36 Responses to Markos Moulitsas Should Primary Himself

1. kindGSL March 10th, 2010 at 1:40 pm «

   Maybe it is time for him to run for office.
• Monty Karlo March 10th, 2010 at 1:54 pm «

  Hahaha, he’d probably do pretty well seeing how he is capable of talking out his ass.
2. Synoia March 10th, 2010 at 2:16 pm «

   The issue between Kos and Dennis appears to be irrational personal dislike of Dennis by Kos.

   Very immature of Kos to behave in the manner. Very childish.
• Leen March 10th, 2010 at 5:32 pm «

  Kos was a complete asshole. Completely acceptable to question Kucinich’s stand. But to claim Nader was responsible for the Bush administration, the wars, the economy and that Dennis was pulling a Nader was complete and utter bullshit. Then Kos threatens Kucinich with a lame challenge.

  There was a way to question Kucinich without turning into a raving lunatic

  Was so pathetic
• arctor March 11th, 2010 at 7:47 am «

  What’s hysterically ironic here is Kos’ total hypocrisy about “etiquette!” DKOS proposes itself as the Miss Manners of blogsites and prohibits personal attacks on those one disagrees with. Then the man himself trashes Kucinich on public tv, what horseshit.
• fflambeau March 11th, 2010 at 5:57 pm «

  Yup, repeatedly called Dennis K. “ugly” during the 2008 Democratic primary process and refused to address any of his positions. DK’s name at DailyKos was always followed by things like this #!*!.
• Bruce H. Vail March 12th, 2010 at 6:30 am «

  Hear, hear
3. Seymour Friendly March 10th, 2010 at 2:57 pm «

   Moulitsas is just another party apparatchik and self-serving operator. Furthermore, his web site is overrun by idiots and slogan-reprinting groupthinkers who really only serve one purpose together, and that is to feel certain that they are superior to others. “Daily Kos” is one of the biggest wastes of time in the political internet. All his munchkins do is expend their energy, contributing to a) entropy and b) the furthering of the political career and personal wealth of Markos Moulitsas.

   Well, OK, a) and b) are kind of one and the same, but you get my point. Smart people don’t waste time with the Orange Satan.
4. SueDe March 10th, 2010 at 6:09 pm «

   Nit Picking: – Monty, I think you meant:
   “But his call was not headed” (should be “heeded”)
   “Queue Markos #2″ (should be “Cue”)

   I understand that you’re upset with Markos, but I don’t agree you should be upset because he changed his mind about supporting the health care reform bill that finally emerged. We were all ready to fight for a bill that contained a strong public option, but it became obvious that President Obama wasn’t willing to fight for it and it wasn’t going to pass the senate without the White House fighting for it. I quit fighting for what I considered a bill that was a giveaway to the insurance companies about the same time Markos did, and so did a lot of other Democrats. But the bill we have has a lot of good parts to it, especially that it forces insurance companies to provide policies to people with pre-existing conditions, outlaws recissions (a really nasty practice), and forces the insurance companies to spend 85% of premiums on paying for actual health care. So I, like Markos, want it passed.

   What you can fault Markos on is the way he went after Kucinich – throwing a childish temper tantrum at a congressman who is actually standing up for his principles. Such people are rare in congress, and Kucinich deserves respect whether Markos agrees with the stand he’s taking or not.
• Monty Karlo March 10th, 2010 at 6:54 pm «

  Nit Picking: – Monty, I think you meant:
  “But his call was not headed” (should be “heeded”)
  “Queue Markos #2″ (should be “Cue”)

  Thanks for the edits, I am cool with that becuase I don’t spend enough time doing so.
• Monty Karlo March 10th, 2010 at 6:57 pm «

  What you can fault Markos on is the way he went after Kucinich – throwing a childish temper tantrum at a congressman who is actually standing up for his principles. Such people are rare in congress, and Kucinich deserves respect whether Markos agrees with the stand he’s taking or not.

  This is exactly my objection to Markos. Don’t really care if the DNC got to him or not. My point is he is the one that changed and he is trying to primary a guy who has the support of his conscience and his constituents.
• Phoenix Woman March 11th, 2010 at 6:59 am «

  What’s hilarious is that the primary deadline was the 18th of last month, so all of Kos’ and Larry O’Donnell’s hissyfitting over this was pointless.
• Cujo359 March 11th, 2010 at 10:49 am «

  I think Markos is wrong on both counts, but the slam on Kucinich is what upsets me. I’m not even all that fond of Kucinich, to tell you the truth. It’s just claiming that a guy who didn’t have anything to do with making the bill a worthless piece of crap is to blame for all the deaths it’s not going to prevent anyway is patently absurd. I wrote as much last night, but not in a tone that’s suitable for export.
5. cbsunglass March 10th, 2010 at 7:03 pm «

