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Archive for the 'Daily Kos' Category

The Kos Bubble and Rove 2.0

Published by William Beutler on November 20, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogger Panels, Blogging Officials, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos, George Allen, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Netroots, Tech Blogosphere, Technology, Television, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 7 Comments

Whether or not Kossack heads actually exploded throughout the leftosphere this weekend, I cannot say. Reports will trickle in… or not. But Newsweek’s experiment of pairing the Great and Powerful Kos with the Great and Powerful Rove is off and running, and it’s not too soon to draw some preliminary conclusions. First, in terms of drawing blog hype, Newsweek could hardly done a better job of securing two more polarizing and potentially intriguing figures — for the left and right each, I’m having a hard time coming up with any two people in politics who inspire as much passion in their detractors outside of current and former presidents.

I’ll leave the reviews to others, but 24 hours after both stories hit the web, how are they doing in terms of measurable attention? Newsweek provides two metrics that we must assume are the most accurate, simply because they are based on internal numbers, even though Newsweek does not provide actual numbers. I understand why they don’t release them, but if the Digg-ification of the Internet continues apace, they will eventually. So which of the two was e-mailed more than the other?

Newsweek's Most E-mailed Stories

As we see, this was a clear win for Rove. As of about 10 p.m. on Monday night, Rove’s piece has been e-mailed more often — but we still don’t know by how much. Second, Newsweek’s list of the top 10 most viewed stories:

Newsweek's Most Viewed Stories

Even without precise figures, this one paints a clearer picture: Rove is at number one, and Kos is nowhere to be found. Short of a Chris Bowers Google bomb, Rove is the greatest and most powerful.

How can this be? Kos is arguably at the zenith of his fame, with appearances on The Colbert Report and Meet the Press earlier in the year, still reigning as one of the RNC’s favorite bogeymen. Rove on the other hand is out of the White House and for all anyone knows, out of national politics. It may say something about Time readers just not knowing who Kos is, but I’m operating under the assumption that the online version of Newsweek reaches what IPDI has termed the “Poli-fluentials.” To be sure, time will tell. One possibility is that Kos, with his eminently Internet-based platform, stands to do better over the long run. But I also ran the Newsweek column’s permalinks through Technorati to find out how many times each had been linked by another blog. It wasn’t close. At all:

Ouch. Then again, if you look at the top blogs linking to both articles (results above are sorted by authority) a clear majority hail from the left. Maybe the left still remains more interested in Rove than the right is in Kos.

Another possibilty is more subjective, but I’ll offer it anyway: Maybe Kos just isn’t that interesting a writer. Like more than a few in my line of work, I’ve been perusing Matt Bai’s “The Argument” lately, and Bai does little to conceal his skepticism of Moulitsas’ political knowledge. Now, I have read both articles, and I did find Rove’s much more interesting. But don’t take my word for it — the blogosphere seems to agree. I have also seen both speak in a public setting, and perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but the seasoned campaign veteran was certainly more compelling than his younger upstart opponent. And there was the time when Kos got a tryout with ideo-journalistic Washington, but didn’t quite make the cut.

An aside: Last week I went with my colleagues and associates Jon Henke, Leslie Bradshaw and Jesse Thomas to see Rove co-keynote Yahoo’s Citizen 2.0 midday bash with Max Cleland (!) at the Willard Intercontinental. They’ve already written about it in detail, but I can’t help noting that their study merely put a slightly different gloss on the IPDI report linked above, i.e. “Citizen 2.0″ has replaced “Poli-fluential.”

Just about Rove, however, I must say: His arguments and observations were as well-honed as any “Internet expert” I’ve seen address a political crowd. And Rove knew what he was talking about: He recalled early computer hard drives he owned, admitted to his membership in the Apple cult, delivered a paean to Moore’s Law, and mused about the long-term effects of TiVo and time-shifting. He spoke of the Allen/Webb race (though he didn’t use the word “Macaca”) and cited studies of the blogosphere like any contributor to TechPresident. That’s why I was a little surprised and disappointed to see Michael Bassik dismiss him as “Not Citzen 2.0″ when in fact the definition given by Yahoo! makes Rove almost the perfect example. I was less surprised to see Think Progress willfully misinterpret the goings-on, but Henke has that one covered. Say what you will about Karl Rove, but don’t say he’s not a geek.

