Washington Monthly on Daily Kos
by RonChusidThe Washington Monthly looks at Daily Kos. One of our problems with Kos is that, while he bashes those he doesn’t like (such as Kerry) as Bush-lyte without any ideological justification, the candidates he supports are often significantly less liberal than Kerry. Washington Monthly sheds light on this:
The conventional wisdom is that a Democratic Party in which Moulitsas calls the shots would cater to every whim of its liberal base. But though he can match Michael Moore for shrillness, the most salient thing about Moulitsas’s politics is not where he falls on the left-right spectrum (he’s actually not very far left). It’s his relentless competitiveness, founded not on any particular set of political principles, but on an obsession with tactics —and in particular, with the tactics of a besieged minority, struggling for survival: stand up for your principles, stay united, and never back down from a fight. “They want to make me into the latest Jesse Jackson, but I’m not ideological at all,” Moulitsas told me, “I’m just all about winning.”
One of the problems with Kos is that he gave misleading impressions that victory over Bush should be easy, ignoring the difficulties in beating an incumbent during war time. When Kerry lost, the ditto heads at his site blamed Kerry, weakening the party in the long run. The Washinton Monthly gives a reason as to why readers at Kos had unrealistic expectations:
Moulitsas wasn’t just posting any polls, he was selecting those that suggested Democrats—from John Kerry to congressional candidates—were heading for victory, while downplaying less encouraging signs. It left liberals trapped in a bubble of reassurance. Heading into the election, it would have been reasonable to assume from the evidence presented on Daily Kos that Kerry was the clear favorite to beat Bush, and that Democrats were likely to pick up seats in both houses of Congress. When none of these things happened, there was a sense of incomprehension. All of Kos’s confident predictions had been wrong. “It’s a valid criticism. Looking back, I was too optimistic,” Moulitsas told me. “[At] the beginning, I didn’t even know what a margin of error was.”
While I fear it will be quite damaging to Democrats in the long run to allow Kos to appear as an unofficial spokesman, the article does point out that he has not actually been very successful politically:
Worse, Kos hadn’t just fared poorly as an armchair quarterback—he’d been beaten on the field, too. In the Democratic primaries, he first backed Dean, then Wesley Clark. Both sparked grassroots excitement, but ultimately, of course, flamed out. Then, of the 13 Democratic candidates for Congress that Moulitsas handpicked for his readers to support—and for whom he raised over $500,000– not a single one prevailed.
Ultimately where we differ from Kos is that we care about what happens after a candidate is elected. This is all about the government policies we will ultimately have. Therefore we continue to back John Kerry based upon his policy positions, while Kos continues his vendetta against Kerry dating back to when he was paid to support his primary opponent. While on the one hand Washington Monthly gives Kos far too much importance than it has in politics, it also sums up his failings:
Moulitsas is just basically uninterested in the intellectual and philosophical debates that lie behind the daily political trench warfare. By his own admission, he just doesn’t care about policy. It’s here that the correlation between sports and politics breaks down. In sports, as Vince Lombardi is said to have put it, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” When the season is over, you hang up your cleats and wait for the next season. But in politics, that’s not the case—you have to govern, and if you don’t govern well, you won’t get reelected. So while tactics and message are crucial, most voters will ultimately demand from politicians ideas that give them a sense of what a party is going to do once in power. Wanting to win very badly is an admirable and necessary quality in politics, and Moulitsas is right that Democrats have needed it in greater quantity. But it is not really a political philosophy.
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Ron
It should be all about the issues, not just winning. Winning is important and we need to get there, but yes once we do we need to affect change in policies. It’s untrealistic to think that it’s all about winning and if it were and he were so effective why hasn’t those he has backed won?
Big questions for the DCCC if they plan to elevate him to some advisor of stature.
Big questions for the DCCC if they plan to elevate him to some advisor of stature.
