Markos "Kos" Moulitsas On Obama, Twittering, fighting The Blue Dogs, and Major Changes Coming

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/139605/markos_%28kos%29_moulitsas_on_obama%2C_twittering%2C_fighting_the_blue_dogs%2C_and_the_major_changes_coming

Markos 'Kos' Moulitsas on Obama, Twittering, Fighting the Blue Dogs, and the Major Changes Coming
By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted May 4, 2009.

The founder of the popular Daily Kos site discusses the growing power of the online netroots, and their upending of political gatekeepers.

No one symbolizes the success of the liberal political blogosphere -- known to many as the "netroots" -- more than Markos Moulitsas, the outspoken founder and owner of Daily Kos, the popular daily blogging site, which began in May 2002 and rose to prominence during the Bush era.

The Daily Kos is part of a particular group of "A list" blogs like Fire Dog Lake, Atrios, Open Left, MyDD, Crooks and Liars and others that pioneered an aggressive and progressive approach to electoral politics, reflecting a generation of tech-savvy, promotion-conscious writers, activists and thinkers who dedicate much of their focus to getting liberal Democrats to win more campaigns.

During the Bush era, pushing back at conservatives and defeating Republicans was the centerpiece of the netroots' activities. However, in the Obama era, a good deal of their attention is now focused on conservative, so-called Blue Dog Democrats.

- snip -

The Daily Kos has spawned a major national progressive conference, now called Netroots Nation, (which is not now run by the Daily Kos), which attracted 7 of the 8 presidential candidates in 2007 and where more than 1,000 bloggers and activists attended (the next one is in Pittsburgh, Aug 13-16).

AlterNet's Executive Editor Don Hazen sat down with Markos in the AlterNet offices in San Francisco in early April for an interview.

Don Hazen: Let's start with the big picture -- what is your take on the situation we find ourselves in? Has the netroots increased its influence in the Obama era?

Markos Moulitas: If you look at the official definition of netroots -- which is pretty much anyone who engages in politics online -- then absolutely; the netroots has had huge impact, if for no other reason than that it played an important part in Barack Obama's victory. He's sitting on an e-mail list that's 9 to 12 million strong. But it's a massive e-mail list. Twitter has obviously become the darling of the chattering class of D.C. All of the reporters are twittering, and they're being exposed to criticisms that they're not used to. So in that sense, yes.

If you want to get more particular, like blogs, that may be a different story, but I think the broader netroots -- and to me it's one big interconnected ecosystem -- has become integral. It's going to be the key way, moving forward, that people use to communicate. Especially as newspapers are dying, or going online only, and our modes of information are increasingly digital as opposed to analog.

- snip -

Organizing on the Web

DH: Who do you think is doing the best organizing now, both on the Web and elsewhere? And please comment on this new accountability project that you, SEIU, Firedoglake.org and others are doing to hold Blue Dog Democrats accountable.

MM: Who's doing the best? It's weird, because five years ago there were two or three people doing activism online. Nowadays almost all activism is online. From people on Facebook to the Twittering class to the bloggers to other independent media. So am I seeing anything that stands out?

Last year, it was the Obama campaign, bar none. I'm worried actually this year that they're misusing their list and not being aggressive enough. You're talking about several thousand per congressional district.

DH: The media wasn't impressed with their first effort at using their list and mobilizing their people.

MM: Well, here you have Obama giving a speech about why it's important to pass the stimulus, as opposed to "Here's your local congressman's phone number, put some pressure on." And I think they must be afraid of seeming too heavy-handed. There's sort of a fragile truce in Congress right now. And that some of these Blue Dog Dems will bolt if you get several thousand phone calls demanding that they toe the line for Obama.

Blue Dog Democrats

DH: But you've always been in favor of going after Democrats in the primaries.

MM: Absolutely, and I'm going to be working alongside Accountability Now. In fact, I'll be doing polling for them to essentially remind elected officials who they represent.

What we're seeing a lot now with these bailouts and stimulus and CEO pay and bonuses is that there is a class of elected officials who are 100 percent beholden to corporate interests, not their constituents. They hide behind "oh, we're in a moderate district," but I don't care how conservative, if you're in the Idaho first congressional district, which is the most Republican district held by a Democrat, no one there is clamoring for higher CEO pay or bonuses. Nobody. It doesn't exist. They're all in NYC , they're all in Connecticut.

And so this notion that this is the moderate position is patently absurd. If you look at what the definition of "center" is, it should be the place where a majority of the American people reside. In the American majority, the American people don't want higher CEO pay. They don't want bailout money going to bonuses.

So, what we're gonna do is find these elected officials doing things like voting against the stimulus and voting to protect CEO pay. We're gonna find what those major issues that are resonating are, and we're going to poll districts -- ask those people if they agree with the positions that their elected officials are taking.

MORE

[PATRICK]

1. At about this time

during the occupation of the WH, Bush term one, the swing vote play of Blue Dogs and moderate Republicans added to the Jeffords defection had the same empty pretensions of being the power brokers in DC. Even before 9/11 they were put off, treated with contempt and pretty much in full cooperation with the WH whose main shrug was to treat them as irrelevant came to quick and brutal fruition. They were a drag on the party's responses to outright dictatorship ever since. The notion that that this crowed about centrist caucus even existed as an important group faded into nothingness. "Bush is a genius" Bayh cheeped aloud with the most embarrassing display of ignorance, stupidity and poor judgment that these rational moderates could possibly muster. After that, as continues NOW, the only identifiable mustering of this groups comes when votes are needed to save the corporate agenda. Gone the ideology, the bipartisan moderation or any real philosophy on "new" Democrats or a Conservative justification or base.

