33:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

We do care... but no one is ever persuadedon Kos or here (6.00 / 1)

As far as I can tell, I have not convinced one person to think differently on BMG on anything.  And yet I continue to beat my head against the same walls.  Persistence as an end in itself.

I also think it is unrealistic to expect a bunch of political junkies not to talk about the nomination race 24/7.  Hell, few of us have ever seen a race like this and who knows if we ever will again.  Lots at stake and lots of passion.  

Whether Kos or other sites remain as relevant as they did when first conceived I don't know. I'm still fairly new to blogging so I find surfing through them somewhat worthwhile. And once this race cools off things may chill and we can all go back to bashing Republicans.  No one ever seemed to mind the hysterical shit we said about them - we all liked hearing it and even believed a lot of it.  Its only now that we have started to engage in friendly fire that folks are getting offended.

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by: lanugo @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:13:38 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The seeds of the schism have been there for a while (6.00 / 2)

Once the focus was directed on the Democratic Party rather than exclusively on the common enemy of the GOP and its Democratic enablers (eg Joe Lieberman), the huge fault lines in the party were exposed. One of these is the desire of some to return to the Democrats' version of the '50's, the Clinton years, while the rest saw the goal as the creation of a new paradigm of government. This may mean a serious culling of some of the bigger sites which cater to a far more diverse set of opinions than is sustainable.
I'm not sure where the Clinton people go from here. Do they make peace with the DKos community, for instance, do they disengage, or do they start new on-line communities? -- and what would these look like?

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by: Marc Davidson @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 15:58:57 PM CDT

a schism? (6.00 / 1)

I don't know about that. All along, the blogs have been independent. They've never been united under one umbrella: only the newspapers have been idiotic enough to believe that.

No schism will take place, because the netroots has always been a diverse group of people who only have come together on certain issues. They didn't come together on a Presidential candidate because Edwards and Obama split most of the folks, and even Clinton had a few strong supporters. Since Edwards left, we've unfortunately seen their rantings go to histrionic levels, instead of trying to be fair and keep everyone united together. (And there are plenty of ways to do that, while also supporting your candidate).

What I've unfortunately seen is a willingness for the netroots to become EXACTLY like the main sream media in reporting of this race - and not even ahead of the media, either. It's all horse race crap, no great analysis and, of course, the blanket reporting of all the negative crap without actually doing things like analyzing positions, or reporting on the issues in the race that aren't recieving media attention (isn't that what we're supposed to do?). But, like I said, this isn't a schism. Hell, there really aren't even enough strong Clinton supporters in the netroots to tear apart the movement in the first place.

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 16:08:33 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

uh, no (5.33 / 3)

People like myself don't side with Hillary Clinton because the Nineties were a utopia.  They were a dystopia mostly, with the Clintons involved in bringing about the parts that were actually some good.  The rationale for Hillary is that the problems we inherit from Bush Jr. markedly resemble those that Bill Clinton inherited from Bush Sr.

It's the Obama crowd that went to revisionism and redefining every element of it as disaster using all kinds of inconsistent or unDemocratic criteria.  Bill Clinton is blamed for losing Congress in '94 in a way reflecting the revisionism of the do-nothing conservative Southern Democrats that actually lost it.  Health care reform failed in 1993 because middle class voters panicked on class/race and weren't ready for it, and the conservative Democrats in Congress weren't willing to pay any political price whatsoever to implement it. NAFTA is made all Clinton's fault, when in fact companies were doing all the same things in more roundabout ways.  (The anger about NAFTA diminished in the late Nineties and picked up again when the Bush Administration let the corporations do whatever they felt like or bought themselves permission to do.)  Bill Clinton and Lewinsky affair are blamed for the 1998 and 2000 election results being bad.  Etc. Etc.  There is a legitimate basis for complaints, but the analyses are not serious.  The honest gripe gets twisted into revisionist or selfserving conservative bullshit.  The motif is always really one of violated conservative desires and willingness to settle for superficial explanations.

