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June 10, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
An Overdose Of Yearly Kos
The netroots invaded Las Vegas this week for the Yearly Kos convention to celebrate the growth and influence of the liberal blogosphere, but you don't have to be there to appreciate the show. The confab is the focus of attention almost everywhere you turn online.
For $10, Air America Radio is offering live Web streams of the conference, which began Thursday and ends tomorrow. C-Span also covered the event yesterday (footage is available in C-Span's Web archives) and was expected to be there again for some of the sessions today.
The blog channel of PoliticsTV, a video offshoot of the liberal blogosphere that launched earlier this year, is running clips of speeches from the event and interviews with participants like Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and former Ambassador Joe Wilson.
Other video excerpts have been posted at ForaTv and Link TV, and by a diarist at Daily Kos,
Some transcripts from the event already are available online, too. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of Daily Kos and the inspiration for the convention, posted the text of his keynote speech the morning after he gave it, and Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest shared his prepared remarks from two sessions.
Conservative bloggers sent a few spies to the conference, and they are blogging about the event and posting footage of their own. Hot Air, the video site recently launched by blogger Michelle Malkin, is offering the most frequent critical coverage, while blogger/New York Sun writer Ryan Sager offered an insider's view of liberal bloggers discussing whether or how to "spin" the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "Nope. No way to spin this one," Sager concluded.
Both Expose the Left and RedState noted the footage of Boxer calling for the censure of President Bush now and the possibility of a future impeachment. RedState's analysis: "Impeachment with a wink and a nod. It's an impossibility now, but give us the House, and it's a whole new ballgame."
Several major media outlets are at Yearly Kos as well. Think Progress has a roundup of links from yesterday. The New York Times also published both a news article and a column by Maureen Dowd on the event today. And Ana Marie Cox, the blogger made famous at Wonkette, penned a column for Time magazine.
Washingtonpost.com sent its political blogger, Chris Cillizza. He covered Moulitsas' keynote speech on Thursday. Cillizza also has posted entries about former Gen. Wesley Clark and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Dean, and former Virginia Gov. (and potential presidential candidate) Mark Warner.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal was there as well. And here's a gem of an excerpt from Salon (one that apparently didn't set well with Chris Bowers of MyDD):
At the top, the Democratic blog movement is overseen by a small, and increasingly powerful, brain trust. They are organized, as one blogger explained to me, like a royal court. Moulitsas, as King Kos, sits in the throne overseeing the largest political site on the Internet, with substantial power to direct the conversation and raise money. His chief advisor is Jerome Armstrong, who pioneered liberal blogging and now works on the undeclared Mark Warner presidential campaign. Beneath them sit a set of ministers, most of them connected to Armstrong's Web site MyDD or DailyKos. Chris Bowers, a gangly longhair from Pennsylvania, plays the role of policy advisor, having mastered the wonky details of polling and district strategy. Matt Stoller, an aggressive preppie, plays the role of Washington enforcer, leading Internet-based campaigns into the halls of the Capitol. Beyond the inner court, there is a loosely held republic of Web sites that command hundreds of thousands of readers a day, even in off-cycle election years.
Never the fan of mainstream media, bloggers at the convention wasted no time in taking potshots at their journalistic enemies. Ezra Klein, for instance, accused National Review Online writer Byron York of misquoting him. Mike Stark of Calling All Wingnuts also ridiculed York for refusing to consent to an interview about abortion.
"I really don’t understand why one of the intellectual heirs of the modern conservative movement would be so quick to chicken out of what should be a thoroughly prepared and well-rehearsed debate subject for Republicans, but he did," Stark wrote. "Maybe it’s the paste."
Of course, there is also plenty of conversation in the blogosphere about the conference. The entries run from the celebratory and philosophical to the confused and critical. See the extended entry for excerpts.
Brainster's Blog: "Byron York infiltrates the Kossacks in Las Vegas, and highlights something that I've been talking about here for awhile; the tendency for the liberal blogosphere to think they've won when they beat other Democrats. Or even when they don't."
Peter Daou of The Grit: "Yearly Kos is certainly a milestone in the growing legitimacy of the blog world. But Dowd and [Adam] Nagourney [of The New York Times] seem to believe that cross-pollination among the netroots, the traditional media and the political establishment somehow represents the annexation of the netroots by the establishment. That's like saying the political establishment is becoming the media because of politicians-turned-pundits."
Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine: "So is this a party? A caucus of the party? A splinter from the party? A new party? A gathering of bloggers or media? A gathering of media or activists? A candy mint or a breath mint? Life is so confusing now. Since the Kossaks can sometimes be rather defensive, let me make clear that I’m not criticizing the gathering. I’m celebrating it. But I’m also trying to figure out what it is — as are the scribes in The Times. But I don’t think it fits any old definitions. It’s something new."
Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft: "Yearly Kos rocks. It's netroots at its finest, and the party leaders and MSM have finally figured out, ignore them at your peril. What's net roots? People power. Grass Roots to the Nth degree. It's here. Embrace it."
Stirling Newberry at TPMCafe: "It's not the party in the fight, but the fight in the party. And when the historians of this period draw lines, there will be one through this convention. It was the point where either the Democratic Party was reborn, or passed into history having not been able to convert on its last best hope for a governing, progressive majority."
Susan G of Daily Kos: "We are here. We are at the gates. We will no longer remain passive and meek in order to court favor. We, the people, are coming to power slowly and indefatigably, here in Vegas and here on the blog. We have arrived. And we'll never go back to silence again."
Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum: "The last time an independent political movement managed to pull in [this] kind of political and journalistic firepower was at the ill-fated height of Ross Perot's United We Stand America. ... United We Stand America, which had 2 million dues-paying members at its height, was of course primarily a creation of Perot's bulging bankroll. The netroots, which has its beating heart here this weekend, is a very different beast."
And in a separate entry, Sifry said he isn't too impressed by Mark Warner's courting of the Daily Kos community and the netroots as a whole.
"I've now had two opportunities ... to ask Markos Moulitsas why he thinks Warner is the candidate who gets the Internet, and both times his answer is, essentially, 'He hired Jerome.' Now I think Jerome Armstrong is a smart guy and deserves a lot of credit for starting MyDD.com and nurturing a group of savvy bloggers there. And I respect him for his having spotted Howard Dean's national potential earlier than almost anyone else. But I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't a new version of the Bob Shrum primary, where we're supposed to be impressed by the campaign with the best consultant.
Posted by Danny | 08:15 PM
