Hi, it's Trapper John. And at the risk of prolonging an already agonizingly overwrought discussion, I'm going to tell a short story.
A lot of folks here probably don't really remember this -- since the site has grown nearly exponentially in the past year or so -- but I was one of the dKos front-page contributing editors from January 2004 until December 2004. The other members of my "class" were DHinMI, DemFromCT, and Meteor Blades (and, for a brief time, Theoria). Now, what's all this ancient personnel recitation got to do with the price of tea in China (or, for that matter, The New Republic's rapidly declining circulation)? Not much -- except it pretty much puts the lie to TNR's and David Brooks's pathetic bleating about how Big Bad Markos has a death grip on the minds of lefty bloggers. Markos's selection of me and my classmates shows that Markos is an abject failure at controlling political discussion at the very top of his own site, much less in the liberal blogosphere as a whole. Read on.
It was a fascinating time to write on the front page, due in part to the growth of the site during that time, but mostly because of the 2004 election. And while the latter part of that election -- the Bush-Kerry showdown -- demonstrated how this community to work together toward a common goal, the 2004 primary season served as an example of just how fractured we can be.
Markos supported Howard Dean by early Fall 2003, as did a plurality, if not majority, of Kossacks. But there were vocal Clark and Edwards minority caucuses, a handful of Gephardt and Kucinich supporters, and a surprisingly large number of ABD ("Anyone But Dean," for those who've forgotten) folks. (Not more than one or two Kerry partisans, FWIW.) And man, things got heated early and often. This fraudster/anti-fraudster stuff? Shit, it doesn't have a patch on a good ol' Dean/anti-Dean argument for sheer, untrammeled vitriol. Those were contentious times.
Now, if Markos was really interested in manipulating the hive mind of the blogosphere to manufacture support for a Dean nomination -- as TNR and Brooksie would have us believe -- you'd think he'd have selected committed Deanies to replace Soto and Gilliard as front-pagers. Or maybe, just maybe, if he really wanted to ratfuck the anti-Dean cohort, he'd pick one or two unhinged Clark or Edwards fans, just to make the Dean loyalists look good by comparison.
But no. No, Markos picked two writers who hadn't given the slightest indication whom they liked among the 2004 Dems (DemFromCt and Meteor Blades), a vaguely pro-Clark but definitely anti-Deanie fellow (DHinMI), and me -- an avowed Gephardt supporter who had some real problems with the Dean candidacy. None of us were unhinged, and none of us had any real love for Dean. We were all cogent writers who did nothing to aid the Dean campaign; to the contrary, DHinMI and I may have, in some slight way, helped Dean's opponents.
So either Markos is shockingly incompetent when it comes to accomplishing his core mission of aiding candidates employing Jerome Armstrong, or TNR and Davd Brooks are full of shit. Your call. Either way, it goes to show that -- pace Marty Peretz -- Markos Moulitsas runs a fairly heterodox media outlet. And with that, I'm going to turn my attention back to the shit that matters.
UPDATE by DHinMI
I'd just like to add a tiny bit of additional information to this post. When Markos first asked me and Meteor Blades to start "guest blogging" for him back in the late Summer of 2003, he never asked either of us anything about our preferences for President. He never asked any of us to write something, or to not write something, and he never edited any of our posts. I can think of a couple posts that Markos wrote where some of the most vociferous disagreements came from me, MB, Trapper John or DemFromCT. In fact, one post I suspect Markos wishes he never wrote elicited withering criticism from all four of us, and within ten minutes of it being posted.
In short, if mob "kingpins" enforced allegiance in the lackadasical way Markos dealt with our political "loyalties," we might never have had The Godfather, Frank Sinatra or the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.