The Obama crowd sells on a revisionist utopia: what we could have made of the Nineties.  It's about rolling back the Bush Presidency and pretending it didn't really happen.  It's MultiCulty Paradise that's the domestic vision there.  The 'Culture War' and leftovers of the Cold War being hard problems with unwilling but hard commitments...they don't accept that.  That's other people making unimportant things important, buying into obvious lies and being fools, etc.  Now, I have no love of more Culture War or Cold War combat either, but I think there are hard obstacles to the things we really want- barriers to getting to that place where the Obama vision becomes fairly real- that Obama and his people neither really intend to fight nor will get a mandate to do.  

Instead of a real cleanup of problems with an iron broom we will predictably get fairly soft Administration, if Obama were to win, with substantially more moderate/conservative Democrats to it, though their faces may well be fresh ones.  And they will see their job as reversing the worst Bush measures and adding a few popular ones of their own, and that will be enough.  No commitment is evident to driving to the bottom of problems.  No ethos of real sacrifice is evident for real policy goals, though there is plenty of willing sacrifice to achieve the central desire of Our Turn.  I don't like the prospect of 2012 rolling around and only the really obvious and unavoidable things having been implemented.

Maybe too many Democrats want more time to recuperate after the draining and grind that the Bush years have been, but I'd rather that we knock out the last serious social conservative forces and strongholds.  Civil wars don't end by leaving the last, tattered, tiny rebel armies standing in the field and prolonging the agony out of preciousness and selfpity and wimpy submission to exhaustion.  You eliminate them all as forces, period, and then indulging all that other stuff will get its turn.

I don't think DKos will recover- the ad revenue seems to be falling rapidly, reflecting a dropoff in casual visitors and of a set of hardcores.  Markos has let the bar drop so low that stupidity feels highly emboldened and intelligent people leave.  In the end each site reflects the persons who really define and run it, and the needs of the owner(s) and the people who frequent it.  I suspect Markos is tired of the site (it's been six years, and I'm sure he's sort of burned out on it) and it's become a mere instrument.  He's burning out the political cred of it for some set of reasons- my guess is that he's heading off to becoming a full time consultant and has gambled all his prospects on an Obama victory.  He's in his late thirties, his kids are asking about what his day job is.  Whether Obama campaign cash or promises might be a further incentive, only he can say.

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by: amidthefallingsnow @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:45:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Well, he's right (6.00 / 7)

The way the blogs, and media, has treated Clinton is deplorable. Even liberal stalwarts have earned my boycott as of late: I tune Keith Olberman out because it's inevitable that the first 15 minutes of his show will be dedicated toward bashing Hillary. I don't go to DailyKos for the same reason either.

You know, if Hillary really were that bad, I'd give it a pass... but she's not. On the issues, she may even be further to the left - and closer to where we need to be - than Obama himself. It's just not the 'reality-based' media we've been seeking as the netroots, IMHO... it's crazy, histrionic ranting that just doesn't make sense and has completely turned me off. Screw Kos.

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 16:03:48 PM CDT

Maybe the problem is (6.00 / 2)

that a presidential campaign isn't the best time for a debate on the positions of the candidates among the people who are generally already very familiar with the main players.
Is anyone really satisfied with the debate over the last few months, even here where we are generally much more civil than average? Have any minds been changed here? Or have our positions on our presidential preferences increasingly hardened? I strongly suspect the latter in most cases. Frankly the substantive debate on presidential politics for most of us was over months ago.
Last year I was interested in hearing the various arguments for Edwards, Feingold, and Obama, but that was last year.

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by: Marc Davidson @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:15:00 PM CDT

OK, OK ... (6.00 / 1)

I haven't been writing much lately ... I'll start blogging more. That way we won't have to talk about a "goodbye cruel world" post from Kos. BFD.

