Kos grabbing credit I thought belonged to Dean bugs me. Does it bug you?

Am I being over-sensitive, or does this passage from a Kos diary today not give Dean himself enough credit. "We"?!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/29/15457/355

We're now at the rough one-year anniversary of the DNC chairmanship battle, in which us netroots hooligans helped propel Dean to the top of the DNC. We outmaneuvered Kerry, who wanted to install Vilsack and then Sheehan by fiat. We outmaneuvered Reid and Pelosi, who wanted Tim Roemer. We outmaneuvered Mark Brewer of the Association of Democratic State Chairs, who wanted to Donnie Fowler.

Wasn't that Dean himself who out-maneuvered the rest of the candidates to become DNC Chairman? What is this "we", Kemosabi?

Well? Am I just being goofy, or what?

I am not going there with you. The attempt is to smear Dean via Kos, and I will not help you do that.

It is in some forums right now, an attempt to smear us as his supporters as well.

It is childish. I like some things Kos does, and I don't like some things he does.

If you want to replay the primaries, you can go there alone now.

Kos's humongous empty head though. Kos is so full of Sh*t it comes out of his mouth.

If you have some sort of Great Man fetish, then it was Dean all by his lonesome. If not, then it was Dean and his various allies, including the bloggers who fired up the Party roots to prevent the DLC takeover.

I vote for Goofy.

For the rest, I started supporting Dean as DNC chair in Aug 04, but certainly not thanks to kos. It is more a turnoff than anything else.

I remember a poll I did back then that made the point of saying that even folks who didn't support Dean for prez were supporting him for DNC Chairman.

And I still support him. It's good that he has netroots help. But I still think that most of the credit should go to Dean himself.

I supported Dean for the DNC because of who HE is and what he can do for the party and what he's doing now. Not because of the supporters.

is that the "we" refers to all of us. And he does say "helped". It is undeniably true, I think, that the leadership resisted Dean until they were forced by us grassroots loudmouths to deal with him.

He was not referring to himself in specific.

else followed. He is his own best fan. Praises himself whenever he can.

I don't read any self-praise into the above quoted paragraph. He's always made it clear that the netroots are bigger than any one person or website.

campaigning and effort and persuasiveness, and how much was the netroots getting him in there. Some say he never would have made it without the netroots.

I'd like to think he would have. Because the stronger he is, the better a chairman he is, and the better off the party will be for his efforts.

While Dean's might personal campaining was crucial, the netroots, for the first time in a party chair race, played an important role, especially in terms of pointing out flaws in some of the other candidates. Without the netroots, the contest may have dragged on to a multiple ballot mess in which various party bosses could have cut deals to gain influence and power.

I do remember it being said that never before had the DNC Chairman race garners so much attention. Almost as if it were a national election.

Okay, I see your point.

Take me through some of what the netroots did. Did folks call?

Did we really force anything? To some extent I thought it was the Governors endorsement.

Not arguing, honestly asking. How did we force the leadership?

I still think that this takes something away from Dean himself.

the great Kos.

He's also trying to empower his audience, to let everyone know that YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE by saying : "WE HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE IN THE PAST"

The blogs are the best thing that has happened to left wing politics in a generation and DKos is at the forefront and if he has a big head, he's earned it.

Let see: we were supposed to ignore the Bankruptcy Bill, the Energy Bill, the Roberts vote, ... because he had strategized that this was the good choice.

We are supposed to support Casey and blast NARAL and NOW because he thought we should ignore pro-choice movement.

Many blogs are left wings. kos is very centrist. I have nothing against centrists per se, but please dont tell me kos is into left wing politics. As long as somebody is not DLC. he will support him/her wherever this person stands.

So it comes down to Abortion huh?

BTW I don't he support Casey. He supported Dean.

If Kos is the enemy to you, then don't bother being a DEM because every DEM out there in office has let you down at some point. GO run for office and be the ultra pure liberal you demand the rest of us be.

Christ I'm pretty damn far left and I hate the DLC but people like you make a joke out of party.

I'm sorry but Abortion is pretty low on my priority list and its been far to long that we've let NARAL allow it to be an Albatross around our necks. And just because some of our leaders recognize what a winner wedge politics have been for the Republicans doesn't make them bad people. People like you who attack them for being politcally and saying things like : "abortion, safe, legal and RARE" (omg how dare you say RARE....we LOVE LOVE LOVE abortion)........you people are the enemy within.

as a woman, choice (my choice to decide for myself) comes pretty high in my list.

If you consider kos as left, sorry, you're right, we are not talking about the same thing, because I dont.

They got dissed too.

Kos seemed to come down pretty hard on those who didn't like Casey, even though Casey I believe was pro-life. He considered winning against Santorum more important I guess.

But then he upset when he thought GLBT rights were being impinged.

Confused the hell out of me, and pissed off a few people unnecessarily.

A diplomat he ain't.

as an honor, but on DU, I dont think most people would call me that (may be because I dont hate the DLC by itself, though I really dislike some people there), so I am a little lost.

I think most of us are a mixed baggie of some moderate, some left and some even right opinions. Most people are not totally one thing or another.

without Kos's help. Kos's ego is now running ahead of him.

You've missed the whole point of that post.

