US Poll Results

[Kuciwalker]

Not until we're out of Iraq.

[Nubclear]

Not until I'm President for Life.

[Ninot]

Don't quit your day job Stalin.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Ramo


Clearly they hate the DLC (and it's pretty mutual), but not for its basic ideology. The point I was getting at is that the left wing blogosphere is fundamentally more libertarian than populist. Webb is not their natural candidate.

I think people STRONGLY overestimate the how ideological the Kossites are. Basically they'll support any candidate, no matter how moderate, (and they've supported some very moderate candidates) that will come down strongly against Bush. The the that pisses them off isn't so much ideological impurity as repeating Bush administration talking points and not being critical enough of Bush.

Basically its more about building a disciplined/partisan Democratic Party so that is has comparable organizational muscle more than applying ideological litmus tests.

For example Collins and Snowe are very moderate but they generally toe the line on important votes and don't mouth off against fellow Republicans on TV. That's the sort of thing that Kos is after.

Kos is far from being my favorite blogger (I like www.billmon.org personally) but he is much more pragmatic than most people give him credit for.

[Drake Tungsten]

Kos is quite pragmatic, I agree. That being said, I'm not sure how widespread that trait is amongst his followers.

BTW, does anyone know if Kos has supported a Dem who's for the war in Iraq? That seems to be the litmus test for determining whether someone is a conservative or a liberal these days, so I'm curious to know if he has...

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten BTW, does anyone know if Kos has supported a Dem who's for the war in Iraq? That seems to be the litmus test for determining whether someone is a conservative or a liberal these days

By that metric, Pat Buchanan is a liberal.

[Impaler[WrG]]

By that metric, Pat Buchanan is a liberal.

Its Amazing how far the center has moved

[Drake Tungsten]

By that metric, Pat Buchanan is a liberal.

Paleocons certainly aren't high on the Kos Kids list of enemies...

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Kos is quite pragmatic, I agree. That being said, I'm not sure how widespread that trait is amongst his followers.

BTW, does anyone know if Kos has supported a Dem who's for the war in Iraq? That seems to be the litmus test for determining whether someone is a conservative or a liberal these days, so I'm curious to know if he has...

Kos and the "netroots" have pretty much only supported challengers, and right now, pretty much every challenger wants to change the course in Iraq. Then again, the vast majority of Americans want to change the course in Iraq. Obviously, there is no consensus on what to do about Iraq, but at least in this election cycle, I'm not sure that says much about Kos.

What is going to be interesting is, once the 110th Congress is in session, seeing Kos' balance between maintaining party loyalty/disipline, and fighting for the issues.

[Drake Tungsten]

There's indications that the nutroots are already raring to go after Rahm Emmanuel. Nice way to repay the guy who got you control of Congress...

[-Jrabbit]

You mean "Rahmbo" Emmanuel.

[Drake Tungsten]

Dems should call him whatever he wants to be called after last night...

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
There's indications that the nutroots are already raring to go after Rahm Emmanuel. Nice way to repay the guy who got you control of Congress...

I'll bite.

Going after Emmanuel is probably stupid, simply because now is a time in which Democrats should come together, but Emmanuel ran a pretty mediocre campaign. The DCCC concentrated its money in certain "key" races, ignoring the law of diminishing returns. Even with the DCCC ad buys, some DCCC candidates lost, while non-DCCC supported candidates with extremely limited fundraising came agonizingly close. Also, many of the races the Dems won were in districts that the DCCC didn't think was competetive, and only became so because of Dean's 50 state strategy, and because the netroots invested money and attention in long shot races. On top of that, Emmanuel was incredibly pissed at Dean for not focusing his money on DCCC targets. I think its not a stretch to say that if Emmanuel had been running the whole show in 2006, the Dems would've done less well (maybe only barely taking the House) than they did.

Of course, I may be bitter, because the two races I worked in were ignored by the DCCC.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This seems the best thread for this: Salon has a pretty funny article about FoxNews' coverage of the returns. I just wanted to post this paragraph:

Barnes and Kondracke acted irritated by the whole evening, as if the historic electoral upheaval they were witnessing was essentially a routine event and anyway, dammit, if they didn't make their Georgetown dinner dates on time the merlot would all get drunk by other people (possibly Democrats). Barnes insisted that "there was no ideological component" to the GOP's ever-worsening defeat, and that the widely despised Iraq war was not an ideological issue. That sounds smart until you think about it. In plain English, I think that means: Absolutely everyone has finally grasped that the president is an idiot.