The Daily Kos

[yasscat]

Blake's not kidding. If you missed the golden age of the site, I scarcely know how to describe it to you beyond giving a general elaboration of how it was.

Spoiler: Tragedy and Fail

Back in the day, DailyKos was a fucking gleaming gem of reasonability in a time when the left had taken it on the chin pretty badly. 2000-2004 was not a fun time to be a Democrat, to put it mildly, but DailyKos always managed to be both entertaining, informative, and analytical, and many of our routine commentators were experts in their field. You had people with actual know-how explaining various things, cause-and effect with minor issues, and actual, honest-to-god discussions.

Right-wingers and Independents came to the site constantly to discuss things like adults, and we had a lot of great dialogue take place. Civil disagreement was a common thing, but nobody took it too hard and we genuinely learned things from these discussions. One of my favorite posts was brought about from a former RNC worker who had basically elaborated that the rank-and-file of the right and the leadership were on two completely different continents, arguably on different planets, and quite possibly different planes of existence.

DailyKos prided itself on things like these. "a reality-based community," we called ourselves, mocking the idiocy of the 2008 election cycle. Feels never trumped reals, and a more solid community I'd rarely encountered online.

It was far from perfect. There were people who were constantly pushing sophistry over actual data, and this became an increasing problem as time went on. Kos in particular was a gigantic faggot and would go out of his way to antagonize the newcomers, but since this was the quality time of DailyKos, people constantly made fun of his ass when he did. Unfortunately, this was a time when neoprogressives started to get a foothold on the site - and they immediately kissed Kos's ring-piece. Soon, Kos started posting the hatemail the site would receive in a weekly feature, and this quickly mutated from making fun of people who could barely spell and punctuate and who called Kos a nigger to him belittling people who otherwise had solid arguments. This kind of shit quickly got worse, and soon any viewpoint to the right of Che Guevara was considered wrongthink. The independents were the first to fuck off, followed by the right-wingers we used to discuss things with. After that, we only had the original userbase, and they started to fracture when the infestation got worse.

We started to see Trigger Warnings. Then we saw "White People Aren't Allowed to Comment in Race Threads." Then we flat-out saw bullshit like the 1-in-5 statistic for rapes on college campuses and the userbase proceeded to begin ragequitting. Less said of what happened during the Duke Lacrosse scandal on DailyKos, the better.

Within the span of 3 years, DailyKos went from a community priding itself on its research and ability to engage people of different viewpoints to a place where any distance from the narrative was considered a cardinal sin. Once, we were a site that made fun of the Teabaggers for being proud-to-be-brainwashed dolts that refused to listen to logic or reason; we then became a group of proud-to-be-brainwashed dolts that refused to listen to logic or reason.

I've made comparisons between Markos and Moot a few times, and I stand by those comparisons. I'm almost entirely sure he's hated the community of the site since it got big, and I honestly think the current occupation of the site by Social Justice is what Kos always wanted. His views were always much more aligned with his own personal power than giving a damn about his own userbase. Nowadays, DailyKos is trying to become another Gawker in a desperate losing battle to remain financially solvent. The jokes pretty much write themselves.

It's seriously a goddamn shame, how much of a mockery of its former self this site has become. The difference is night and day.

I really miss the way it used to be

 

[Jaimas]

I actually would like to see what happened around this time. Do you have links?

Sadly, no. DailyKos does periodic purges of old articles and you can only look so far back. Pretty much every new update has come with mass deletions of old threads. If you can find other veteran Kossacks, though, they'll generally report similar.

 

[systemlord_baal]

Sadly, no. DailyKos does periodic purges of old articles and you can only look so far back. Pretty much every new update has come with mass deletions of old threads. If you can find other veteran Kossacks, though, they'll generally report similar.

Memory-holing is a definite sign of the decline of a site. ;(

 

[DrJonesHat]

@Jaimas brings up a valid point. The SJWs are driving out moderates from the Democratic Party just as the Tea Partiers are driving away moderate Republicans. It wouldn't surprise me to see the moderates of both parties form into a new political bloc with the nutjobs at either end of the spectrum.

 

[AnOminous]

The site used to pretty cool. I remember its eponymous founder used to impose some quality control, such as banning members who tried to claim that Bush's winning of Ohio (and thus the election) in 2004 was a conspiracy. That was pretty based.

They also banned truthers and similar tards. That was pretty awesome and the salt content went through the roof.

Kos used to be a middle of the road Democratic Party supporting site which usually focused on actually getting Democrats elected. A lot of leftists disliked it for that precisely because it was so focused, but pragmatism is at least a reasonable ideological position and gets stuff done.

I can't really think of a specific example of a Republican-leaning site that was into the "getting stuff done" ethic, but early Tea Party stuff was actually pretty successful at actually electing candidates of its choosing.

There isn't really a direct parallel, but the lunacy into which most of this online political activity has descended certainly seems to be across the board.

 

[Jaimas]

So Kiwis, how do you feel about circular firing squads?

Spoiler: Civil War Comes to DailyKos

The original diarist gets sniped, holds his own.

