Final (hopefully) Conversation on YearlyKos

And this will conclude my non-coverage of the YearlyKos/Democratic convention. (I know I said I was talking to independents as Shaun Mullen was making cookies and so it was.... I understand the cookies turned out fine, as did the conversations...) The candidate debate was presided over by Matt Bai and some other lesser known folks... So far, carla at Loaded Orygun (now on The Hankster sidebar) wins MVP for the debate section today [people seem to think that Obama was charming... that's nice....]

Someone said this at Group News Blog: "This is really interesting convention, the attendees are very diverse in age, not so much in race, but they do cross income boundaries to some degree...." Well, that's good news....

Marc Ambinder at Atlantic wins the award for Most Improved Player with this comment: "Barack Obama has placed on a pox on both houses of Congress and both political parties...." and "After the forum ended, reporters clustered around Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson...." I don't know, I was talking to independents about Clintonism and how triangualtion hasn't particularly been good for regular people...

On a side note, John Harwood was allowed to say (now that the WSJ has been bought by Rupert Murdoch....) that "Some 53% back the idea of building a third party to mount presidential candidacy...."

The Seminal was really excited because he got a question in on the special session and he's having a party.....

Wait a minute! What's become of me??? I've become THEM! Yikes! I'm blogging about bloggers! Help me!... Oh, that's right... I'm going away to the Newport Folk Festival tomorrow. Thanks!

See you here next week!

More Conversation on YearlyKos

At the risk of reacting to the Big Blog, here are a few more YearlyKos abstentions: Shaun Mullen (Kiko's House is now on The Hankster sidebar...) cites E.J. Dionne Jr.'s WaPo commentary ("Daily Kos is often described as liberal, but it is, more than anything, partisan....") and is baking cookies.... Yummy! Pete Abel agrees with a small caveat...

Here's my 2 cents: YearlyKos will add nothing to a much needed debate on the future direction of our country. The questions will be neatly arranged within a Democratic Party framework while appearing to be coming from the grassroots. That's a lot like Clintonism... There'll be a lot of balooey about taking over the DP by the grassroots, and the MSM will drone on about how the DLC will dominate in the end... Too bad. The time for insurgence in the DP is over. Without a relationship to independent voters -- left, center and right -- YearlyKos will remain safely within the boundaries of the very partisan political culture that is responsible for the bad policy we are living with right now.

Unless grassroots Democrats are willing to talk about the Democrats' complicity in the current political arrangement, they'll be left with griping about how the Dems are not as organized as the Repubs and can't win elections because all the corporate money is behind the Repubs, etc. Lots of Bill O'Reilly stuff... They'll end up blaming the base and supporting the top of the ticket no matter what. They'll say Billary is better than Bush. They'll organize the grassroots to back the lesser of the 2 evils because we can't afford to have another Repub in office.... Blah, blah, blah...

So Shaun is baking cookies and I'm making calls to independents...

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Michael Tomasky writes in the Washington Post that the "I-word is being tossed about pretty freely in some left-leaning circles these days...."
• James Rainey at the LA Times notes that YearlyKos "attendees struggled with how to strike the right balance between their previous renegade stance and still work cooperatively enough with Democratic Party institutions to win elections...."
• Ben Smith at Politico takes also takes a direct approach, identifying YearlyKos as a special interest group: "The bloggers’ clear partisanship and their importance to the eventual Democratic nominee continue to make them a major part of the institutional Democratic Party...."
• Hillary gets her own special session at YearlyKos... where some of the little guys are...
• Idaho Repubs are split on closed primaries...
• “I vote for the person, not the party,” is a common mantra in San Angelo TX...

Open Left and independent voters

Why Political Machines Like Static Races by Matt Stoller on Open Left (now on The Hankster sidebar) is worth a read. As an independent, I agree that the process that the Parties go through for presidential elections is rote, but I also think that what makes this election exciting is what's happening on the outskirts of the parties -- the rise of independent voters (and candidates) is a significant departure from the winner-take-all politics-as-usual riff we get at election time. It's early, and non-partisan voices have an opportunity to be heard right now, at least until the election gets totally sewed up....

And while you're there, read The Case For Blogosphere Funding by Chris Bowers, who delivered his message at YearlyKos this morning...

Conversations on Race, Politics and the Blogosphere

Chicago 1968-2007

Here's an important discussion of race and politics from earlier this year: Blackosphere & Whitosphere: Silence is Never Golden on MyDD by Francis L. Holland (now on The Hankster sidebar) who says:

If in 2008 Black people and Latinos fail to vote in sufficient numbers for the Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida and Ohio, then whites will hypothesize endlessly about the "cultural" reasons for Blacks failure to vote. Whites may not ever consider that they simply exercised their majority power within the Party to nominate a candidate whom Blacks and Latinos really did not like very much. Although Black people always vote reliably and overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, our turnout and, therefore, the election results often depend upon the degree of Blacks enthusiasm for the candidate chosen by the Party. If the Party chooses a candidate whom we do not like, Black activists within the Party find it all the more difficult to mobilize Black voters. So, when you hear Black voters say that a proposed candidate is "just another white [man]", this ought, logically, to give you pause.....

Also discussed at The Field Negro (now on The Hankster sidebar) who says:

Mr. Holland seems to be screaming for more black inclusion in the Whitosphere, and more black links to sites like Daily Kos and My DD etc. This is where my man and I tend to part company. I personally could give a f**k whether My DD or Daily Kos, or any of the other so called white progressive blogs link me or even include me in their discussion. Honestly, their issues aren't my issues. I know they have very strong political beliefs and are tied to the democratic party and it's leaders, but not me, and this is going to surprise some people. But I would just as soon vote for a republican over a democrat if I thought he had my people's best interest at heart....

Is there a "de facto blogger apartheid practiced at prominent "progressive" whitosphere blogs"?

What's happening at YearlyKos? Francis L. Holland will be there (last year he spotted at least 6 black people there...). The National Review calls it the "vast left-wing establishment". On Saturday, Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel and Bill Richardson are set to appear at a forum. They will take questions from two journalists and the audience on foreign policy, domestic policy and philosophy... and they didn't attend the DLC Nashville gathering....