Category Archives: Netroots

Time put out their list of the 25 Top Blogs and the 5 most overrated. One of their most overrated ones, the one that hits the closest to home for me, is Daily Kos.

This hit rather close to home for me. I have been a many times a day reader of Daily Kos since December 2004. My first reaction was some variation on TIME SUX. PRINT MEDIA SUX AND IS DYING LOLZORS.

Then, I realized that I’m smarter than a YouTube commenter and I decided to do an actual in depth exploration of my feelings on the subject. My main thesis, for those who don’t wish to keep reading, is that Daily Kos has been subsumed, at least in my mind, by the diversity of voices on the internet. For those who want more, look below the fold that will eventually get put in here.

I always viewed Daily Kos as a tremendous resource. I started reading it as it was linked from other bloggers. It was like a giant planet that every other blog revolved around. Stories that came up there would then be talked about by other bloggers, or a story could become big once it actually hit the front page or at least the recommended diary list at Kos. I also really enjoyed the level of analysis that I got from there, combined with humor. My favorite blog right now is called Balloon Juice. Run by a guy named John Cole, he comes at things from the perspective of an ex-conservative Republican, who is now disgusted with the modern Republican Party and brings strong sentiments to the discussion. This is his latest post, found here:

One of the real joys of blogging is the mail, and since Obama was inaugurated, every single day I get spammed email from Clinton supporters about “how all my whoring for Obama” paid off or something to that effect, complete with a cut and paste of an entire Glenn Greenwald post and a little note explaining to me that Obama’s human rights sins are worse than the Bush era and might even rival the Khmer Rouge.

Seriously. Nowhere does it seem to occur to them that as Hillary is working with Obama, there is no reason to think that were she President things would be much different. Nor has it occurred to any of them that the first few weeks of an administration is a touch early to judge the record and direction.

The weirdest thing is these are allegedly lefties- but at no time during the past eight years did I get the steady email trashing me for voting for Bush. Just weird. The Clinton cult is a strange, strange thing.

The first thing that’s obvious here is that he was a very strong Obama supporter during the primaries. The second is that there is a nice element of snark behind this, with a sarcastic tone which is hilarious. The third is that this is a highly personal account, full of his individual view. This one is definitely not as informative of a blog post, but plays along and updates his readers knowledge of his strong opinions. In a microcosm, it is everything that Daily Kos has lost.

I still love Kos’s posts. They are the highlight of the blog for me. He brings a nice element of snark and information, with a clear focus on elections and Republican ridiculousness. The other front page writers are so much less interesting. It’s not the blog has lost its focus, it’s that it has stopped being interesting. Time calls it a repository for DNC talking points, but that’s wrong. There is an element of that with long posts full of blockquotes from Obama speech transcripts, but even their analysis posts are boring. Daily Kos was my one-stop progressive blog repository, but it’s not really necessary anymore. I can get views on the issues of the day from many sources out there. Their job is to draw me in and make me want to go to them. Daily Kos is failiing in that mission now and I don’t now how it can keep competing in this brave new world.

Either that, or Markos is Satan, but it’s definitely one of the two.