   Markos has apparently been bitten by the same rabid dog that has victimized so many dairists over at DailyKos. I hope he is able to get rabies treatment before the foam spews too heavily from his mouth. Maybe he needs a glass of water.
6. cbsunglass March 10th, 2010 at 7:06 pm «

   I just gave Kucinich a 100 bucks. I hope he receives good treatment from those of us who refuse to be borged by the Democratic establishment.
7. rossl March 10th, 2010 at 7:21 pm «

   Good to hear, cbsunglass. As for Markos, the guy’s always been an asshole. I avoid the DKos front page, but do like looking through the diaries there (admittedly, these days 9 out of 10 are crap).
• cbsunglass March 10th, 2010 at 8:17 pm «

  I don’t mean to trash everyone that comments at Dailykos, but you have to admit there is a knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of Obama by a vocal and rabid majority. And it appears that Markos has finally come out of the closet to expose himself as a Democratic Party operative. I enjoy reading comments over there too. Sometimes I even join in. My lifetime membership to DK, though, was a bad decision, almost as horrible as all the money I gave to the Democratic Party and Obama in 2008.
8. SueDe March 10th, 2010 at 8:36 pm «

   DKos has some really good bloggers. I’ve learned an enormous amount from some of the economic bloggers (especially about international economic systems and markets), from David Waldman (although he posts on other blogs too), and I’m fascinated by the science writers. Also on the weekends they have really good gardening diaries. You’re right about some of the political diarists bordering on reactionary, and the really good ones don’t write as often as I would like. But some of the commenters need to be locked in a basement until they stop screeching (or whimpering).
9. El Duderino March 11th, 2010 at 8:07 am «

   Add this clown to the list of bloggers who should be primaried:

   http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/03/10/kos_kucinich

   Alex Koppelman is another blogger who likes to attack Kucinich for sticking to his principles. And isn’t that the problem? People who previously had one position on a given issue, such as health care, change it with the same frequency they change their undergarments (at least one hopes they change their undergarments so often, otherwise check their privates for flies). So they attack the ones who don’t sell out their principles as being “purists” and “extremists” and “not pragmatic”. It’s considered taboo in the minds of access-bloggers to stick to principle. Selling out is what they consider to be the only rational behavior, and they cannot understand why principled people remain true to themselves.
• Monty Karlo March 11th, 2010 at 8:43 am «

  Clearly principle has not place in politics. Ask the President, all that matters is a win, any win.
10. Leen March 11th, 2010 at 8:49 am «

    Kos could have come out and challenged Kucinich’s stand without making false and inflammatory claims about Nader being responsible for the Bush administrations horrendous mistakes and then comparing Kucinich stand to Nader. Then Kos went onto put out a lame challenge to Kucinich. Pathetic.

    He could have questioned without going into a rant and threatening Kucinich. Ridiculous
11. Monty Karlo March 11th, 2010 at 10:09 am «

    According to Kos he’s been hating on Kucinich since 2007. Man that’s a long time to be nursing a grudge.

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/10/844564/-Midday-open-thread
• edgecliff March 12th, 2010 at 2:58 am «

  If you go back before 2007, it was around 2006 that kos made his famous “Dennis runs for president to meet women” case on the front page. It was the first time I realized what an ass this fellow is. Now that he gets airtime, you can see it in person – the dweeb and the tool that is Moulitsas.
  But here’s my theory: He needed cover to do his about face and join his orange oompa loompas who live in their orange reality base. What perfect diversion than to dust off his orange egocentric hatred of Dennis Kucinich. Make consistency and principle the enemy of the perfect capitulation and the perfect electoral means.
  Because, in the end and on Daily Kos, this all boils down to electoral victories where the Gate Crashers perceive they lie. The site makes no apologies for being a Democratic too. Which is fine. Eventually it has induced the site to become less of Gate Crashers and a lot more like its forebear, MyDD. But that also has a cost that can quickly implode the site into a backwater and irrelevant hangout for a loose community of aging hipsters, screaming apparatchiks, and bipolar hanger-ons who get more confused by the day which way the wind should blow for a rec’d diary.
  Should it be a Pro-Drone Attack diary or the 126th diary on the difference between a “progressive” and a “pragmatist”it really jumped a shark this year.
12. Eureka Springs March 11th, 2010 at 11:12 am «

    We should create an All Hail Mussolini award and give it to Kos for promotion of mandates to buy private insurance…. along with a bunch of wire coat hangers for the women in his community who will need them soon enough with Dems like him in our midst.
13. iphelgix March 11th, 2010 at 12:46 pm «

    Actually suggesting primarying Kucinich seems to run counter to the stated “electing more and better Democrats” goal of the DKos community . I can’t think of a better Democrat than Kucinich ( at the moment ).

