All politics is local. I think the best way for Daily Kos to magnify its national impact, paradoxically, would be to sharpen its focus on both elections and local issues in all of the states.
This diary is inspired by Slinkerwink's excellent recommended diary "What Should Be The Future Of Daily Kos" (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/19/91350/119/611/663484).
At the moment that diary has 571 comments. There is mention in the diary itself, and in some of the comments, on increasing the focus on local elections. After thinking about that a bit, I think the idea is worth a diary on its own, as this grew past comment length.
One of my favorite features on Daily Kos are the election diaries from people reporting from their home states. Carnacki's many diaries on West Virginia come to mind and there are many others.
So far the community's efforts to promote particular candidates have focused on a few preferred candidates, those promoted by ActBlue and some others. This is useful.
But following Howard Dean, I think the focus should expand to include all Democratic candidates on every level.
For example, I'd like to be able to subscribe on the site in such a way that all information pertaining to Maryland issues and elections comes up in a browser tab. I've just switched to Firefox, and I really don't get all the tab features, but I could figure it out. I'd really like to have all Maryland stuff right there every time I log on, without having to do searches.
Smarter technical minds will have better ideas on how to do this, but perhaps people could volunteer to be co-chairs for their home state, and a main part of their job would be to do regular searches and to check tags so that appropriate material for a particular state would automatically be routed to the state tab.