From following is my dispatch from YearlyKos, written for the Hotline:
The hour is creeping on 11 p.m., and the entire city of Las Vegas is spread out panoramically some 850 feet below the windows of the Stratosphere. Mark Warner, former Virginia governor, progressive blogger hero, and The Man Who Brought Us Here, is on the tiny stage, sandwiched uncomfortably between two Blues Brothers impersonators. They’ve given him a hat and sunglasses and are striking up Wilson Pickett’s classic Mustang Sally.
Ice sculptures abound, and around the corner from Warner, fresh cut sushi and a flowing chocolate fountain entertain the 800-person crowd in between their trips to the open bars. Elvis is playing on the other side of the Space Needle-like Stratosphere, near a gift shop selling “I (heart) lap dances” t-shirts. A floor above Warner’s head, on the outside observation deck, a group of bloggers are debating a rational national energy policy, their backs turned on the gratuitously lit Strip.
The party could rival any of the soirees at a Democratic nominating convention, but tonight’s party is all about the Democrats’ newest interest group: the blogosphere. In fact the entire YearlyKos convention, the first ever gathering of the netroots activists who populate the progressive blog DailyKos.com, has been filled with the incongruous sights of a group who lionize their outsider, insurgent status but at heart want nothing more than to be Party power brokers. The convention was filled with 1,000 armchair Mark Penns, Joe Trippis, and Celinda Lakes-in-training.
Convention namesake Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who lent his name to the volunteer-organized conference, and fellow blogger Jerome Armstrong wrote this spring a well-received book called, “Crashing the Gates: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics,” but when the bloggers crashed the party’s gates this weekend-holding their first ever national convention-they found themselves waiting inside.
Who would have thought three years ago, as Howard Dean began his Quixotic insurgent campaign for the presidency, that in the spring of 2006 he’d be chair of the Democratic Party and bloggers, those great unwashed pajamaudheeden, would be having a convention just like the dental hygenists’ association-complete with box sandwich lunches, an exhibit hall, and lanyarded credentials, as well as 18 workshops, ten roundtables, and 24 panel discussions.
The convention’s motto, “Uniting the Netroots,” is written in the same font that Dean for America used during the 2004 campaign. This is the state of the blogosphere circa mid-2006: It even has a standardized font-Marydale-to demonstrate what is authentically “netroots.”
Because of the perceived power of the netroots activists, hopeful 2008 presidential candidates and Party leaders were out in full force: from New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who made a last minute drop-in, to Warner, to panel members Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, and General Wesley Clark. By far, Warner poured the most resources into the event, with more than half-a-dozen staff on site, and his Friday night party, and the tony “Blogosphere at the Stratosphere,” paid for by his Forward Together PAC-and was rewarded for his efforts with adulation from many of those present. Russ Feingold had a prominent booth, complete with “I’m a Progressive Patriot” stickers. Senators Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer both spoke, and Nancy Pelosi “begged” to attend, organizers say, but House votes kept her in Washington. Howard Dean received a hero’s welcome during a packed Saturday morning breakfast speech, with the crowd interrupting his speech with standing ovations six times.
Nevertheless Boxer, Reid, and Dean all faced tough questions from the bloggers who don’t think the Party is being aggressive enough to fighting the Bush administration. Disappointed by the paucity of grand tactical actions like Reid’s much celebrated shutting down of the Senate last fall over the issue of Iraq intelligence, one blogger grilled Dean, “When are we going to use our powder?”
Noticeably absent from the festivities at Vegas’s seedy Riveria Hotel, though, were three other potential 2008 candidates: Hillary Clinton, who is hugely unpopular in the blogosphere, John Edwards, who was in Israel, and John Kerry, who instead sent staff. “This was the Iowa J-J dinner for bloggers, and just as no one who wants to play in Iowa would skip the J-J, I’m surprised some of them skipped this,” Trippi said. “We’ll see now if it matters.”
Even without the candidates, there was no shortage of Washington insiders: the audience was peppered with staffers and consultants from PACs, campaigns, committees, and think tanks like the Center for American Project. There was even a pundit training, teaching bloggers how to do television. Markos, who appeared Sunday on Meet the Press, admitted he’s taking the advice. “If I criticize our side for not being put together, I figured I needed to be a bit more put together,” he explains.
There was scant humility visible amid a group who widely see themselves as responsible for reinstalling a backbone in the cowed Democratic Party and holding to account a lazy and entrenched Washington press corps. Markos’ Thursday night kick-off speech was celebratory and self-congratulatory for building an online community that, he says, now attracts half-a-million readers a day. During a panel discussion on political journalism, moderator and blogger Matt Stoller began by chiding the national press in attendance: “It’s all off the record except for this: It’s all your fault.”
Throughout the rooms and halls, attendees-who ranged widely in age and skewed more elderly than one might suspect-were perched typing furiously on mostly Apple laptops and surfing what others were writing about the convention using the convention’s free Wifi network, n3tr00tz. It was the first time many of the bloggers had met their daily online companions face-to-face, and many people introduced themselves both by their real name and their online handle, while others like DailyKos blogger “Hunter” stuck only to their pseudonyms. Marveling at the diversity represented among the crowd, one blogger said, “We’re not at all geeks. Well, we are, but we’re interesting geeks.”
The weekend was filled with brain-bending moments, especially as the national media-more than 120 reporters credentialed for the event-ran up against the netroots media. At one point, Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz was photographing a blogger camera crew videotaping Chicago Tribune political reporter Jeff Zeleny interviewing Markos. The five-person New York Times contingent, including Adam Nagourney and Maureen Dowd, received much attention, and the National Review’s Byron York, also present, was called out time and again by speakers-never in a context that one would mistake as complimentary.
At another point, two elderly attendees mistook one of the conference’s celebrated heroes for another, confusing former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi for Mr. Valerie Plame, Ambassador Joe Wilson. They grabbed his hand, pumping it up and down while praising him for his courage and for standing up to the Bush administration.
At panel after panel, which ranged from electoral reform to energy reform to “Building Progressive Infrastructure,” the progressives present debated what needed to be done. There were workshops and roundtables aplenty but precious little in the way of action. A marquee panel on the CIA leak investigation, which packed the largest ballroom, merely rehashed the last year of the investigation and bashed the complacency of the Washington press corps.
Additionally, considering the stakes in the Democratic efforts to retake Congress in November, only a handful of 2006 candidates appeared, and there was no panel about a strategy to approach the critical midterm fall elections. One Kos blogger, DemocracyLoverInNYC, said that while the lack of direct action was a disappointment, the blogging crowd wasn’t going to go quietly into the Nevada desert. As she said, “The nature of this group is that this won’t end here.”
Just how much of a change the blogging community has brought forth in the Democratic Party was visible just a few hotels up the Las Vegas Strip at the Frontier, where the Young Democrats of America were holding their national conference. Nevada Senate candidate Jack Carter, the son of the former president, opened his remarks Sunday morning to the 150-person crowd by plugging his campaign blog and how he even had a page on MySpace.com. Then, perhaps echoing the feelings of his Party leadership at large, he laughed nervously: “I’ll let you know I’m not entirely comfortable with that.”
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