YearlyKos 2007: Little More Than A Show

Familiar with DailyKos? Of course you are. You might like the blog; you might not. But you definitely know the name.

Well, this past Saturday the 2007 edition of the YearlyKos Convention, an annual gathering of bloggers, politicians, and various other influentials brought together under one roof by Markos Moulitsas, a civil puppeteer of sorts, hit Chicago with a bang. The convention was especially poignant due to the presidential debate which occurred among Democratic candidates at the event under the critical eye that is the blogosphere.

If only the critical eye were a little more ethically and intellectually sound.

The YearlyKos 2007 debate was a show, and little else. From the noticeably elongated applause and singsong birthday wishes given to wonderman Barack Obama, to the strange attention given to the question of whether an official White House blogger should be appointed by the administration to come next (all candidates predictably agreed), to the numerous shouts and jabs delivered to Hillary Clinton when the issue of lobbying came up, little very noteworthy information emanated from the Q&A forum that the average citizen wouldn’t otherwise be able to deduce by following Washington discourse and banter (both hollow to start, I might add) for any extended period of time.

That’s not so much an attack on the political establishment in the US as the blogosphere, because if anyone at present is to get to the root of any issues concerning the greater national populace, it should no doubt be a Web-based pundit of some sort, free of beltway interests.

There is constant talk of how bloggers routinely ask the “tough questions”, but such an assessment is actually rather bizarre, at least when it comes putting a point directly to the political elite. Amidst their peers, bloggers, like big media-type journalists, happened to “play it safe” this weekend, not hitting too hard from the start and not volleying returns at a rate that would get candidates to stray from slogans and tried-and-true campaign copy to begin talking with a modicum of genuineness.

In that way, bloggers at YearlyKos 2007 failed to accomplish what their readers wished them to, which was: Disabuse candidates of the notion that they would be able to scoot past touchy subjects and queries that would require them to think rather than simply speak.

When brought face to face with the genuine articles of the 2008 race, they appear to be losing the momentum and drive they steadily gained over the past decade, which surely is not a good sign considering they have only very recently been given such open access to newsmakers.

Bloggers would do well to remember how and why they rose from obscurity to become mainstays in the public eye. Political access is undeniably a powerful attraction, and in many ways it can also be an intimidating potato to handle. It’d be incredibly unsavory to find bloggers so quickly corrupted out of the fortitude they’ve amassed over the past few years.

Readers of today’s most notable blogs do not care in the least about the ill effects of the current political space. They only want remedies. If the current set of bloggers is able to deliver solutions through the incessant pestering of public notables, the public will appreciate them for it. If not, they’ll look for others to do the job.