Kos gives himself kudo's and throws a little- and you helped too- out to his supporters. No, I don't think I am reaching here. Kos actually believes he can make or break a candidate.

I think it's important to claim a part of the success. I also believe that Dean would be the first to share credit, so no, it doesn't bug me. :)

Actually, it was Dean who promoted himself. I find it hard to believe that Kos's small group, when compared to the majority of the DNC, had any significant roll in winning this seat for Dean.

And I can almost gaurantee you without "OUR" ,as in all of us who supported Dean, He wouldn't be chair now.

We called? We wrote? What? Seriously. If there is an aspect to what happened then that I missed I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Was there a call to action?

I just remember looking at the field and finding Dean to be the best one?

Are you sure he wouldn't have won?

that helped Dean- if you go with what you state. I personally wouldn't follow Kos's lead on anything, yet somehow, I was able to support Dean with out Kos. i repeat, Kos is full of himself.

Nevermind Kos, how did the grassroots help Dean. Call to action? Phone calls? Letters?

Who would have gotten it instead of Dean without the netroots?

I just thought he was the best candidate, myself.

Thats' not some small group.

over the party as a whole. And not all of these visitors follow Kos's lead-at least I hope they would take a lot of what Kos says and dismiss it.

Cause I didn't read that. He means the grassroots of the party. Who contacted people who voted. I don't know how you can think he just means his readers. And anyway you are just being nasty and pety here. Move on.

I personally thought Dean was the best of the lot. A couple of the other contenders didn't even belong on the same stage with him.

REID, PELOSI, or KERRY WANTED? There was also a STOP DEAN movment going on in the elite of the party because you know he's so far liberal and a loose cannon and all the other garbage the media was selling about DEAN.

ended up calling Dean quite alot and gave about a million dollars to welcome Dean when he came on board. See the picture in my sig. That's why that is there. It's a unity thing.

Okay, that was Kerry, and his possible candidate didn't last very long.

Who did Reid and Pelosi want? I wasn't paying so much attention to them at that point.

because I think Kos is needlessly divisive. The subtext of thinking that he was also crowing about something that didn't have all that much to do with him occured to me later.

Which is why I was asking if I was being overly sensitive on the issue.

I do think that for a person who runs a site that is quite prominent in the blogosphere, he takes a wee bit too much glee in divisions that should have been left behind in the primaries.

I'm mostly a Unity Gal. Criticize Dems when they deserve it, but don't enjoy it, and certainly don't go out of your way to bash unnecessarily.

I think sometimes that there are those who work against what Dean himself is working toward, which is a strong party. Kos sometimes is one of those people. Dean is learning to work with many different people and ideas. I wish sometimes that others would follow his lead.

What Kos was saying was very correct.

Without OUR support meaning grass roots efforts put out by groups like DU,DKOS,Moveon etc. etc. etc. He probably wouldn't be chair right now.

I can't even begin to understand how some of you got that he was taking personal credit for dean's being elected.

Some people seem to make it thier mission to sow divison.

he can control and influence everyone who reads what he writes. He represents the same old media spin,but on a blog site. Try checking into some of the things he claims to know about and write on.He misinterprets, out and out lies and makes things up. Yet, I bet people think he is tell them the God's honest truth.

Dean is the one who did all the campaigning and work and convienced the delegetes to vote for him. How arrogant of them. No credit for Dean whatosever? :eyes: Some support.

I guess that was badly worded.

:toast:

You were right.

...how?

anymore and he is being recognized a commented on on other media shows. I for one think it is important that blog sites that claim to be news sources and provide commentary be as honest and accurate as possible. I find that a lot of the time Kos isn't. If the blogs become just like the lazy media we despise, we will not have less means of finding any accurate news.
I would hope the blogs could do better that the media has in being accurate and fair.Kos often isn't either and this is one case in point.

At a time when I'd like to see us all working together, there are those who take glee in tearing us apart.

That was my first concern. Giving Dean credit where it was due was a secondary thing that occured to me. How much of Dean's accomplishments are him, and how much are his netroot supporters?

And aren't we all his supporters now, those of us in the party, that is. He is MY Chairman, too.

I certainly didn't mean for this thread to turn into something that would also tear us apart.

And I certainly wasn't trying to bash Dean as someone said. In fact, I think that he deserves more props than sometimes he gets.

Dang.

He does say "we" after all. And I, for one, did my part by contacting my state Democratic Chairman to urge that he vote for Howard Dean for the party chair.

We all did our part in getting that done. Of course, Howard Dean played it brilliantly. Which is why he is where he is.

I find him overly divisive at times. Which is why I asked if I was being too sensitive in the first place. This thread is helping me to get my head straight on the issue.

Except that I would seem to be adding to the divisiveness. Didn't mean to do that.

However he's got some great posters on the site though so I still read over there everyday.

I made up my own mind about Dean. I like him a lot, but no thanks to Kos that's for sure.

It is that gestalt (geshtalt?) feeling that is good about DailyKos. A goodly amount of what is good about that site has nothing to do with Kos except that he owns the thing.

Every once in a while he pisses off a group of readers. One of these days he's gonna do that once too many times. So far, I've seen him diss feminists, "hippies" and pro-lifers.