If they do, my contributions stop. I will not donate to any organization that helps lend credence to this Dem hater. He only helps to promote divisiveness, and that’s the last thing we need right now. If kos was about winning, he does a piss-poor job of it.
When I give to the DCCC, I do it to help our candidates, not kos’s massive ego.
Kos ain’t no Rove and the last thing the party needs is a Rove Wannabee. (We also don’t need a Rove.)
If we want unity, if that is indeed what we stand for as a party, then we have to model those principles. We either live what we say we believe or… we don’t.
GV,
In Kos’s comments on this he noted several errors in the article with regards to his ties to the party establishment. These were over minor points, not the issues discussed here.
Kos did respond on the DCCC item in the article:
“That staffer is a liar. I have never made a recruitment call for the DCCC. I’ve never made a call for the DCCC period. I’ve talked to ONE congressional candidate this cycle and it had nothing to do with the DCCC.”
“All he really wants is not to be president, or governor, or have statues built for him,” one of his friends told me, “but maybe to help run the DCCC, to help Democrats win, and to have been right.”
I have no doubt kos is capable of doing a lot of good. He’s just got to stop bashing every Dem who doesn’t fit his mold.
And I’m not going to stop giving to the DCCC.
Thanks, very interesting look at kos.
Kos is a 30-something, educated at Yale and Harvard, I believe, who takes this as something of a lark. Not as seriously as for someone with his power and potentially damaging reach.
This from another top 100 blogmeisters who has met him, a single mom, and takes changing and affecting the world quite seriously.
Moulitsas told me. “[At] the beginning, I didn’t even know what a margin of error was.”
This nails it for me. Kos always struck me as a lucky newbie who managed to get a mic and hang on to it. Cooperation, consensus building, and all the other WORK that is both politics and governing always seemed beyond his almost adolescent attitude and arguments.
Ditto for the rest of the writers on Kos.
It isn’t only that Kos was lucky, but that he made the right moves, but his initial success doesn’t qualify him as a political guru.
Kos had the advantages of being one of the first sites which discussed such political issues, and he was smart to set it up with diaries for members. He gave people reason to come back, and his hits are greatly amplified by people commenting to both main posts and all the diaries.
So, if you want someone to set up a political web site, Kos might be a great one to hire.
If you want someone who understands the issues or realy knows what the candidates are all about, Kos is the wrong guy.
Ron
What’s interesting when you look at the “comments” on Kos and some of the other highly trafficed blogs is there is no substance, no conversation, no discussion.
Pamela,
What has always bothered me more is that when they do discuss issues they are so quick to abandon principles.
I realized how little devotion to principle they had when the Medicare issue came up during the primaries. When I questioned Dean for supporting the same cutbacks in Medicare which Gingrich was pushing for, the response of many was to back Dean and support the Medicare cut backs. The moment the issue was connected to Dean, they ignored principle to back him.
Ron, exactly, I know I sound like a broken record, but “If we want unity, if that is indeed what we stand for as a party, then we have to model those principles. We either live what we say we believe or… we don’t.”
It blows my mind how easily some on the Left parrot the behavior on the Right. Justification and rationalism rule the day. Haven’t we had enough of that from this misAdministration? Do we need, as a party, to use their tactics? NO!
Ron,
And they are the same ones who rant about Clinton, or anyone else trying to be a minority legislator in a hostile group, not strictly upholding Democratic principles or positions.
I give Kos credit for being the first to get the site up and running. I think it’s a lot like other new things that come about because of new technology ( or even developing the technology because of new scientific knowledge and production capabilities) there are any number of people who are working on the same idea with different ways to implement it. Kos is an excellent example of how the first ones are not necessarily the best, they sacrifice something in order to beat the others. And society starts with more mediocrity than good from the power of something new .
Personally, I think mediocrity is more destructive than outright evil. People put up with it, don’t recognize it, don’t feel the need to fight it. In the long run, it does more harm by interfering with or clouding the better ideas.