Support grows for the initial diarist for what's considered a non-progressive opine on DailyKos.

One of many angry morons who tries to dismiss the whole thing as racism.

Subir has gone to the Margaret Pless School of Journalism, and immediately snipes at the diarist.

Subir confirmed for accusing him of thoughtcrime.

I like the cut of this diarist's gib.

And finally the good taste and intellectualism you've come to expect from DailyKos.

This little barrage of content is from one of many threads on DailyKos covering the Cologne attacks. Common sense has started to win out against the stupid on this one - a rare thing if you've been following this thread for a while - and the result has been a number of out-and-out flamewars and attempts to label anyone bringing up the obvious racists and Islamophobes as the rest become increasingly unwilling to not say the obvious.

 

[JU 199]

Cross-post!

"DOW fell off a cliff today you say? Recession in the pipes you say? Lol No!"

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/13/1469262/-Seven-Pretty-Good-Years-Actually

Now in January 2016 we have an NYSE well over 16,000 despite its recent China/India based falloff, and a housing market that has rebounded sharply from its freefall of the last decade. We have a national unemployment rate of 5%, way below the post-WW2 average of 5.8%. Inflation is virtually nonexistent, and has been for years. The nation just celebrated our 70th straight month of positive job growth, a prospect that would’ve been unthinkable on Obama’s January 20, 2009 Inauguration Day. The Wall Street Reformation Act, along with its ancillary Consumer Protection Bureau, has put a very heavy lid on corporations that bend the rules and practice the predatory lending practices and voodoo accounting that they got away with before. Santander Bank, Allys Auto Lending and General Motors have all discovered that the old lax ways don’t fly anymore.

 

[Hellsperger]

I'll just repost what I said about Daily Kos in the Sarah Nyberg Defense thread:

I started following Daily Kos because they were part of some campaign either against SOPA or for saving net neutrality. Sad to see they've gone off the deep end.

On that note, isn't it massively hypocritical that so many critics of SOPA/ACTA/etc. and supporters of Net Neutrality have become SJWs?

 

[AnOminous]

I'll just repost what I said about Daily Kos in the Sarah Nyberg Defense thread:

It had actually markedly deteriorated already by the time of SOPA.

Arguably its height of relevance was 2004-06 or so, when political campaigns would actually associate with it. At the time, it had the sense to outright ban 9/11 truther bullshit. Unfortunately, by 2010 or so, SJWs already had really fucked up the place, and by now, they're totally in control.

 

[Jaimas]

It had actually markedly deteriorated already by the time of SOPA.

Arguably its height of relevance was 2004-06 or so, when political campaigns would actually associate with it. At the time, it had the sense to outright ban 9/11 truther bullshit. Unfortunately, by 2010 or so, SJWs already had really fucked up the place, and by now, they're totally in control.

The best years of DailyKos were between 2004 and 2007.

2008 was an excellent year - and the beginning of the end.

By 2009, the disease was in its veins, and could no longer be expunged.

Spoiler: What Happened?

Social Justice always had a small and loud presence on DailyKos, but it didn't start to really become a major issue until late 2007 and into 2008, hitting full-bore in the aftermath of Obama's election.

Everyone was assuming Obama's election was the start of a new thing - "the adults were now in charge," to hear people outside the USA tell it. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief knowing Bush was no longer President, and Dems all over the place started patting themselves on the back for a job well done. If you're unfamiliar, 2008 was a fucking slaughter for the Right, and Democrats gained obscene ground. All indication was that things were going to be finally improving. This led to a lot of previously active groups on DailyKos to need something new to fight for.

Most of the ones that actually mattered locked onto decent causes. The others, however, would become part of the problem.

There was a strong contingent of unpleasant fucks, mostly incredibly wealthy ones, who had an entrenched desire to disturb the shit. The only unifying connection (at first) was that most of them were radical feminists (of the sort that other Lefties would call "fucking crazy") and Hillary supporters cut from the same cloth as the infamous "Chair Incident Lady."

I want to get across that this wasn't all or even many Hillary supporters that did this - it was just a tiny, loud, shrieking minority, just as it was now. Pissed that they didn't get "their candidate" in office, and spoiling for a fight after the last electoral cycle, they started latching onto the worst kinds of fucking first-world problems, and, being essentially political Hipsters, they acted like any Hipster does when they're fucking ground in the dirt until they cry: they acted like assholes. Their first action?

Attack the coalition that led to the 2008 victories in the first place.

If you're not familiar, Dems were not the only ones who voted in Obama. Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents voted for the guy in force. They liked the message and they believed qualifications mattered more than political stripe. To give you an idea of how ridiculous this was, Obama took home states that hadn't voted in a Democrat since fucking apartheid was a thing. This was huge. DailyKos had seen a small presence of reasonable right-wingers and independents come to DailyKos to discuss things like adults, and it was good. These assholes then started to preach ideological purity, and the same sort of "with us or against us" shit that we mocked when the Tea Party did it. Even when openly reported, they tended to get away with it because Kos himself was one of these faggots and had no problem stabbing rational discourse in the back. Because a few of them were on the mod team, it had the same sort of insular, metastasized corruption you'd later see on RationalWiki. These were also the same fuckers, coincidentally enough, who actively demonized Libertarians in general in the previous election cycles, because of course they were.

