Dean Barnett over at the Daily Standard says Daily Kos is akin to a
virtual ward committee.
Like a ward committee, the Kos community is able to raise funds for candidates and causes it deems worthy. Also like a ward committee, the Kos community has energy; politicians know a favorable nod from Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas or one of his co-bloggers can generate not just cash but volunteers, too. Problematically, though, the Daily Kos also has many of the negative characteristics of a Ward committee: The excessive passion, the intemperate remarks, and the strange world views of people who obsess about politics.
BUT AS A WARD COMMITTEE ON HYPER-STEROIDS, the Daily Kos has become enough of a player that it's not just selectmen and aspiring state senators who curry the community's favor. United States Senator Barbara Boxer has sent the community not one but two fawning mash notes in the past month to better ingratiate herself with the Kossacks (as they call themselves). As Moulitsas has crowed many times on his website, the Daily Kos has real power, power that is evidenced by the fact that a national figure such as Boxer will stop by repeatedly to pay her respects.
But unlike an actual ward committee which has its meetings (mercifully) in private, the Daily Kos convenes around the clock on the Internet, where the whole world can monitor its goings on.
Last week Kos "diarist" (the Kos Community has numerous diaries which function as blogs within the blog) "Regeneration Man" offered a lengthy post which purported to prove that Jeff Gannon/James Guckert was the missing link in the Rathergate scandal. As Regeneration Man put it, "It now appears that Jeff Gannon could be the thread that unravels the real story behind the TANG/CBS forgeries. I have put together a case here that if looked at carefully by the blogosphere would show that the TANG forgeries were made by the White House . . . The main point of this diary is that Gannon was being used by the White House to ID Mapes to send the news media in a certain direction on that story . . . In all instances, it's Gannon who is given hot information to help orchestrate the story." ...
Moulitsas (who declined to be interviewed for this story) has not been bashful about his ambitions: He wants to first empower the Democratic grassroots and then in turn empower a more reliably liberal Democratic party.
But his site's greatest asset is also its greatest potential liability. The Kos community's energy attracts politicians with the promise of money and volunteers. But that same energy also produces a surfeit of unseemly commentary on a recurring basis. If Moulitsas is unable or unwilling to exert a more forceful hand in harnessing that energy, he runs the risk that the political class will eschew his embrace.
Then again, perhaps Moulitsas is trying to usher a different kind of Democratic politician to the fore--the kind of politician who is unconstrained by the traditional urge to appear civil.
Steve Gilliard pokes great big holes in Barnett's commentary:
Like all Daily News stories about the NY Post serve an agenda, all Weekly Standard stories abouyt liberal bloggers must be regarded in the same light. First, Kos has the brains to not talk to the Weekly Standard, something I would recommend as SOP for all liberal bloggers. Why let them distort our words when we can speak for ourselves.
Second, civility? You mean like Michelle Malkin's justification of the reprehensible internment of the Japanese, Jonah Goldberg attacking Juan Cole, only to get his dick smacked, and Frei Republik, which routinely calls for murder of people they disagree with.
DO NOT BE FOOLED. Civility is a club to beat you over the head with. Jim Inhofe is as civil as a dog. Ann Coulter uses the word treason like Alton Brown uses Kosher Salt. They want to make it seem like the Daily Kos community is a bunch of wackos and it is not Frei Republik, and saying one "hates" Republicans wouldn't go far there. Of course, they left out the fight between the vote fraudesters and Kos, who didn't let them take over the site. Imagine that battle on Frei Republik. People would have lost their minds.
They want to call us unamerican traitors and we're supposed to remain civil. Well, that dog don't hunt. They no longer get a free hand. They stopped being civil a long time ago. So don't be fooled by this argument, because it's really bullshit.
What you also need to read into this is that GOP attempts to create a version of Kos has failed miserably. The owners either edit comments or demand party loyalty to an idea-killing degree. So it serves their interest to knock Kos and his site as much as possible. They want to hamstring the Democrats while the vermin they call pundits run free denigration their opponents and embarassing America.
Drummond and
georgia10 posted Diaries on this subject earlier today.