On the other hand, he did mispronounce “Kos.”

P.S. This is as good a time as any to share this photo, taken with my iPhone, of Karl Rove taking a picture of me with his iPhone:

Karl Rove and his iPhone, taken with my iPhone

The man on the right is former Senator Cleland. Believe it or not, they got along like old chums. My guess, and it’s just a hunch, is that Cleland is better at hiding his thoughts and feelings than his boisterous persona suggests. The man on the left appears to be from an Aphex Twin video.

P.P.S. What if Rove turned to blogging? Tom DeLay’s occasionally updated blog is in relaunch limbo at the moment, which provides not the best precedent (despite my own pleasantly surprised initial reaction) but then DeLay was never known as a thinker, either, and left official Washington under considerably less triumphant circumstances. So I think Rove could do well, and I bet he would even write it. If he consented to participate in rightosphere activities like appearing on Heading Right Radio (warning: automatic audio), he could quickly become one of the most influential voices on the Internet. But even then, I’m not sure he’d be the most influential voice on the right.

P.P.P.S. Then again, we haven’t even begun to address the matter of which fledgling columnist Google thinks is the greater and more powerful.

Exactly Why I Don’t Give My Name

Published by Not Paul Begala on June 13, 2007 in Barack Obama, Blog Fights, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos and Online Campaigns. 1 Comment

Adam Bonin from Daily Kos has a nice little post up on what happens when your real name is associated with your own thoughts on the internet and you work for a presidential candidate:

There are lines one could plausibly draw between those who serve on a campaign’s staff exclusively and those outsiders who consult with that campaign and others simultaneously, or between speech and actions which are germane to one’s campaign responsibilities and those which are not. But if these lines do exist, they don’t seem to be obeyed these days — everything that anyone connected with a campaign (in any way) does, says or writes is being attributed back to the campaign, and campaigns will continue to be be called upon to disavow, and there may be calls for more people’s heads, etc.

This, my dear bloggers, is why you don’t see more of us pros blogging. We eventually get our bosses into trouble.

Mentioned in the article is Obama General Counsel Bob Bauer’s thoughts on pardoning Libby. I have to say, I was mad when I saw the title, but I like Bob’s logic. I’m all for laying this at Bush’s feet. You game?

Gotcha! The Strategy!

Published by William Beutler on June 1, 2007 in Cable News, Campaigns, Daily Kos, Earned Media, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Netroots, Online Campaigns, Oppo Research, Web video and White House '08. 1 Comment

Much as the rightosphere disdains Markos Moulitsas, conservative bloggers do pay attention to what he says. But if they leap on him when he’s in the wrong, they can also give him credit when he gets something right. If you know the scene, you’ve probably already seen this from dKos last week:

Videotape everything they do

All it takes is one “Macaca” incident to transform a race or create one where one didn’t exist. … And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It’s about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events. … The more material we amass today, the better we’ll able to use that video to support our efforts next year.

Gotcha! The Sport! And LJN/Nintendo game cover!Little Green Footballs, among the few blogs from either side to warrant its own adversarial watchdog site, considered it perhaps better advice than he knew:

Excellent advice. To which I would add, don’t forget to take screenshots of everything the Kos Kidz do.

Dean Barnett — Hugh Hewitt’s right-hand man — was more complimentary and, in a trend that would be repeated, took it seriously enough to build on the idea:

First of all, to give credit where it’s due, this is an excellent idea. Because I’m not really the call-to-action type, I’ll leave it to some other enterprising right wing pundit to market a similar effort for conservative activists. We really should get busy on this because Democrats are at least as tongue-tied and prone to blunders as Republicans. Need I remind you, John Kerry is up for re-election in ’08. His race alone should keep a half-dozen Republican digital camcorders busy.

Matt Margolis from GOP Bloggers (and the late Blogs for Bush) found the strategy wanting, a distraction from the ideas that win campaigns:

I’m sorry. I just don’t agree. We should be above the sick game of gotcha politics. If there’s anything we should have learned from 1994 is that Americans respond to an agenda, and Republicans shouldn’t need to sink down to Kos’s level. I’d much rather see Republicans win on ideas than see Democrats lose because of some video showing an unflattering moment they’d sooner forget.

