Harry Reid, the senior Democratic senator from Nevada and Senate minority leader, opened his speech at last week's Yearly Kos blog convention with anecdotes about two new grandchildren. After people gasped at the size of his family, evidentially unaware he's Mormon, Reid, known to many by his nickname, Pinky, then gave a pretty standard speech. He touched on all of the topics relevant to Democrats: health care, energy and his actions that closed the Senate last year. For those he got loud applause. But when he touched on Iraq, the conference room at the Riviera exploded with shouts of "Bring the troops home!" and "Bring them home now!"
Reid stopped, seemingly stunned. The cries grew louder, then subsided. Hesitantly, he continued with his prepared speech, with no word of when American troops would be pulled out of Iraq.
If Reid hoped to win the left-wing blogsphere over to the mainstream Democratic line, he failed, at least on that issue.
When the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, was reported in the wee hours of June 8, many in Iraq rejoiced. President Bush and Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, hailed it as a victory, though not a final one, against a brutal group responsible for beheading civilian captives and bombing children waiting in line for candy and toys. Naturally, not everyone was so happy with al-Zarqawi's death: His family, residents of his hometown and al-Qaida members twisted the loss of their hero into a celebration of his martyrdom, claiming he was now married to God.
That same day saw the opening reception for the first-ever Daily Kos convention at the Riv. Daily Kos (pronounced like "coast" with a silent T), an online site of diaries, blogs and bulletin-board postings started by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga in 2002, has been rated as one of the highest-trafficked and highest ranked of all blogs, often having millions of unique visits a week.
To say that the members and politics of Daily Kos lean to the left is like saying Fidel Castro likes the occasional cigar. With al-Zarqawi pronounced dead, Daily Kos' denizens leapt to their keyboards. Just one posting of the news generated nearly 400 comments—or threads—by 208 people by the afternoon of June 8. The first response: "Bush's idea of justice is bombs falling out of the sky?" by Johann. Others soon followed, ranging from the entire operation being a hoax ("Those pics of Abu Z look like they just thawed him out just in time for the elections" by Barefoot Mailman) to al-Zarqawi being an American agent ("Zarqawi was quite probably a psy ops job in the first place, so what does that make his 'death'?" by Christopher Day) to even the occasional statement of approval, albeit tempered by dislike for Iraq's liberation—"al-Zarqawi was at war with the United States and Iraq. As such, he was a legitimate military target ..." by Euston Manifesto. However, those last sentiments were rare.
They take their lead from their leader, Zuniga (who prefers to go by his middle name, Moulitsas). When American contractors were killed in Fallujah, their charred corpses beaten, dragged through the dirt and then hung from a bridge by a cheering crowd, Moulitsas said he felt nothing for the men providing security for food deliveries, calling them "mercenaries." "Screw them," he posted. In January of this year, he declared Osama bin Laden "sounds just like Republicans!"
These, then, are the self-styled "netroots," part of the blogsphere—people who go online to express their innermost thoughts, left or right, political or personal. Daily Kos, together with left-wing activist organizations like MoveOn.org (now a political action committee) and Democratic Underground, are the leaders of the progressive blog movement. As pointed out by National Review White House correspondent Byron York in his book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, they're small in numbers, optimistically 2.5 million in a country where more than 120 million voted in the 2004 presidential race, and it's likely that the same people who post on Daily Kos also post under different names on MoveOn and Democratic Underground, and are the ones who went to see Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11. With such small real numbers and such radical views, then, why would the chief Senate spokesman for the Democratic Party bother? It's because they hold an increasingly large influence on what they dismissively term the "mainstream media," a view that places the liberal New York Times on the right side of the political spectrum in their minds.
It is for this reason, more media perception than political power, that Pinky came to the convention to deliver the keynote address.
Kossacks, as they call themselves, named after the czarist troops infamous for killing Jews in Russia, do and don't fit the stereotypes you'd expect. Humid body odor filled the small room packed with exhibitors, political candidates and Kossacks—but not the scent of patchouli oil (though if you get that many people of any political stripe in a small room, it's bound to start smelling a little European).