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by: Charley on the MTA @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:20:51 PM CDT

Pretty sad if you ask me (5.00 / 3)

I read it as a cry for attention. "Strike" is just another word for "GBCW". Frankly, apart from the tiny news blip in the blogosphere, I don't see how this helps their candidate to just disappear from such an influental blog. I really don't think that most people there will even notice.

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by: HR's Kevin @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:21:32 PM CDT

Not sure about that. (6.00 / 3)

DKos doesn't hit the MSM very often, but Alegre's "strike" post is all over the place -- Atlantic, Politico, you name it.  MSM loves this kind of thing.  

Plus, your point about a candidate disappearing from "such an influential blog" contains the buried assumption that I was talking about upthread.  Yeah, lots of people read DKos.  But does that make it "influential"?  Who does it "influence"?  If anything, I think these days it gives fodder to those who like to paint the left generally, and the lefty netroots specifically, as a bunch of America-hatin' hippies.  Influential, maybe, but not in a terribly constructive way.

Whatever presence Hillary had on DKos wasn't doing her or her campaign any good.  This is probably a net plus for her campaign.  And that's sad -- it didn't have to be that way.

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by: David @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 17:33:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

You're right... (0.00 / 0)

there's an article about the strike on the Drudge Report, which is read by millions.  I think the strike just helps cement the image that the party is pretty much fractured over this primary, and it's not getting any prettier.  

"The world was made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." ~Annie Savoy, Bull Durham

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by: Justice4All @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 21:46:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

That is a blip (0.00 / 0)

The combined audience of all of the political blogs still represents a small percentage of the population, and unlike the real writers strike, this was a one day story. There are no picket lines to observer or cross, no unions to negotiate with, no lost revenue. The strike will live on only as a running joke on that site. This is just not a big story, and you are deluding yourself to think otherwise.

Furthermore, if you go back and actually read the diaries and comments of the strikers, it paints a very mixed picture. These people are no blog saints and are perfectly capable of mixing it up with the worst kos has to offer. It looks very much like a bunch of Clinton partisans doing a mass GBCW.

Don't get me wrong, kos has way to many abrasive knuckleheads, but there is still a lot of good content. I am sure it will go back to normal after the convention.

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by: HR's Kevin @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 08:34:56 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Of course it's a blip. (0.00 / 0)

But you're missing my point.  Most of what happens on the blogs, even the glamor blogs like DKos, never breaks out of the blogosphere.  This story did (and is still doing so -- check out MSNBC this afternoon).  So not only did this story, unlike almost everything else in the blogosphere, actually make it into the MSM, its staying power in the MSM is beyond one day.  Facts are facts.

All of which is to say: what has happened to DKos tarnishes the entire blogosphere.  And that's unfortunate.

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by: David @ Mon Mar 17, 2008 at 11:28:24 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

What is "DailyKos"? (0.00 / 0)

I've never been to that website. When titles have a "k" I think it's a comedy thing. A comedian once said , if you want to get laughs use jokes with a lot of K's in the words. Guess that's why when folks here referred to DKos or Kos, I thought they were taklking about a comedy site.

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by: HLPeary @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 18:55:20 PM CDT

The End is indeed Near (0.75 / 4)

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by: Lasthorseman @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 19:59:06 PM CDT

Forgot (0.00 / 0)

one is supposed to have this unspoken reverence for political pontiffs so far above myself, me of the mere peasant class of Amerikans, how dare I.

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by: Lasthorseman @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 19:35:46 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

no, it's just too juvenile (0.00 / 0)

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by: HR's Kevin @ Mon Mar 17, 2008 at 07:41:01 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I started reading dKos in 2002 (0.00 / 0)

it was the first blog I followed. It was a good political newsource and had some good discussions.

I figure it jumped the shark bad around 2004 and now it is a trash-heap of opinion. TPM is a much better, as long as you don't read the comment section.  

