Decision ‘08

Kosola Hits The Big Time

The talk of the blogosphere last week was “Kosola”—allegations that Moulitsas wrote favorably about candidates with whom he or his close friend and coauthor Jerome Armstrong had financial relationships. Moulitsas swore the charges were baseless (Armstrong, too, has denied impropriety), but they clearly got under his skin. When The New Republic’s Web site published an e-mail from Moulitsas to a group of friendly activists urging them not to talk about Kosola and thus “starve it of oxygen,” Moulitsas went berserk in a blog posting, accusing the venerable liberal journal of treason. By the weekend, Moulitsas’s allies were sending each other e-mails infected with the paranoia of revolutionaries who’ve gained power too fast: How should they deal with traitors? How much openness could they handle? Which fellow travelers could they really trust?

Let’s say that again: from this week’s Newsweek (this time with the Lieberman angle):

…[H]e’s taken on the task of party-loyalty enforcer, backing candidates who wear their partisanship proudly and assailing those who seem too cozy with the other side on a range of issues. The best test of his new power: Sen. Joe Lieberman, an old Moulitsas nemesis who stands a good chance of losing his August primary thanks to heavy blogger backing of his opponent, Ned Lamont. Moulitsas’s success in that race, and a handful of other contests that may well turn on the politics of the war, will help determine if he’s just the latest in a series of faddish Internet phenomena (remember MoveOn.org?) or the future of the Democratic Party he so longs to be.

For the third time, just because I like saying it: from this week’s Newsweek (more Lieberman, and Newt Gingrich, to boot):

…[S]ome Dems fear that Moulitsas’s popularity will pull the party so far to the left that it won’t be able to win the general election in 2008. “It’s a little bit like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ with these guys,” said an aide to a Democratic presidential candidate who asked not to be identified while the boss was angling for Moulitsas’s support. “You like what they’re saying when they’re coming in, but you don’t know what they’re going to do once you let them into your house.” Newt Gingrich, who wins points even from liberal bloggers for his political acumen, marvels at the Democrats’ embrace of the blogosphere: “Candidates out there run a risk of resembling the people they’re trying to appeal to,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “I think the Republican Party has few allies more effective than the Daily Kos.”

Moulitsas will try to earn his stripes in the Aug. 8 Connecticut primary, where he and other bloggers have hammered Lieberman for his embrace of the Bush doctrine on Iraq. “If it were not for my position on the war in Iraq,” Lieberman tells NEWSWEEK, “I don’t believe there would be a primary against me.” Moulitsas is doing everything he can to make that primary fatal for Lieberman—rallying other bloggers, ginning up money and making Lamont the poster child for the “people-powered movement.”

Moulitsas’s targeting of Lieberman angers some Democrats, who argue that at a time when the party faces tough odds of taking back the Senate, there are better targets than a popular incumbent. But in other races, Moulitsas has put pragmatism above his ideology. When Iraq veteran Paul Hackett was facing Sherrod Brown in Ohio’s Democratic senatorial primary, Moulitsas initially backed Hackett. “Give me an Iraq vet over a career politician,” he blogged. But as the contest wore on and Democratic leaders spread the word that Brown would be a stronger general-election candidate, Moulitsas changed allegiance. (Hackett eventually withdrew from the race). Brown’s candidacy is now obsessively promoted on Daily Kos—along with other candidates who take a variety of different positions on the war.

Missing from that analysis: the fact that Kos changed allegiences in the space of hours, when Brown hired…Jerome Armstrong, the Kos co-author recently revealed to have signed a consent degree with the SEC regarding charges of stock manipulation, and the man who is at the heart of Kosola…

2 Responses to “Kosola Hits The Big Time”

1 mtl Says:
June 25th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Does the lefty blogosphere cheer if Lamont wins the primary, but Liebermann then wins the ACTUAL seat as an independent?

It would be like capturing “Okinawa”. Geat moral victory, but your army is now 4500 miles away.
2 wavemaker Says:
June 26th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
There is a word for what Markos is seeking to impos on his followers. It’s called fascism.