The Honors Keep Flowing For Markos Moulitsas
These are important days for Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas.
The Yearly Kos convention he put together got substantial blog and mass media coverage, culminating with his appearance on Meet The Press where viewers could put a face to a name and to words they see on their computer screens (he came off quite well). And now the Drum Major Institute For Public Policy is honoring Moulitas for his impact on politics with the 2006 Drum Major for Justice Award in New York City.
Moulitsas’ impact is, of course, subject to debate with positions usually taken according to whether or not someone agrees with Moulitas and whether the ideal of impacting elections via the cyberspace community has produced any hard results — or whether it’s actually on the verge of doing so. Or not. Again, it depends on the person’s political position. Moulitas is a hero to many on the left and still remains highly controversial to many on the right. But there’s one thing on which his admirers and detractors would agree: politics would be a lot different in the Democratic party today if he had not burst upon the scene and created Daily Kos.
Tom Watson, who is involved with the institute and the award, has put together a “virtual committee” of progressive bloggers. He explains why he feels this matters:
Fresh off of YearlyKos (and don’t I wish I’d been there), the progressive netroots movement is on fire – but I think it means more than simply realigning one of the major parties in time for this year’s election. I think it means a new, more open, more transparent way of conducting ourselves in the public arena – and when I say “ourselves,” I do not mean the elected officials, candidates, party staff, consultants, and lobbyists. I mean everyone who wants a voice. Because if everyone who wants a voice has a voice, progressivism in American politics can’t lose. And policy will matter.
You can read the full DETAILS HERE in Watson’s post and also see the list of progressive bloggers on the committee so far (and they are still signing interested progressive bloggers up).
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5 Responses to “The Honors Keep Flowing For Markos Moulitsas”
Yes Markos is a hero. So is John Aravosis at America Blog. So is Crooks and liars, and a meriad of others.
It is easy to wave the flag up people’s arse in America. Its darn difficult to question the sanity of the nation you love. Especially when it has gone into some kind of super nationalism thermal overload. America is drunk on a patriotic high and cannot see that it is right on the precipice of self destruction. Rather than open it’s “by design” multitude of many eyes and look out the window to see the danger, it closes up and takes another swig of patriotism….as the world watches in horror.
I’m loving the way Clark and Warner approached YearlyKos. Go Centrists!
Good point, JP. Notice that two of the big three winners among the “raving left-wing Kossites” were centrists (the other being Feingold). This only confirms Kos’s overall point. He is a partisan, not an ideologue. Kos regularly defends Ben Nelson of Nebraska, for example.
And Jim Webb….
Kos is an extreme partisan, and bitter about Iraq.
He showed in Virginia that being angry and supporting abandoning the people of Iraq is more important to him than substantive, programmatic liberalism. This is not inconsistent with his position in Connecticut.
I am disappointed in Mark Warner for snuggling up to the Kossacks. Maybe he sees too big a crowd on the DLC side, Clinton AND Biden AND Bayh (all of whom have been smeared by Kos) and thinks theres more room on the other side.