Re: WaMo DailyKos Piece

Last night's Washington Monthly "Kos Call" article about Kos, and by extension, DailyKos, is still sitting uncomfortably with me.

I perused some of Wallace-Wells' other articles since this piece suffered from a lack of fundamental journalism skills--in particular the ability to collect good data and prioritize relevant information--and I wasn't sure whether this was a stumble by a weak journalist, or an intentional misstep.  Per other Wallace-Wells pieces, he seems to work primarily with policy or criticism of policy fleshed out with limited data supporting an implied thesis.  They appear solidly reasoned and adequately sourced.  ("Off Track" is a good recent article.)

But this particular article, "Kos Call", is oddly off.

There seems to be an underlying story here.  And this is how it seems to play:  the liberal blogosphere is preparing for the 2006 democratic primary run-up, and the WaMo and TNR are making a subtle move for what they perceive as "the middle".  Not within the blogosphere, but within "big D" Democratic circles of influence.  Offered with the bonhomie of a slap on the back but functioning more as a judo flip, Wallace-Wells gallantly decodes DailyKos for those of us in the liberal blog audience who remain unacquainted with this site.

But, then...none of us in this vast liberal blogosphere needs Wallace-Wells to explain the function and content of DailyKos.  Anyone tooling around this site for less than a week should be able to comprehend the varied make-up of specialized current news analysis, policy wonkery, therapeutic venting and simple camaraderie that this site houses.  

So, if the blogosphere is not the intended audience, who is?  Did Wallace-Wells gather his choice, irrelevant material and strategic anonymous quotes--fitting perhaps, in a season of anonymous sources--as an offering for outsiders looking to undermine the credibility of this site?  "Kos Call" is an article well-tailored for email distribution in political circles, signaling the weakness of the once feared fortress of DailyKos.

Complimentary discussion is embarrassingly out-dated, stale and obvious, but the insinuations are leading and corrosive.  And his claims--when not patently false--are crafted to leave false and damaging impressions:

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.

The site is for the true believers, not the aesthetes; its tone is harsh, impassioned, and frequently humorless.  And sometimes infantile and absurd.  The site in recent months has become to seem like the site of some arcane political Thermidor with puzzled liberals being endlessly impaled upon pikes.

But the more that the Democratic Party turns to Moulitsas for help, the more the limits to his movement become apparent, the less the raw animus of many liberals for the Iraq war seems likely to translate into any lasting liberal movement, and the more the current obsession with his brand of Winnerism looks misplaced.

Most other bloggers think that Moulitsas is a fame hound, a loudmouthed nerd at the back of the room pulling ever more absurd stunts to get attention--What if I doctor the photo of Zell Miller, so it has fangs, and blood cascading from its mouth? What if I did it without wearing any pants?

There are simple and legend-worthy stories of Kos, and of DailyKos: one tells how this site helped develop a new synergy between lawmakers and citizens for the first time in history, another lies in the "brain explosion" of resources and research that feeds the traditional media and forces them to get relevant to stay competitive, and yet another can be found in the blogs spawned from and cross-pollinating with DailyKos, engaging international involvement and creating a community of communities.  DailyKos has made activism a shared lifestyle in a time when very few lifestyles can be shared anymore.

In telling the story of the DLC, Wallace-Wells is polite company--he carefully avoids presenting the progressive point of view and overlooks the keystone of the split:  that the DLC exists to strengthen and benefit corporate interests within the Democratic Party against the interests of American citizens.  The DLC could write an epic about its K Street adventures.  As well, Wallace-Wells forgets to mention the groundbreaking practice of Senate leaders using DailyKos as a forum for action and feedback, as he scrambles in the annals of 2003 for sufficiently dull and worn material to give the impression of thoroughness.

Markos has given a rebuttal of some confusing and contradictory charges made.  Many more can be addressed.  I would like to highlight one:

The younger-than-35 liberal professionals who account for most of his audience seem an ideologically satisfied group, with no fundamental paradigm--changing demands to make of the Democratic Party. They don't believe strongly, as successive generations of progressives have, that the Democratic Party must develop more government programs to help the poor, or that racial and ethnic minorities are wildly underrepresented, or that the party is in need of a fundamental reform towards the pragmatic center--or at least they don't believe so in any kind of consistent or organized manner.

That Wallace-Wells can say this is astounding for so many reasons--first, because it shows a glaring failure to read the site as basic prep for the article, but also because this article is written and edited by those understood to be a part of "the Netroots".  (Kevin Drum specifically recommended and endorsed the article on the WaMo website.)  That this statement was issued from netroots media shows that so many are still so clearly stuck in the rearview mirror, and cannot comprehend policy change as pertains to the future, and as we advocate it on this site daily:

alternative energy analysis and proposals,
campaign finance reform,
voting reform,
policy on the Iraq war,
immigration policy and issues,
and so forth.

And eliminating corruption in government is policy, though the DLC might not like to think so.

The article is short on integrity and relevance but long on mistakes and foreshadowing.   Wallace-Wells is foreshadowing the decline of...DailyKos?  The Netroots?  The wing of the Democratic Party that is not the DLC?  

We're not sure yet, it appears that he is still conjuring out of his ass.