The exposed dogs still merit more than ever to be treated with less respect for the pretensions they threw away out of plain cowardice or cloudy money serving hypocrisy. Cheney dished out contempt against all of Congress as the only EEO program he ever supported and this least brave coalition thinks it deserves resurrection? Obama needs to deal firmly and intelligently with this fraud, though this is harder and more intelligent work that these tools in fact do not personally deserve.

[HelenWheels]

2. Kohl (D) WI

I wrote an email to Kohl and called him a Blue Dog--which he is. I got a letter length reply and this is an unusual reply from him in response for an email. According to him he is not a Blue Dog but belongs to a Democratic Group for Progress or something to that effect. Guess the name Blue Dog stung a little.

[Peace Patriot]

3. The best thing the American people could do to take care of our "Blue Dog" problem is

TRANSPARENT vote counting. Our corpo/fascist establishment did not take away the transparency of our election system--with electronic voting run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Puke corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls--just to keep Bush/Cheney in power in 2004, in order to lard up the war profiteer gravy train and arrange the Financial 9/11 of September 2008. Nope, this complete power over our election results, that was fast-tracked all over the country during the 2002 to 2004 period, allows them to control the American peoples' outraged reaction to the unjust war and mindboggling looting, for instance, by filling up what should be leftist slots in Congress with traitor Democrats, and significantly and fraudulently shaving Barack Obama's mandate to further tie his hands as to real reform.

All the blogging in the world isn't going to change this. Only restoring transparent vote counting will enable us to clean out this stinking cauldron of corruption known as Washington DC, as well as other centers of corpo/fascist putridity, such as our state capitols.

------------------

My image of a "Blue Dog" Democrat will always be Gary Condit, darling of the Bush White House, who not only proposed a bill to post the Ten Commandments in all public buildings, but who also led the group of ten traitor Democrats who voted for Bush/Cheney's first tax cut for the rich on May 3, 2001, two days after he met with Dick Cheney on the very day (May 1, 2001), and during the very disappearance hours (12:00 noon to 3:00 pm), of one of his secret mistresses, Chandra Levy (whose bones were found in Rock Creek Park a year later, after 9/11). It was a very close and controversial vote. It started an escalation of more tax cuts for the super-rich, massively corrupt government contracts, the final ripping up of the financial regulatory system, and the massive, unprecedented looting of U.S. government coffers and the American people that has left us in ruins.

"Blue Dog" = filthily corrupt, incredibly hypocritical tool of the corpo/fascists who rule over us.

How dare they resurrect that term, "Blue Dog"? If they're going to be filthily corrupt and incredibly hypocritical, they could at least have come up with a new name for it. "Yellow dog" Democrats? "Dog Piss" Democrats? "Dogpile" Democrats? "Brown Spots on the Lawn" Democrats? "Smiling Villain" Democrats? "Ha-Ha on the Voters" Democrats?

But my venom won't change things either. What will change things--our first and main power as a people, the most fundamental requirement of democracy--is TRANSPARENT vote counting. But Markos Moulitas took the DLC ("Blue Dog") line on transparent vote counting, after the 2004 election, when some of us were trying to expose the egregious non-transparency of 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting by Diebold & brethren, and the more than probable miscounting of that election. Bury it. Don't talk about it. Call them kooks. Ban them from Daily Kos. Terry McAulife (then DNC chair) and his dirty "Blue Dog" pals sold our country down the river with their support of 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, and Marcos helped them out by shutting down discussion and investigation of it at Daily Kos.

But neither will my anger about this really do any good, except maybe to alert more people to this FIRST PRIORITY problem of how our votes can easily--EASILY!--be miscounted, discarded, disappeared, sloughed off to minor candidates, reversed. If your vote is just a bunch of electrons, manipulated by 'TRADE SECRET' programming code, owned and controlled by a handful of corporations whose far rightwing ties would make your hair stand on end, with no paper trail whatsoever in half the voting systems in the country, and a meager, inadequate 1% paper trail audit in the rest (99% of the votes never counted), you do not have a democracy, and all the screaming and yelling you can do, on blogs or anywhere else, will do you no good whatsoever, because the people you are yelling at are not beholden to you and me. They are beholden to people like Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, and a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser, who promised, in writing, to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004," and Howard Ahmanson, the far rightwing, reclusive billionaire who funds Diebold's brethren corp, ES&S, and also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals!

I am not putting down issue advocacy and political activism. Daily Kos is a good web site in that respect, and some discussion of election reform has been permitted since 2004 (after the issue became a bit less demonized by the Dem Party establishment). All I'm saying, to those who are working on other issues besides election reform, is that, if you feel that you have a ten-ton albatross on your back, as to achieving decent government policy and real reform in Washington DC, in your states, and/or within the Democratic Party, this is the albatross: privatized, 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. We must change this--we must!--before any real reform can be accomplished.