Blogs and really-real politics

[prog]

From a nice NYT story about the 2004 political blogging scene (with photographs of Kos and Wonkette):

But at the same time that blogs have moved away from the political center, they have become increasingly influential in the campaigns -- James P. Rubin, John Kerry's foreign-policy adviser, told me, ''They're the first thing I read when I get up in the morning and the last thing I read at night.''

This is great. I have only recently started reading the hard-left blogs like Kos's during slow moments, having fun picking out the brilliant comments from the cynical mire, and was really impressed to see the Kerry campaign seeming to cherrypick these same ideas for their next public address or press conference. The above quote jibed with this observation, and makes me smile.

(Reading the Kos comments without filtration, though, is fast becoming as wanky a timewaster as reading Slashdot's, except that I tend not to get angry at them (OH MY GOD I accidentally read Slashdot the other day and all the +5 Insightfuls from a thing about the Green Party candidate (not Nader, remember) were rantlets from the Bush-and-Kerry-are-exactly-the-same camp... grr... grr... arrggh...))

Comments

[wrog]

overtly or unabashedly
"liberal" or "partisan Democrat"
work for me.

"liberal" in particular has been underused lately.

I also tend to think one needs to be at least some variety of socialist to qualify for "left" --- i.e., belief in a minimalist safety net, or that labor unions and progressive taxation aren't necessarily tools of Satan doesn't really make the cut IMO --- but I guess I'm kind of old-fashioned that way.