Perhaps noble, but in a follow-up post, Barnett took the realist position:

Politics ain’t beanbag; I would prefer our candidates and operatives knew as much.

And the good work of building on the idea continued. From the non-aligned John Stoddard:

Calling for an accumulation of “gotcha” moments is a strategy about nothing, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld. It’s not about persuading or inspiring voters. It merely reminds them that we are governed by two-faced narcissistic jerks. That’s why negative campaigning’s most notable effect is to suppress voter turnout. It doesn’t make voters say, ”Aha! Now I prefer X over Y.” It makes them say, “I was going to vote for Y, but now, ew.”

Kos is right. If you turn off more Republicans than Democrats, you’ve improved your chances of winning. But no matter how much video you capture, you can’t depend on coming out ahead in the gotcha race. It only works if the other side lets its guard down and lets you off the hook when you make your own blunders. In the YouTube era, that’s basically an assumption that your opponents will commit professional suicide. Good luck with that.

More good advice from the Larry Sabato of GOP online consultants, David All:

The bottom line is that any serious campaign effort – from City Council to POTUS – should have a two camera strategy — one on the opponent and one on their own guy to help add context to a “macaca” moment and “flood the zone” to deflate organic YouTube search results.

And some unavoidable longer term questions from Bivings Group’s leading voice, Todd Zeigler:

So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments.

It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.

Kos may not much impress ideo-journalistic Washington, but when he talks campaign strategy politico-journalistic Washington listens.

Turkey in the Straw Poll

Published by Not Paul Begala on April 17, 2007 in Daily Kos, Netroots, Online Campaigns, Online Polling and Straw Polls. Closed

I really like it when the top bloggers do straw polls. It’s good water cooler conversation, they happen often so you can measure changes, and the MyDD polls have some cool rankings that allow voters to choose first and second preferences.

Straw polls can also be a good measure of organization and activist support — look at how Romney and McCain are constantly trying to outdo each other.

But what I don’t like is that the online straw polls on the progressive/netroots sites always come as a surprise.

I wonder if Kos announced that he was going to do a straw poll in a week, would any of the presidential candidates whip for it? Send out a blast to their lists? Might that also increase the number of participants?

Will Elizabeth Edwards Resign, Too?

Published by William Beutler on February 17, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blog Consultants, Blog Fights, Blogging Officials, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos, Democrats, Hotline, Internecine Battles, John Edwards, Online Campaigns and White House '08. 43 Comments

Earlier this week, Blog P.I. posed a question: Who was responsible for hiring bloggers in Edwardsville? The logical answer was Matt Gross, Edwards’ chief Internet strategist, and considering the resignations of said controversial bloggers, we idly wondered if Gross would be tendering his resignation as well.

But as the headline above has already given away, we may have blogged too soon — after all, there is someone else at the campaign who is a longtime member of the blogosphere, and it is someone who wields much more power than Gross.

It’s Elizabeth Edwards.

We certainly don’t know for a fact that EE (as we’ll refer to her from here on) recommended Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan for the jobs of blogmaster and blog wrangler (respectively) but we can demonstrate that she would have been in a position to know about them and to make such recommendations. And if it ever did come out that EE was responsible for this mess, it would renew questions about how much control she has over John Edwards’ campaign — and whether it hurts more than it helps.

So let’s get demonstrating:

Going back to at least the 2004 campaign, EE has not just been a mere reader of the blogs but also a commenter at some of the biggest sites on the left.

In April 2005 she took to task several members of the Democratic Underground community for making fun of right-wing radio talker Laura Ingraham’s breast cancer — EE is a breast cancer survivor herself — earning thumbs up from Michelle Malkin and others in the rightosphere.

She may have only commented at Daily Kos eight times from 2004 to 2005, but she was nevertheless one of the earliest to sign up: going by the sequential user ID numbers, EE was the 3,454th person to register; the site now has well over 100,000 registered accounts (not the same as active users).

