Posted on 08/04/2007 9:04:54 PM PDT by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
In one of the better “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon strips penned by Bill Watterson, Calvin wonders where people go when they die, to which his companion replies “Pittsburgh”. After a pause, Calvin asks if that’s for being good or for being bad. Having been born in Pittsburgh, that joke works on a number of levels for me, and particularly now as the infamous YearlyKos event looms.
The annual convention of liberal political bloggers, called “netroots” by supporters and “nutroots” by critics, is in Chicago and not Pittsburgh – at the very least begging superficial comparison to another convention there in 1968, or perhaps hubristically to the poem by Carl Sandburg. The web-site whose adherents drop the f-bomb and other obscenities in their postings almost as often as any other noun/verb/adjective (and definitely more often than most indefinite articles), is once again gathering like-minded intellects for “building a netroot nation” – which will surely bear more resemblance to Sandburg’s “stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth” than actual political content. And the leading lights of the Democratic Party will be there, even if they’re not sure why.
But it is not only back-bench candidates like Dodd, or has-beens like Wes Clark and Howard Dean that are courting the discourteous. Hillary Clinton’s people took on O’Reilly last month to defend her own involvement with the YearlyKos convention, and candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson have all signed up for the convention’s “Leadership Forum.” It appears that any Democrat serious about running for President in ‘08 is showing up at YearlyKos, which might explain why Dennis Kucinich isn’t (outside, of course, of the fact that he has already been “Kossed” by the Big Daddy Markos himself, who recently described the candidate simply as “ugh”).
But are the Democrats tripping over each other to be seen at YearlyKos because they have been good or because they have been bad? Are they going to Chicago because they believe the Kossacks (as some have called them) are truly a part of the Democratic Party base, or because they merely need to pay obeisance to those who might harm them later?
Howard Dean may have been the first to experiment with the netroots phenomenon, but John Edwards took it to new levels by abortively inviting some of the medium’s more vitriolic commentators into his campaign. The Democratic hopefuls recently took part in a CNN/YouTube debate, which provided as much comedy as it did insight. This could all be an honest effort to draw into the political fray the passionate, if often disaffected populist Left. If so, it says something very revealing about where the Democratic Party is headed.
On the other hand, the profoundly leftist Kos crowd has been needling Democrats since the mid-term elections, mostly for not leaning far enough to the Left, making this trip to Chicago potentially as voluntary as an Angevin penitent pilgrimage – all the would-be kings groveling in the cyber snow, hoping to regain the favor of the secular church of the Left. One wonders what their putative sins might be (it took killing an Archbishop to humble Henry II) to make such a trip necessary, or if it’s just the sort of elaborate kissing-up ritual for which politicians are too often famous.
Either way, the candidates are playing a dangerous game. The Kos crowd is famously fickle, and is given to periodic ideological feeding frenzies on those whose unorthodoxy is not sufficiently orthodox. Liberal web sites do not have the corner market on vile commentary, but the DailyKos appears to revel in the puerile exercise of outrageous behavior, somehow missing out on the fact that fashionable obscenity was passé not long after Ginsberg over-played it. After all, most Americans, when seriously considering the seriousness of a candidate, don’t often equate rancid language with a fertile mind.
One wonders if the candidates going to Kos really have a plan – or if, like Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, they’re just guessing.
Oh my! Talk about no hope for the afterlife!
Bleh, like a big KKKommie circlejerk.
Compared to a hard reality term:
'unwashed communists'
Well, it does take less bandwidth.
I believe all serious Democratz should follow and scream the Kos line, every day, every minute leading up to the 2008 erection.
Don’t they realize this is all Karl Rove’s plan?
O’Reily had a positive impact by criticizing this. None of the Dem candidates for President were leaders enough to exercise similar leverge.
O’Reilly is a tool. He ALSO called Free Republic a right-wing hate site and compared it to Kos.
Very good article by David J. Aland. Thanks for posting.
It’s over kossacks. You’re stuck with Hillary.
That’s like a virgin being stuck with a venereal disease. Which proves nearly anything is possible.
It's because these are the storm troopers who will have the greatest influence on who is the eventual nominee. Those on the far left are the ones who vote in the the greatest numbers in the primaries. The candidates know and understand this. That's why Lamont was the Rat winner in the CT primary last year. But unlike CT, once someone is crowned King Rat, all the others will find that there's no more cheese to be had this cycle.
I believe all serious Democratz should follow and scream the Kos line, every day, every minute leading up to the 2008 erection.
They pretty much do.
You don’t have to look far to find what he’s talking about.
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