Many on the Right have had fun poking sticks at YearlyKos. The media, as they do with everything these days, swept it up into a maelstrom for a day or two - turning it into whatever it was they wanted it to be, unmindful of any related reality.Byron York begins to address it more seriously here via NRO.
Indeed, many participants in the convention expressed frustration with the way in which bloggers are sometimes portrayed. Yet the remarkable thing is how little scrutiny Moulitsas’s writings have received in major media outlets. Now, after YearlyKos and all the attention that came with it, it seems likely that will change.
As a blog event it was a tremendous accomplishment and a credit to the energy of Markos Moulitsas. Yet, as a political event, it really amounted to less than your average significant fundraiser once you look at the facts.
A recent Iowa Presidential poll had John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry a distant third with John Vilsack bringing up the rear. Only Vilsack attended, and even Nancy Pelosi canceled. Given Moulitsas' on line rhetoric, as York points out, one can easily imagine the RNC praying for a photo of a national Democrat figure with his arm around the author of DailyKos. Not even liberal favorite Russ Feingold attended, I don't believe.
Harry Reid was there, well, it is his home state - and one could speculate he had some boxing tickets that weekend. And not long after Barbara Boxer spoke, a prolific liberal blogger, Jane Hamsher, posted this:
CLUELESS: Well it wasn’t the dumbest thing anyone said so far at the conference, but it was damn close.
Barbara Boxer came upstairs after her speech at YK yesterday and Tom Curry from MSNBC asked her about her position on Joe Lieberman. Boxer enthusiastically expressed her support of her esteemed colleague with whom she had worked many times over the years, and said all of the opposition to Joe was based on his support of the war. She said other groups, like women, were backing Joe because he was so good on their issues. I like many things about Barbara Boxer so I’m going to assume here that she’s an idiot and not a liar.
The fact is that women in Connecticut are NOT happy with Joe Liebeman on their issues. In fact the head of Connecticut NARAL and Connecticut Planned Parenthood are EXTREMELY upset about Rape Gurney Joe telling rape victims to take a hike (literally) if they want emergency contraception and have the bad luck to be taken to a publicly funded, Catholic emergency room. In fact in a recent poll 74% of Connecticut voters think that Catholic hospitals should have to provide this necessary treatment to rape victims or get out of the fucking emergency medical business. Barbara Boxer seems, at best, a tad out of touch with what’s going on with Joe in his home state of Connecticut as she shows her support for the incumbency protection racket.
That Boxer is out of touch was backed up moments later in the hall when she turned on Curry, miffed at having been asked the question in the first place. "Why are you so focused on Lieberman?" she snapped. "Because everyone here is," he answered. This seemed to shock Boxer. Where exactly did her aides tell her she was speaking?
No doubt other party-faithful Democrat Senators and Representatives will be lining up for the honor of giving their time to such erudite would be pundits, wouldn't you say? But the real myth around YearlyKos is that it was some coming of age event for political bloggers. What have people been watching?
Libertarian, though often considered Right by some, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit is frequently enough on Reliable Sources. If one watched coverage of the 04 election, it was hard to miss the fellows from Powerline. Michelle Malkin is becoming a regular fixture on Fox and the Right recently launched GOP Bloggers, not to mention BlogsForBush.
To many bloggers, the rhetoric, and more importantly, the positions, of those most closely aligned with DailyKos are fairly well known: Get out of Iraq now, impeach Bush, nationalize health care, completely unrestricted abortion, cut the budget for the Pentagon, while offering some number of other entitlements by taxing the rich who fuel the economic engine of the vast multi-cultural and ultimately balkanized cum socialist America the KosKids want it to be.
The most important critic of YearlyKos wasn't the Right, it was the Democratic Leadership Council KosKids love to loathe. At some point the adults might remind them that it was the DLC that produced the only Democrat President in the last thirty or so years.
The reality of Yearly and DailyKos is that America continues to reject their positions, year after year. And given their clear desire to not compromise, or hide their agenda, as most successful liberal Democrats do, it's only a matter of time before DailyKos becomes an albatross around the Democrat's neck.
As a conservative, party on Kos is about all that really needs be said.
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