    Painting him as a ‘Nader’ is disengenious at best. Nader wasn’t even the spoiler to be honest. We ended up with Bush because the Dem’s tried to sell a shit sandwich with a bit less gusto than the GoP were hawking their own crappy wares. We ended up with the legislative messes because we didn’t have better democrats who were willing to take principled stands and caved to the Bush administration.

    Personally, I think this will make Kucinich more popular with people who matter ( those who vote for him ) because he’s one of few who actually seems to vote in line with their principles *oh, and the actually having principles helps too*.
14. agramante March 11th, 2010 at 3:28 pm «

    I won’t try to explain Kos’ change in position, but I myself last summer felt that we should jettison the Senate bill as being too weak. Partly it was out of sheer frustration and anger at the likes of Lieberman and Nelson, who killed the most meaningful reforms for no intelligent reasons. I still despise them and their utter hypocrisy. But in the following months, I’ve come to think that the Senate bill is a good starting point, far better in terms of health care reform than nothing at all, and there’s the real possibility of fixes shortly to follow should the House of Reps pass it. So I’ve changed position in the last six months, too.

    Kos’ hatred of Kucinich is pretty longstanding, and I think, well-founded. Kucinich did a 180 on abortion rights for no reason other than political expediency. Furthermore, he’s been almost completely ineffective while in office. He’s authored no legislation of any substance. He’s an uglier, less popular left-wing version of Michelle Bachmann.
15. Monty Karlo March 11th, 2010 at 3:40 pm «

    He’s an uglier, less popular left-wing version of Michelle Bachmann.

    Ad hominem unwelcome on my diary.

    Nothing ugly about standing up for what you believe in. Furhter, if you and Kos can change your positions on the senate giveaway to the insurance companies then it Kucinich can chose to change his mind on abortion. You can’t in one statement hate him for not changing and next hate him for changing.

    What comes across is that you both hate him becuase he doesn’t march to your beat or that of Kos.
16. agramante March 11th, 2010 at 3:45 pm «

    Kucinich’s change–from one extreme to another–came very, very quickly, for the sake of an election. Furthermore, he’s gone out of his way to sponsor bills that are assured of going nowhere. It’s legitimate to say that he’s completely incompetent as a legislator.

    Contrast him with Ed Kennedy, who was often vilified but was a very powerful, and often successful, advocate for liberal causes.
• edgecliff March 12th, 2010 at 2:08 am «

  Ted Kennedy was a Senator from the first family of Democrats of the 20th Century. The years he built his legacy were the high water marks for Liberal Democrats.
  To compare DK with that situation, those golden years that eventually led to the term “Liberal” being a moniker of shame, btw, for all the Ted Kennedy reasons became the poster child of Liberalism to be shunned by the time Reagan was elected is a hoot.
  Dk is not a Liberal. Much more of a populist.
17. agramante March 11th, 2010 at 3:59 pm «

    One point on changing one’s mind (I finalized my last reply too quickly)–of course anyone has the right to. People like Lieberman who betray their own reasons (killing the public option on deficit grounds, when the CBO scored it better than the reform bill without PO) are contemptible. Kucinich’s abortion flop was an instantaneous, diametric change, with no rational explanation other than vote-getting.

    My change in opinion on the Senate bill (and apparently, Kos’) is not so extreme, or without principle. To be like Kucinich’s abortion flop, I’d've had to have moved from teabagger “Hell-no-keep-your-government-hands-off-my-Medicare!” to “Nothing but the public option will do!” I am now, and have always been, in favor of health care reform including a robust public option. However, I’m simply acknowledging political reality that something is better than nothing. A big first step is only a step, but it is still movement.
• Monty Karlo March 11th, 2010 at 4:23 pm «

  I appreciate your point of view.
• CarolynC March 11th, 2010 at 9:49 pm «

  “My change in opinion on the Senate bill (and apparently, Kos’) is not so extreme, or without principle.”
  You know this about Kos how?
18. fflambeau March 11th, 2010 at 6:06 pm «

    Amy Goodman over at Democracynow.org has an excellent interview with DK.

    He talks about the recent congressional vote which he forced on the Afghanistan War and how that war affects domestic spending:

    AMY GOODMAN: Talk about trying to invoke the War Powers Act, Congressman Kucinich.

    REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Congress has a clear constitutional responsibility, under Article I, Section 8, but the War Powers Act is a vehicle by which we can exercise our constitutional responsibility to be able to enter into the decision-making process as to whether we keep troops at war. I felt, after a eight-and-a-half years, we had waited long enough to have the debate, and so I used the War Powers Act to create the debate.

    I’m glad there was a debate. Now Congress has taken responsibility. The debate didn’t turn out the way I would have liked it to, but at least we brought it into the public’s awareness that Congress has now entered into essentially affirming the Obama administration’s policy on Afghanistan.