Now, how much involvement does she actually have with blogs? Last year she told Campus Progress:

I spend a lot of time on the internet. I get a lot of information from blogs, I have a whole list including Talking Points [Memo], Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and more. Sometimes I check out the right wing sites to see what they are talking about. I have a whole folder of sites and I open them all up every day and see what catches my eye. … Sometimes I would post on blogs not under my real name. … But I had to stop doing that after John started running. Now I sometimes participate under my own name. I participate in blogs and newsgroups – not just political ones but other issues too.

Make no mistake, EE knows a lot more about the blogosphere than the average consultant.

And we also know that while she holds no official position with the campaign, she has something of a reputation for usurping the paid consultants’ authority (or so goes the chatter). In December of last year, she appeared in the comments of Illinois-focused ArchPundit to defend herself against claims that she led the ouster of star consultant David Axelrod, who handled Edwards’ media in 2004 (but this time is advising Barack Obama). As ArchPundit’s Larry Handlin put it, during the previous campaign

her handling of consultants and staff was problematic because she tends to micromanage and many would say she cuts people out of the loop. That’s a management problem. It’s also what probably endears her to those who love her and so it’s a double edged sword.

If that’s the case here, then we owe an apology to Matt Gross. Obviously there is no smoking gun evidence that EE was the instigator of the blog hires, but she most certainly would have been in a position to advise (and even make decisions) on the matter. It’s also not unreasonable to think EE would be a more avid reader of pointedly feminist blogs than Gross (not to impugn his feminist credentials). At the very least, she didn’t step in and warn that Marcotte’s rhetoric might be a little too hot for her to serve in a communications role.

Without more information, we’ll file this one under “more than plausible.” But Blog P.I. is not the first to suggest that EE had more involvement here than has been reported. Take this bit from National Journal’s most recent Dem rankings — where Edwards is ranked number three, where he has been since Obama’s emergence:

The 24 hours that elapsed between the MSM’s Blogger-gate stories and Edwards’ nuanced response has become this cycle’s unexplained, awkward Jeanine Pirro gap. We’d blame this on consultants, except Edwards routinely brags he doesn’t listen to them. This one’s on him (or her?).

Commenters at Pandagon seem to think Elizabeth Edwards was behind the decision, too. And in a Feb. 8 diary at Daily Kos, New Hampshire-based MissLaura posted a recent (but pre-controversy) interview with EE on blogs, dKos and the campaign. As MissLaura suggested in that post:

Edwards returned several times to the question of how much control campaign staff would have over what she says publicly, focusing on her efforts to resist such control. However the behind-the-scenes debate over whether to fire or stand behind Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan played out days later, we have to assume that it was at least in part shaped by the presence of a powerful figure who understands blogs and who habitually works against excessive homogenizing.

Others, such as early Dean blogger Dan Conley, have predicted that her blog involvement could be a problem — although not quite like this:

There are two ways to view Mrs. Edwards’ posting on blogs. Some will wonder how wise it is for Edwards to enter this swamp. Every blogger has a sane/insane ratio for political posts … we come to accept it from our peers. But when an aspiring First Lady says something pointed, it’s not just typical Internet chatter, it’s potentially big news. Elizabeth Edwards is extremely smart and a terrific writer … but it’s an incredible high-wire act for someone so prominent to attempt.

Sure, it’s pretty neat that there’s a potential First Lady reading and writing on blogs (on her own, in her own words). It’s proof that whereas all the talk about the downfall of the MSM a couple years back proved false, the blogs certainly have delivered on some degree of democraticization of political media.

But let us observe, as if it even needs pointing out, this development has not always proved beneficial for politicians and political campaigns. No matter what, that’s been the case here. As my former colleague Marc Ambinder points out at Hotline On Call, the controversy

stepped on his health care rollout and has been the dominant theme of his campaign for a week.

Make that two weeks. The Edwards campaign did itself enough damage by waiting too long to decide what to do with their problematic bloggers, and the drawn-out hiring, firing, rehiring and resigning just made it worse. Not to mention, Marcotte’s blog-and-tell for Salon can only delay the Edwards camp from getting back on message. Alas, Edwards will not be on the Sunday shows this week.

Elizabeth Edwards may be the most powerful blog expert advising her husband’s campaign, but assuming this reasoning is on target, she also may not be expert enough.

Note: Additional links and analysis provided by Not Paul Begala.

