A Compendium of Yearly Kos News

As you might expect, an event that gets all the major Democratic candidates to come and talk to folks involved in the new media, is the subject of a few jitters and considerable attention in the old media.  The word "liberal" might not have seen this much ink since the time of Truman.  There have been many different looks at the convention, and the refreshing thing is how many of them -- unlike last time -- get past the "those crazy nutroots kidz" attitude that dominated last years' coverage.

The home turf Trib logs an account of varied personalities, growing power and Marko's great answer as to why the candidates are at YearlyKos rather than the DLC meeting.

"If the DLC had an e-mail list of 3 million people, you better believe those presidential candidates would have been there," said Moulitsas, who founded the influential Daily Kos blog. "We provide bodies. We provide troops on the ground. It is a more activist audience."

The Washington Post describes Yearly Kos as the other national convention.

The common assumption is that the Net roots is monolithic and full of ideologues. It is neither. It is made up of people who are mostly interested in getting Democrats elected -- and making sure Democrats stay in power.

Meanwhile E. J. Dionne gets it

Daily Kos is often described as liberal, but it is, more than anything, partisan. Its core assumption is that ideological conservatives made the Republican Party their vehicle and rallied in lock step against Democrats. The party of FDR and JFK needed to find the same discipline. The key litmus tests for Kos and his many allies in the blogosphere involve not long lists of issues developed by the American Civil Liberties Union or the AFL-CIO, but loyalty in standing up against Bush and doing what's necessary to build a Democratic majority.

And US News and World Report reliably frames this in the usual, "but what does it mean for Republicans?" terms.

And most of this online activism is being dominated by the left. Robert Bluey, a conservative blogger for the Heritage Foundation, notes that there isn't anything comparable on the right. While former Sen. Fred Thompson has assembled a talented Net team for his unofficial presidential run and Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have been fairly innovative online, nothing they are doing comes close.

The prominence of the upcoming event, which features 200 speakers and is expected to draw crowds of more than 1,400, may be a wake-up call for the less Internet-savvy organizations and candidates.

"So this is a lesson to the center and a real lesson to the Republican candidates," Cornfield says. "If you want to win elections in the digital age, you have to have a network; you have to have digital grass roots."