One of the old guard left-of-center, data-driven bloggers Kevin Drum has died after a long battle with cancer at the age of sixty-six. From Wiki:
Drum initially rose to prominence through the popularity of his independent blog Calpundit (2003–2004). He later was invited to launch another blog, Political Animal (2004–2008), for the Washington Monthly. He held a writing and blogging position at Mother Jones from 2008 to 2021, before returning to independence with his Jabberwocking blog.
One of his most important hypotheses was his lead-based poisoning thesis as an explanation for the crime rate (particularly lead paint chips) which — when lead paint was phased-out — became less of a factor.
He also was one of the pioneers of Friday Cat Blogging, for which regular readers of mine know of my interest. Many years ago, after one of his readers noted that her nephew liked Kevin's cat Inkblot (of whom years later he sadly announced had been mauled by a coyote) he wrote something like:
"Cats today, infrastructure program tomorrow. Inkblot is a critical cog in our vast, youth indoctrination plan."
In the Lawyers Guns Money blog, readers weighed-in. Some expressed some major differences with him (others very minor) yet there were numerous tributes to his fair-mindedness, willingness to change his mind and ability to admit he was wrong. “I didn’t always agree with him, but I always respected him” was the consensus.
One comment stood out:
Drum's two besetting flaws, I think, were, the first, that he tended to extend assumptions of good faith ... past when they were warranted. And he was a normie white guy with a normie white guy's blind spots, against which he struggled, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. And I tell you: if that's the worst you can say about someone ... they did pretty good overall.