Update: NPB adds a worthwhile clarification in the comments:

[Marcotte an McEwan] were not vetted and the communications staff was not prepared for the broadside against them. As a former communications guy myself, I can’t tell you how much incomplete information pisses us off. … It’s a legit question that Democrats should be asking of one of their own potential nominees: Why weren’t you ready for a hit job from the right?

Update, Wednesday: Thank you, everyone who commented. Thank you especially, everyone who commented on something other than “good people” and “hit job.” I have approved several comments that are redundant at best, and I will certainly approve others (even on this very post). However, please read through the comments before adding your own, and please only do so if it’s a unique thought. Bonus points if it’s actually about this post, and not the aforementioned comment.

Low Voter Turnout at Daily Kos?

Published by Not Paul Begala on February 7, 2007 in Daily Kos, Netroots and Online Polling. 5 Comments

MyDD on Daily Kos:

The ultimate community blog, with 120,000 registered users and nearly a dozen regular front-page writers. It produces over 500,000 new words of content every day, on virtually every topic in politics, and has attracted writing from virtually the entire Democratic leadership.

Yesterday’s dKos straw poll has me wondering: After 24 hours, why are there only about 25K votes overall? Wouldn’t you expect that number to be higher?

The percentage of registered voters who actually vote in national elections is somewhere around 60-70%. Granted, voting is only one of many activities occuring at dKos, but it still bears asking: why does a community of political activists with a half million visitors and 100K+ registered users not vote in higher numbers in these things? Anyone?

Who Cares About the State of the Union?

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 24, 2007 in Comment Sections, Daily Kos, George W. Bush and Netroots. 3 Comments

Well, bloggers seem to at the moment.

For the most part, NPB isn’t much of a SOTU fan. I’ll watch it — with alcohol — read a little analysis here and there and then forget it tomorrow. I’m much more interested in stuff like this. That, at least, tells me something about the state of our union besides “strong.”

The truth is, I actually wanted to comment about the SOTU on a few SoapBlox blogs I was reading this morning. And I couldn’t, because the only account I have is on Daily Kos. And it’s not worth filling out the form, checking my e-mail and verifying the registration, all for a comment.

I totally understand why blogs need account registration — to fight the war on trolls and spammers. But can somebody please come up with a system where my Daily Kos login works on MyDD or RedState (need to tweak you wingers every now and then)? Blogger, Typepad and WordPress all have separate regimes, too. Why not create a portable comment ID that works across all systems?

I think a lot of political folks would participate more in the discussion if we didn’t have to sign up for an account on every damn site* we read.

Programmers, bloggers, entrepreneurs, get to work!

*I have 80 some blogs in my RSS reader.

Bloggers vs. the MSP

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 5, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, Campaigns, DNC, Daily Kos, Democrats, Howard Dean and Internecine Battles. 3 Comments

Between binge drinking, sleeping, waiting for my Wii to get here (seriously, I was ready to fight my little cousins for playing time on Christmas Day — this thing is awesome) and catching up with our TiVo’d shows, we campaign people finally have some time on hand to think about what we just went through. Campaign life doesn’t give you a lot of time for a good diet, exercise, nor reading fiction, and certainly not reflection.

The Daily Kos diary “Begala: Dean ‘an a**hole from Vermont’,” which appeared yesterday, is a great example of one thing I’ve reflected on several times while reading the litany of blogosphere postmortems (especially the ones about races I was involved in): the deep divide between bloggers and mainstream professionals — let’s call them, us, the MSP.

To suggest the 50-state strategy is a big reason that the field expanded, as dKos contributor ScottforAmerica does in this post, is utter delusion. However, to suggest it had nothing to do with wins across the country, as he says Paul Begala did, is also dead wrong.

But as an MSP myself I am always going to be more sympathetic to the man whose name I have borrowed than, say, ScottforAmerica. Why?

Because Paul had to make his living doing this, as do I. For all I know, Scott is seeing his 3rd election cycle — maybe. Scott likely has never worked as a professional consultant, likely never had the benefit of seeing 10-20 races a cycle and learning the lessons that come with them. He’s probably never worked on a presidential campaign and maybe never even walked door-to-door as a regular volunteer or a ground level employee.

Maybe he has. I don’t know him. And not to single out Scott per se — this lack of serious political experience is true of most bloggers.