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by: Leonidas @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 20:59:41 PM CDT

These do happen all the time (0.00 / 0)

Greatest on ever.

Kos is horrible, I stopped reading it a while ago, go back from time to time but I no longer read there routinely like I used to.  TPM is great, got on the map with their R scandal coverage and a lot of the Iraq Bush White house coverage. They really dig into a story.  Think Progress is good too, a different flavor of news but they post items I don't normally see elsewhere.  Inside baseball stuff, MyDD is good enough for me Kos is not needed like it used to.

Listening to Charlie Baker talk about fiscal responsibility is like getting lectured on abstinence from Paris Hilton - Tim Murray

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by: johnk @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 21:16:01 PM CDT

disorganized mess over there (6.00 / 1)

by the time I got there about a year ago it was such a disorganized mess with endless open threads that I couldn't figure it out at all and gave up.  TPM still strikes me as a good place to start and, aside from the font here being so tiny, I like to stay up on MA stuff.

But I still start with the daily headlines from NYT, Globe, wapo and Cape Cod Times and go from there.

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by: elfpix @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 21:21:48 PM CDT

tiny font? (0.00 / 0)

really? I'd check your browser, or try another one.  

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 03:42:17 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Good for Him (0.00 / 0)

I think it's  a great idea, and it has nothing to do with whether or not he can take the heat in the "kitchen" or not.  I suspect there are many veterans from the primary wars who are just burned out on this BS.  

A friend of mine recently suggested that we form a new party called the "Common Sense Democrats" for the Democrats who tend to be more centrist in their thinking.  There's a growing sense that the party doesn't want us or need us - so why hang around?  I mean, really - if these people want the party so badly that they'll eviscerate their own members to get their way, then let them have it.  

Who knows - maybe The Common Sense Democrate can attract some of the Indies back to the party.  

"The world was made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." ~Annie Savoy, Bull Durham

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by: Justice4All @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 22:16:55 PM CDT

"centrist" is a policy location. "political evisceration" is a behavior. (6.00 / 3)

being a centrist doesn't in any way insure that a person will/won't participate in the sort of mud slinging under discussion here.  people from all over the political spectrum seem to love that sport.  so you should expect that the Common Sense Democrats will also sling a little mud at each other when they can't agree amongst themselves just what planks should be built into a "common sense" platform.

Click HERE and sign up: Campaign For Military Partners.

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by: Laurel @ Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 22:32:46 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Not welcomed is also a behavior and the location... (0.00 / 0)

is rather Siberian.  There was recently a post in which someone asked "progressive Dems" to run for a school committee seat in my hometown, which appeared to be code for "garden variety" Democrats need not apply.  And if it isn't code...then why qualify it anyway?


"The world was made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." ~Annie Savoy, Bull Durham

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by: Justice4All @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 00:18:12 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

progressivism (0.00 / 0)

is a political ideology unto its own. If you don't agree with a progressive viewpoint, you should run against them for that school committee seat - or find someone who's viewpoint you most agree with, and volunteer for that person.

Though, if you don't understand what progressive means, you shouldn't necessarily just guess that it means essentially super liberal democrats. There are plenty of progressives out there who aren't any more liberal than traditional liberal democrats - progressives just have a different view on how government, and elections, should work.  

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 03:47:10 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Perhaps it's not code, (0.00 / 0)

perhaps they are being quite up front with their preference for progressive Democrats. What exactly is wrong about that?

"The oldest ones are the young ones."

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by: Will @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 10:14:19 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

they already have that (5.00 / 1)

they're called the Blue Dogs.

And they're the ones who make it nearly impossible for us to block any of Bush's most offensive plans, because they constantly capitulate. The Democratic Party, by and large, is already the centrist being. We don't need to go any more to the right. (No offense intended.)

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My thoughts are mine and mine alone. They should not be considered representative of any other organization, group or person - save me.

~Ryan.

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by: Ryepower12 @ Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 03:44:07 AM CDT

[ Parent ]