This Morning Markos wrote Accountability moment: How did my predictions stack up?+*, reflecting on his remarkable polling accuracy, and it occurred to me that I hadn't recently thanked him for his writing and other contributions here. So I wrote this comment which I replicate here with a few corrections, and an added picture, and additions to also thank the founding team, front pagers, other volunteer writers, commenters, readers, other lurkers, and all the rest of you here that have built the Daily Kos community into such a powerful and effective voice for advancing progressive, liberal, and Democratic causes.
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Great job kos. BTW, I gained a much better appreciation of your work and role here over this last year and a half.
I know it might seem funny for the founder, one of the key writers of 10 years, and still active manager of his own world famous blog site to receive praise for participation and contribution from a lowly seven year lurker, like myself, you may not have even noticed, but due to a number of improbable coincidences, and maybe a testimony to how incredibly large this place has become, with over 500,000 UIDs, I didn't really notice your political analysis, writing work as much as I should have over my first five our so years here, until we started this last political cycle two years ago.
I've praised you before for your generous, hand-offs, tolerant, and visionary management style, and for founding the site, but I hadn't really noticed how much work you do as a writer and political analyst until this last few years.
For example, since I rarely wake up the first half of Saturdays, I never even noticed your regular and humorous Saturday morning hate-mail until last year some time.
For much of my first five years I mostly lurked in comment sections where you don't seem to spend as much time. And, for some reason, maybe because I wasn't really a morning person, I never noticed much of the other front pager's work except for Meteor Blades (probably due to Night Owls.) But, what a pleasant surprise to learn what excellent work all of you have been doing on a regular basis.
Whatever ... sorry for mis-communicating my main point which is to congratulate you for your excellent political writing, and political and poll analysis which I really noticed a lot of this last year as we collectively focused our efforts on winning the elections.
Only after making the commitment last year to write more influential posts to help Democratic elections did I increase my own small contributions and gained a greater appreciation of how much work, research, background reading, analysis, and presentation skill it takes as I strived to emulate the steady stream of high level, professionally formatted, and timely political insight you've been delivering here for a whole decade.
So, thanks and keep up the great work. And, thanks again for your generous and trusting nature in allowing, and even encouraging, such a tremendous diversity of writing and behavior from the rest of us, and allowing us to contribute here in such free and open ways, even though our standards do not always come up to the same level. We reflect such a wide array of diverse idiosyncratic affections that you must sometimes wonder what you were thinking when you started this endeavor.
This diversity and openness is one factor that makes Daily Kos the best site in the world for advancing progressive and Democratic thinking, in my opinion, and also continues to build this community as an increasingly powerful voice in our political system and Party.
I've done a small amount of opposition research on RedState and other conservative blog sites where differences of opinions, or criticism of the power structure of either the blog site, the Party, or other sacred cows, leads to banning and censuring -- something our counter-parts on the right-wing has not yet figured out cripples the quality of their thinking, and quickly ensconces them into self-delusional bubbles where they too easily lose touch with reality and become ineffective.
Your tolerance for real diversity of people and thinking requires an under-appreciated kind of strength, self-confidence, patience, and generosity that you probably do not get enough credit for.
Thanks again and keep up the great work.
After due celebration of these wonderful election victories, progressive, liberals, and other Democrats here have a lot of work ahead of us, as many of the conservatives and Republicans are already doubling down on some of their most regressive agenda and pledging to "continue the battle for this country's "soul" right into the next years and 2014 and 2016 - most likely with even more unimaginable funding than this year.
You've built a powerful voice here built on a much stronger currency than dollars that will continue to lead the way, and give us advantages money alone can not buy as we move Forward to a better America and world.
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I'd like to double down on this thanks and express the same sentiment to all of you who contribute in a wide variety of ways with relative grace, charm, style, dedication, and that unique Daily Kos verve that makes this the best blog site anywhere.
Advocating our progressive ideals and making them part of a better country is going to take a lifetime of work. So I look forward to many year of continued collaboration as we work together to build a better world.
PS: From, Wikipedia
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (ˈmɑrkoʊs muːˈliːtsəs; born September 11, 1971), often known by his username and former military nickname "Kos" (kōz), is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos, a blog focusing on liberal and Democratic Party politics in the United States. He is also a weekly columnist at the Washington, D.C. newspaper, The Hill, and a contributing columnist at Newsweek.[1]