That said, Scott is bringing some nerve/backbone, new blood and determination to these contests. That fresh outsider-looking-in perspective is something I have absolutely loved in the past 4 years, something people like my quasi-namesake cautioned against.

I understand why Dems said “me too” with Bush and the GOP in 2002 and I think it was solid advice based on the strategies and polls we had at the time. But being wrong because the game changed on you doesn’t preclude you from being wrong. We got whooped in 2002. Scott also has his ideas about what works (e.g. 50-state strategy) that I don’t think are correct, but I don’t have data yet to absolutely dissuade him.

So, what does this mean? From my MSP perspective, I get pissed at the smug, know-it-all, cavalier attitude of bloggers like Scott because I feel like this post attacks me just as much as Paul Begala. The ending is really what gets me:

A new Democratic Party took a giant step forward today, a Democratic Party proud of it’s values and it’s principles, and one that won’t be afraid to stand up for our beliefs…anywhere. Unfortunately for Begala and Carville, they aren’t part of it.

You think Paul Begala and James Carville are not proud of the Democratic Party’s values and principles? That they are afraid to stand up for themselves? You think they argue against “50 state” because they just hate Dean and that they are scared of devolving power outside of the professional structures? Do you really think they never wanted to win, have completely sold out to corporations and are just fine with leaving a party in charge that is sending kids to die in the sand?

And right here is where I get offended. You, Scott the Blogger, perceive this struggle as a battle between the elite and the masses. This obviously puts me on the elite side, so I consider your swipe directed at me too. I’m pretty sure you hate me for no other reason than my being one of these elites. You blame me for losing to Bush in 2000 and 2004 and you will find every excuse to not look at historic things, like say, 9/11, to explain how R’s won in ‘02 and ‘04. You don’t think Iraq played as much of a role in ‘06 as the 50 state strategy. Heck, I’ll bet that if you ran for congress and I gave you my resume, you’d throw it away because it doesn’t have a list of the diaries I’d written or “netroots”-backed candidates I’ve worked for in the past.

And that is what bugs me: you hate me for being a professional, for making money doing this and, most of all, for not sharing your “damn them all to hell” and “if DC said it, it must be wrong” attitude. You claim to speak for the masses when you say these things but I’m pretty sure that you don’t know who the masses really are (here’s a hint: they don’t blog regularly).

So, in the upcoming power struggle for the leadership of this party (and it’s coming) we will have to see who’s really better at this game, Bloggers or the MSP. It’s the pros vs. the amateurs, the top-down vs. the bottom-up, the big guy vs. the little guys.

It’ll be interesting to watch and even more fun to play. Better bring your A-game, Scott. I’m pretty good at this.

The Libertarian Wallflower

Published by William Beutler on December 13, 2006 in Academic Blogging, Blog Fights, Daily Kos, Democrats, Internecine Battles, Libertarians and Rhetoric. 2 Comments

A week has now passed since Brink Lindsey’s so-called “Liberaltarian” essay for The New Republic (also available from Cato, where Lindsey is VP for research) hit the web and became an instant conversation piece around ideo-journalistic Washington.

One can trace the excitement surrounding Lindsey’s essay, and perhaps even the piece itself, to an early June post at Daily Kos, by site founder/show runner Markos Moulitsas. That entry, which he later described as “a throwaway blog post,” drew plenty of snickers from Beltway conservative types, but it certainly wasn’t ignored.

In October, the Cato Institute — typically identified with Republicans far more than Democrats — made Moulitsas’ arguments the centerpiece of the October edition of Cato Unbound. Just before the election, Moulitsas made his pitch for libertarians to pull a lever for the Dems in Reason magazine.

These articles drew plenty more attention, of which Lindsey’s article could be considered the latest entry. One need not buy into the notion of an uneasy left/libertarian fusionism being at all likely to replace the uneasy right/libertarian one to find it interesting — and indeed, for all the kind things said about Lindsey himself this past week, almost everybody’s wallets are staying firmly in pocket.

That’s a lot of pockets, too. Among the libertarians, liberals and conservatives who have weighed in on Lindsey’s essay:

Of course, not everyone who might be expected to comment has done so. Among those who have not weighed in since Lindsey’s article went up:

It’s not that he’s been away from the site. In fact, he’s posted 55 times (at the time of this writing) and on a wide array of topics, from the inevitability of Obama to general site maintenance. I realize that the pat response to these questions is “don’t complain about the free ice cream.” But I’m curious as to why Moulitsas has abruptly disengaged from the debate.

