It is not an accident that the Daily KOS blog has achieved rapid and sustained growth that has eclipsed that of the leading right-wing blogs. This disparity reveals an important asymmetry between progressive and "conservative" politics in the Internet era. It is tempting to believe that the success of KOS is simply attributable to the good leadership of Markos, but that is like attributing the emergence of the electric light to a man named Edison. The materials and technological enablers for electric illumination were available in Edison's time, and another inventor would eventually have achieved the breakthrough. The KOS phenomenon is really all about a structurally superior blog environment that is grounded in the constructive engagement of progressives.
Conservative media outlets don't encourage the formation of new ideas, because they are top-down propaganda organs that aim for energizing and mobilizing partisans to support plans crafted by their leaders. Rush and the dittoheads are the model for how conservative media operates. This is why the criticism of KOS by David Brooks was so profoundly stupid. It is obvious that Mr. Brooks can't discern the difference between the right and left sectors of the political blogosphere. Let's look at the structural advantages of progressive blogs in greater detail.
1. Progressive blogs have richer and more powerful features. Markos chose the Scoop software to enable contributors to DailyKOS to make substantial contributions to the discourse, instead of just posting "what he said!" messages.
2. Progressive blogs are more tolerant of multiple perspectives and dissent than conservative blogs. Despite the troll-hunting that goes on at KOS, it is clear that a broad range of controversy is acceptable. Right-wing bloggers crush dissent, because they are psychologically committed to Bossism and authoritarian organization.
3. Progressive blogs are seeking new answers to emerging problems. Thus they are innovative and fruitful in their spinoffs. They are spawning grounds for the next generation of online political activism. Conservative blogs are focussed on retarding change. Their proprietors want to slow down, then reverse many of the changes that have already taken place in American society. Thus, they have little incentive to make structural innovations, other than to improve their propaganda reach.
4. The reason KOS is being attacked is that the conservatives have correctly assessed that the evolutionary gap does not favor them. Extrapolation of the evolutionary characteristics of the liberal blogosphere shows that it will come to dominate interactive Internet politics. All the conservatives can do is crank up the volume of their old-world broadcast propaganda organs to try to discredit powerful emerging progressive blog structures like KOS. It won't work.