The Blogosphere Takes Off

11 June 2006 |permalink | email article

Unlike a pilgrimage to Mecca, this weekend’s political shrine was the online convention in Las Vegas convened by the blog, Daily Kos. It exposed awed liberal interest groups, would-be presidential candidates, union organizers, conservative blogger spies and mainstream media reporters to over 1,000 “Netroots” activists – rabid junkies who came to politics via the Internet.

Berkeley-based Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the soft spoken, 34-year-old liberal provocateur, founded Daily Kos. It has become America’s most progressive and best read blog, and the symbol for a growing Internet-inspired vehicle with twin aims: to attack both President Bush and goad the Democratic Party to regain control of the nation.

Addressing the convention, Moulitsas’s message was clear: “The political elite has failed us. Both parties. Republicans have failed us because they can’t govern. Democrats failed us because they can’t get elected.” He agreed on “Meet the Press” Sunday that the blogosphere is now analagous to conservative talk radio.

On Saturday, columnist Maureen Dowd addressed the festering Old Media-New Media clash in a conversation with Moulitsas.

The cult leader assured Dowd he doesn’t see himself as a journalist, only a Democratic activist, “I don’t plan on doing any original reporting – screw that. I need people like you.”

Her classic putdown: “Even as Old Media is cowed by New Media, New Media is trying to become, rather than upend, Old Media. Ms. Cox (Ana Marie Cox) has left her Wonkette gig to be a novelist and Time essayist. Mr. Moulitsas and Mr. Armstrong (fellow Blogfather Jerome Armstrong) left his liberal blog to become a senior adviser to Mr. Warner (former Virginia Gov.Mark Warner). What could be more mainstream than that?“

That said, the initial “Yearly Kos” gathering illustrates how New Media is reshaping politics. It is reflected by the genuflectional presence of party leaders Harry Reid and Howard Dean, and would-be presidential candidates Warner, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark and Tom Vilsack seeking money and a Netroots endorsement. It is another example of how Moulitsas has come to dominate the political blogosphere.

A partial review of MSM convention “coverage” by Daily Kos blogger sxwarren late yesterday afternoon noted coverage from ABC News Online, Cox News Service, New York Times Online, Los Angeles Times, and credited the Washington Post as “the most accurate so far” while singling out a quote by Tom Mattzie, Washington director of MoveOn.

Mattzie called the struggle within the Democratic Party a “clash of civilizations” between an old order and a new order, discounted the battle in purely ideological terms based on net-roots activist polling. “What they want…is for Democrats to stand up and fight. They don’t want Neville Chamberlain Democrats; they want Muhammad Ali Democrats.”

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