Amidst all the gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair, and long goodbyes, I have come to admit that I truly like the current State of DailyKos. It has been especially funny (ironic funny) to me that so many are now writing GBCW diaries. Were these people asleep during some of the nastiness of December and January?
Democracy and elections and campaigning and monitoring the campaigns all seems to be a rather messy business. It's surprising we even have to review this truth considering what happened in Nov/Dec 2000. I'm not sure what Richard Cranium and all the rest were expecting. If you want purity and 100% goodness then this site is probably not for you. As for the boorish noobs, why bother with any of their diaries.
I'm no Markos apologist. For over a year I was an enthusiastic My Left Winger so I doubt Markos would have me over for dinner even if I was in the neighborhood. Although, parenthetically, I think he would enjoy some of my own stories of visiting El Salvador on 3 different occasions.
And I will agree with some of the diaries which contend that Markos has basically jumped the shark on the "Hillary made Obama more black and fat" missives that he's recently written. Previous to this, he's always had plausible deniability that he isn't for one candidate over another.
But hey... he's human. There are millions of Americans that now proudly admit that they've been swayed by Obama. Is it so bad that Markos seems convinced, too? The purists seem to want a strict neutrality on this site. There does seem to be some arguments for this. As one of the very largest blogs around, it might be argued that its role should be neutral as it's all about electing Democrats. But in this case, I do think given it's history and given that we are pretty deep into the Primary season, that perhaps Markos and DailyKos deserves a tiny bit of slack for now siding with Obama.
But for those who take up the claim of "site mismanagement", I only have rolling eyes for you. The only thing I've seen in site management during this entire primary season is a light touch. And a light touch is how it should be. All those who want bannings, or censorship, or a new form of troll rating, or whatever it is you want, really don't have the best interests of the DailyKos community nor the Progressive netroots in mind.
This is a place where we come to discuss ideas about elections. Period.
With all due respect to some of the GBCW authors, we haven't seen non-front pagers RenaRF, ClammyC, Thereisnospoon, Occam's Hatchet, Brandon Friedman, TeacherKen, Jerome a Paris, Kid Oakland or even OPOLpermanently leave or threaten to leave DailyKos. Others like David Sirota and Bonddadwho have gigs on other sites or in other media also keep coming back. If we had several of these authors abandoning DKos then I'd say the site might have a fever that needs to be tended to. But we haven't lost one! Not one! Some of these authors that I mentioned are pretty big critics of Markos and sometimes of site administration. But none of them are stomping off and taking their toys due to recent site mismanagement.
Emotions are running high. I get that. Take a break. Enjoy the springtime, wherever you are. Un-hitch from the internet. If after breathing in some natural life you come back and still find the site repugnant, then perhaps your continuing involvement was never meant to be.
Go in peace.