My first reaction to BooMan's
diary opining as to the apparently cozy relationship between Mark Warner and all things Daily Kos is "So What?"
Indeed, shouldn't we be elated? An assumed Presidential Candidate is seeking our approval. Our votes. Mr. Warner is obviously courting us. In fact, Mr. Warner is doing what we wanted candidates to do for years.
This is in no way a bad thing. Mr. Warner is one politician who "gets" it. And we are starving for such politicians.
But BooMan rightly points out that Mr. Warner may experience some problems with the Daily Kos Community. And Mr. Warner's position on Iraq, as it stands now, will be the source of the problems, as BooMan rightly describes that position as really being no different than Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, who are treated here as if they had the plague.
As such, it is quite possible that a large segment of the Daily Kos population will grow to oppose Mr. Warner and his assumed candidacy in 2008. If they do not oppose him already.
And that is why Markos was very careful to say the things he said in introducing Mark Warner. He was careful to say that he had not endorsed Mr. Warner. And the reason for that is that Kos knows he represents Daily Kos, a community where there is no geniune consensus yet on 2008, and as I pointed out, a community that may in fact oppose Mr. Warner.
But BooMan is wrong when he asks "is this what Daily Kos wants?"
He remains wrong in posing the question "has Daily Kos come to a point where they are going to cozy up to the Democratic Leadership Council?"
Yes, this is exactly what Daily Kos wants. We want officeholders in our Democratic Party to take us seriously. We want them to court us. We want them seeking our votes.
But that does not mean we are obligated to support said candidates just because they seek our votes. Just because Mr. Warner is in Las Vegas and speaking at the convention does not mean Daily Kos has endorsed him. Just because a candidate is trying to persuade me to vote for him or her does not mean I am voting for him.
Daily Kos thus is not cozing up to the DLC crowd. The DLC Crowd is cozing up to Daily Kos. And we are within our rights as Kossacks to tell this crowd to go to Hell. The DLC Crowd, in courting our votes, will find out that they will have to change a hell of alot about where they stand in order to get our votes.
And that is a good thing.
That is what Daily Kos wants.