Gray was the predominant hair color. Moulitsas said in his opening address that the average age of Kossacks is 45. That may be so, but the conventioneers skewed north of that number. Perhaps the older Kossacks have the time and money to travel to Vegas for four days, or perhaps the generation known for love-ins and bra-burning is more devoted to their cause. As for skin color, it was whiter than a Republican rally.
And not a single Che Guevara T-shirt was to be seen, though there were plenty of tie-dyed shirts, peasant dresses and, yes, black socks worn with sandals. There was also one man wearing a tin-foil hat (Internet slang for paranoia) and another wearing a velvet wizard's hat.
In all, the estimated 1,000 conventioneers were closer in appearance to a Dungeons & Dragons reunion than a gathering of computer geeks devoted to "people-power politics." But while D&D compelled its practitioners to venture out of their basements in search of other people to play with, Kossacks typing in their homes rarely meet in person. At various panel discussions, audience members received applause for announcing their screen names. Hot talk in the halls was all about who from what blog was there and whether the happy hour was an open bar.
In the forums, though, it was all business. Topics included how to deal with conservative talk-radio shows, how to manipulate the media for better coverage and how to make the progressive agenda (renewable energy, anti-free market policies and generally an isolationist foreign policy) a reality.
With midterm elections around the corner and the political crowd seeing it as a test as to whether Republicans, or "Rethugs" and "Repugs" as Kossacks call them, will continue to hold the majority of offices, it's little wonder that the out-of-power Democrats came courting the Yearly Kos crowd. Reid wasn't the only one.
Nearly everyone had a Ned Lamont sticker somewhere on their body; he's a progressive running against Joe Lieberman, whom many leftists consider a "right-wing Democrat." Wesley Clark wandered the halls like Banquo's ghost. Ex-Virginia governor Mark Warner threw a party atop the Stratosphere, for which he was castigated by attendees who felt he was attempting to buy Kossack votes with free roller-coaster rides and a chocolate fountain. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean spoke at a morning session cosponsored by an anti-Wal-Mart group. California Sen. Barbara Boxer also made a pit stop, though House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had to cancel at the last minute because of some voting in Washington.
The risk, of course, is that in their desire to regain the White House, and the Senate, and the House, moderate Democrats—and for the sake of argument, you can lump Dean and Pelosi in there—are making a pact with the digital devil. People for people-power politics don't handle dissent well, and they don't do nuance. You're with them or against them. You refer to the president as a chimp or you're evil. Moulitsas even called York, who filed a critical story on Yearly Kos, a long-haired "chickenshit" on the site for daring to quote him in an unflattering light.
Of course, rage, extremism and sophomoric insults are nothing new online. There's something about the anonymity of Internet correspondence that lends itself easily to darker emotions, letting otherwise mild people unleash their beasts. And hate and anger can be found on both edges of left and right. Strident posts can be found on conservative sites such as Free Republic and ProtestWarrior. Talk radio has infamous hosts such as Michael Savage. Ann Coulter has passages in her new book, Godless, that attack some of the 9/11 widows.
Clearly, the discourse in the public square more resembles a soccer riot. But a key difference is that while the GOP has taken steps to distance itself from far-right-wing elements, especially since the disasterously stupid decision to have Pat Buchanan speak at the 1992 national convention, Democrats are becoming bedfellows with the far left.
The threat to Reid, Dean and the Democratic Party was issued opening night: "The media elites have failed us, the political elites, in both parties, have failed us. It's our turn," said Moulitsas. "If they refuse to reform, if they refuse to be accountable, if they refuse to join the people-powered movement as it seeks to make this a better country and move America forward, then they'll be relegated to the dustbin of history."
As opposed to the silence Reid received after he tacitly acknowledged the sticky reality of not being able to pull out of Iraq "now," Moulitsas' tough talk, only a shade away from "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive," drew cheers. President Bush, humbled by criticism for his remarks made in the emotion-charged heat of 9/11, recently apologized. Here's hoping Moulitsas and his followers, as well as MoveOn and Democratic Underground, learn the same humility. Because if the netroots are the future hope of the Democratic party, what will be in history's dustbin is civil political discourse.