The cynical view would be that with the election now in the past and Democrats victorious, there is no longer any need to reach out to potential new voters. The slightly less cynical view, and the one I endorse, is that Moulitsas was using the term “libertarian” too loosely in the first place. Go back to his seminal post, and notice that he literally begins by seeking to describe why he likes rugged, outdoorsy, sometimes Mountain West politicians such as Senator-elect Jon Tester — and it goes on to deliberately ignore the profound differences between liberal and libertarian philosophies of government. Altogether, it sounds less like argument born of principles, and more like searching for a coherent way to describe his favored candidates.

Moulitsas’ influence currently runs strongly to matters campaign-related, but the interest surrounding his “Libertarian Democrat” post suggests that people are willing to give him a shot as an actual thinker as well. Alas, now that the liberaltarian concept has “crashed the gates” (if you will) it would seem he doesn’t have much more to add. (He announced in the June post that his “next book” will be about the libertarian Democrat. Is that still a go?) Unless he has the conviction to defend his arguments in the public ’sphere — or a whole lot more “throwaway” ideas — he may again find himself relegated to being just what he says he doesn’t want to be: An ATM for Democratic campaigns.

P.S. Does anybody else remember that at one time, Brink Lindsey was a blogger? His former site remains where it always was, the blogroll still a who’s who of the early right-libertarian blogosphere. His his final post in mid-2003 should be considered a classic of the genre. Excerpted:

I’ve lost the will to blog. Actually, I lost it some time ago, but I’ve been trudging along in hopes that I would find new inspiration. I haven’t.

So enough. I’m hanging it up for a while. I plan to take the summer off — at least. Maybe I’ll come back in the fall, maybe I won’t.

I’ve argued before that one need not actually be a blogger to be a part of the blogosphere, and three years later, Lindsey’s currency reinforces that.

Sometimes They Come Back: Another Look At New York Magazine and Barack Obama

Published by William Beutler on December 5, 2006 in Asymmetrical Media, Barack Obama, Daily Kos, MSM, Metapost and Technorati. 1 Comment

What do Glenn Reynolds, Chris Bowers, Greg Tinti, Richard Bennett, Andrew Sullivan and I all have in common? As Conn Carroll has pointed out, in the past 24 hours, we’ve all linked to an early October New York article as if it was just out. (Though, to be fair, I’m the only one who explicitly said it was the latest edition.)

So what happened here? Let’s turn to Technorati.

The common link in all of our posts was to the fifth page of the article, and Sullivan was clearly first. As my post from yesterday should indicate, I found it on his site. I assume the others did as well, a possible exception being Bowers (being the lone netrooter in the group, and the only one not to mention Obama’s swipe at Daily Kos). How did Sullivan find it? Most likely from one of his ubiquitous e-mail tipsters.

And just to be sure, the story is indeed from October. It’s dated the 2nd of that month, and the last sentence of the article’s first page notes that Obama’s new book “will be hitting bookstores in mid-October.”

Searching for links to the article’s first page at Technorati, it appears the article was largely overlooked. The only well-known site to link at the time was Bloggingheads. That week’s ‘heads, Eric Alterman and Mickey Kaus, barely mentioned it, and none of them singled out the Kos reference.

So why did it escape unmentioned until now? That I cannot answer. This episode might put the lie to the notion that political bloggers will turn up every last relevant tidbit from the news. Or at least that they’ll do so immediately — eventually, it did make the rounds. And, of course, it’s probably of interest only to those of us who spend much of our time in the political blogosphere to begin with. Compare: a few days after the original Lee Bandy report, Joe Biden’s latest “Trent Lott” moment is generating bipartisan outrage — albeit limited, so far.

Back to New York and Obama, credit goes to Central Sanity, who linked the story yesterday for different reasons, and led with:

This article from New York Magazine is apparently about two months old, but it’s still a worthwhile look into the mind of the U.S. Senator from Illinois.

It may be a blogosphere cliché, but it’s still good advice — read the whole thing.