    JUAN GONZALEZ: Were you surprised by how few Democrats, of your fellow Democrats, joined you in the vote, and in terms of compared to how many Democrats, for instance, question what was going on in the war with Iraq?

    REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I think that Afghanistan, for the longest time, has been kind of the silent war. Yet with the troop surge—and we’ll have more troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq—Afghanistan will begin to emerge in the public’s awareness and in the awareness of members of Congress, not only because they have to vote on supplemental appropriations and defense appropriations, but because we’ve had a debate now. They’ve had to cast a vote to either keep the war going or not. And this resolution called for essentially an end to the war by December 31st, 2010. The Congress now has to have it in its awareness, you know, and around Washington, if you’re not having to vote on something, you just don’t have to think about it. And now we have to think about Afghanistan a little bit more than we did the day before yesterday.

    AMY GOODMAN: Among those who supported you, Congress members of Alaska, of New York, Maxine Waters, oh, McDermott and McGovern, George Miller, Jerrold Nadler of New York, Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, Congressman Grijalva—sixty-five for, 356 against. You’re linking the issue of the war in Afghanistan to our lack of healthcare at home. Can you talk about that link?

    REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we’re spending $250 billion in Afghanistan already. We have spent close to $700 billion—a little bit more than $700 billion, spent it already in Iraq. If you look at the research that Joseph Stiglitz and his assistant or co-worker Linda Bilmes have done, they’re projecting $3 trillion for the combined cost, long-term, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Now, I made a presentation on the House floor yesterday that talked about if we had chosen to spend that kind of money on matters domestically, how many schoolteachers we could hire, how many people could have healthcare, how many people could be able to have decent housing. We clearly make a choice when we choose for war. We clearly make a choice when we choose to fatten the defense budget.

    The whole interview is worthwhile reading and I’m sure DailyDick is not going to cover it.
19. fflambeau March 11th, 2010 at 6:09 pm «

    At Democracynow.org in the interview linked , Dennis K was asked about DailyKos’s attack on him:

    JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Congressman, on the issue of healthcare, you’ve come under intense criticism by some commentators. Earlier this week, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the website Daily Kos, appeared on MSNBC and slammed you for threatening to vote against the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill.

    MARKOS MOULITSAS: [I’m going to hold] people like Dennis Kucinich responsible for the 40,000 Americans that die each year from a lack of healthcare. And I don’t care if you’re a Republican or you’re a conservative Democrat or you’re somebody like Dennis Kucinich. The fact is, this does a heck of a lot for a lot of people. And like I said, it’s not perfect, it definitely needs to be improved, but it’s a first step. And God knows, it’s taken us a long time to even get our toe in the door, given the corporate interests that are arrayed against any kind of real reform. So I think this is a first step. It’s definitely not the end of the path. It’s not the ideal solution. But we are—our foot’s in the door. And if somebody like Kucinich wants to block that, I find that completely reprehensible.

    And he’s elected, not to run for president, which he seems to do every four years. He’s not elected to grandstand and to—and to give us this ideal utopian society. He’s elected to represent the people of his district, and he’s not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here. What he’s doing, he’s undermining this reform. He’s making common cause with the Republicans. And I think that’s a perfect excuse and a rationale for a primary challenge.

    JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. Congressman Kucinich, your response?

    REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, I brought the issue of single-payer healthcare before three separate meetings of the Democratic Platform Committee. I brought it into two presidential campaigns to raise the bar about what’s possible. Now I made a compromise when I backed the public option and voted for it in committee. I also had an amendment passed that would protect the rights of states to proceed with a single-payer approach at a state level. Each step along the way, I’ve shown a willingness to try to work with the White House so that we can have meaningful healthcare reform. I signed a letter, along with seventy-seven other members of Congress, saying that I would not vote for the bill unless it had a robust public option. At this point, I’m the only one left standing who has kept that pledge.

    I think that we have to ask ourselves why we would have a circumstance where, you know, a week or two before a vote would come, that it would be said that this is going to come down to a single member of Congress, who stands for healthcare for all, Medicare for all, who stands for a public option, who stands to protect right of states, to pursue it, and yet, we should sweep all that aside in favor of a bill that gives the insurance companies a lock on health insurance in America, privatizes the health insurance—$70 billion-a-year subsidy to the insurance industry.

    I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There’s about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, “Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure’s building. Just forget about it,” actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it’s really critical to take this stand, because without it, there’s no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
• CarolynC March 11th, 2010 at 9:47 pm «

  Thanks for this dignified response by DK to Kos’s over-the-top comments. He defends his probable no vote better than anyone of us here. No wonder he is hated by the sell-out Democratic party hacks. By standing firm on his pledge, he makes the rest of them look like weaklings. Which is what they are.
20. willf March 11th, 2010 at 9:50 pm «

    Agreed with the sentiment, but do you realize your title makes no sense?