Examining Kos

Christopher L. Filkins

Brian Reich examines the role of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga in the current election cycle:

Mike Krempasky, one of three founders of www.RedState.org, a conservative community blog that was formed, at least in part, as an opposition to The Daily Kos, says the opportunities that Kos has created will actually benefit others more than Kos' in the long-term. "Kos has largely pioneered the use of this new medium for political purposes, and it's serving him and his part of the Democratic Party well. But community building and political action on the Internet won't go away, and Kos' pre-eminence will not last forever. Frankly, this is good for conservatives, because what he has done is successfully developed a piece of political technology that anyone can use - if they're willing to work at it. And that leaves open an opportunity for many non-liberals to rally their base in the same way." RedState has already taken at least one page from Kos' playbook, powering their community site on Scoop.

Like him or hate him, Kos has a lot of power behind him and opportunity before him. He is helping Democrats all across the country to feel engaged, and have an impact. He is also profiting, promoting his personal beliefs and values, and building an army of followers. For Democrats starved for intelligent opposition to the conservative control of our politics and issues, good, critical analysis of the political scene is like a drug. And, Kos gives us our fix.

But does he represent the future of a community-based, net-centric politics? Kos is always looking forward – he sees the opportunity for self-organizing networks to impact politics. And he has staked out a role for himself in leading the charge. But as long as he operates within the top-down, opaque, unaccountable organizational structure that defines The Daily Kos, he will have chosen to remain firmly planted in the past as well.

Brian is completely off here. Managing hundreds or thousands of anonymous and semi-anonymous folks in a discussion group like Daily Kos surely resembles something more like herding cats than a "top-down, opaque, & unaccountable organizational structure". Brian Reich would do well to read Xian's book. Perhaps try his hand at managing the needs of a large discussion like that at Daily Kos before he tries to impose his concepts of structure on what Marcos is doing. There are surely critiques to what is happening at Daily Kos but Brian has missed them.