Needless to say: They succeeded in driving away these Independents, Libertarians, and Republicans, and many more moderate Democrats soonafter. As this happened, they started to lure in more and more third-wave feminists, and the sort of same idiots we'd come to know as the regressive Left.

You know how this kind of shit works right now when it comes to Social Justice and cronyism, so I won't mince words.

When this happened, any possibility of intelligent discussion on DailyKos fucking died. You know how the Israel/Palestine conflict is a gigantic clusterfuck and discussion of it on any board can reduce it to a pile of burning trollery within a span of seconds? Pretty much every thread on DailyKos became this. Within a span of a year, you couldn't go against "the narrative" without blastback, and within two, anything remotely opposed to Social Justice was forcibly silenced with mass hide-rates and mass reportings.

The infection finally reached full blown cancer in mid-2009, when a huge chunk of the veteran userbase fucked off.

 

[JU 199]

when a huge chunk of the veteran userbase fucked off.

looks like that may happen again. Long time DK user Bob Johnson has just penned this diary-

The website is eating itself

 

[JU 199]

For anyone interested grab some popcorn, the website is officially tearing itself apart.

I Owe Hillary Supporters An Apology

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1488684/-I-Owe-Hillary-Supporters-An-Apology

I am so sorry.

For months I would hear Hillary supporters say they could no longer support Bernie because of the actions of his supporters, and I never believed them. I couldn’t believe that the actions of supporters could influence who a person would vote for. It had to be a Dear Penthouse Forum variant, or some kind of attempt at shaming, but it wasn’t real. All part of the pie fights.

But something changed after watching the events of the last two days. It started hitting home with the “English Only Chant” POS diary and capped off this morning with seeing a front pager now referring to Bernie as “old baldie” (and getting a dozen recs) I’ve finally come to realize that yes, it is possible that one’s supporters can be so over the top as to make me actually hold them against their candidate.

I’m sorry for ever doubting such a thing was possible.

So where I never doubted that I would support Hillary in the general as the dust settled, for the first time ever, after seeing what depths of smears and slurs Hillary’s supporters have been reduced to throwing, I actually have serious doubts about supporting Hillary in the general. After a lifetime of voting, if even the lessor of two evils (not that I didn’t enthusiastically vote for Obama both times) I’m seriously entertaining leaving the presidential line blank or writing in Sanders should he lose the primary.

“But look at how awful Bernie’s supporters have been!!”

Yeah, but here’s the difference I see; We, as a party, have been fighting the corrosive effects of special interest money and conflicts of interest in politics for how long? It might be unkind but it isn’t a smear or a slur to point out Hillary’s ties to special interest money. $150 million in personal payments alone offends me more than I know how to state and I don’t want that person making our watchdog appointments. This is both a policy disagreement and something I think leaves us in a weakened position against Republicans in the general, and is NOT a sexist attack.

On the other hand, Bernie’s long history of fighting for everyone’s rights has been smeared by partisan “civil rights leaders” who are supposedly above reproach, and now following and buildoing on this theme Hillary supporters are pushing the latest smear, lead by yet another “above reproach” civil rights champion, that Bernie’s supporters were chanting “English only” when in fact this is another bald faced lie to detract from his lifetime of work and support for those the system ignores if not actively works against. This is very different than pointing out the disconnect between the reality of becoming fabulously wealthy off of special interests and professing that you’re the best choice to be the champion of the working and under classes.

And now Bernie is “old baldie” and it all came together. It really is possible to refuse to vote for someone based on their supporters.

So I offer my apology to all the people who I didn’t believe could let one candidate’s supporters determine who they did or didn’t vote for.

I was wrong, because at this point, based on the actions of Hillary’s supporters, I’ve gone from accepting the lessor of two evils vote if it came to it, to Fuck You and the house you had to burn down to (try to) win at all costs.

 

[Jaimas]

For anyone interested grab some popcorn, the website is officially tearing itself apart.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1488684/-I-Owe-Hillary-Supporters-An-Apology

Let it all become ash.

 

[AnOminous]

For anyone interested grab some popcorn, the website is officially tearing itself apart.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1488684/-I-Owe-Hillary-Supporters-An-Apology

The good old fashioned "I'm Sorry that Fuck You!" sarcastic apology.

 

[chimpburgers]

For anyone interested grab some popcorn, the website is officially tearing itself apart.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1488684/-I-Owe-Hillary-Supporters-An-Apology

Tl;dr version: Sorrynotsorry.

 

[JU 199]

The good old fashioned "I'm Sorry that Fuck You!" sarcastic apology.

Tl;dr version: Sorrynotsorry.

You're getting a front row seat to the show of the year.

Do you really not care how badly you poison the well?

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...really-not-care-how-badly-you-poison-the-well

Spoiler: "The unselfawareness is strong in this one."

Spoiler: continued

 

[Doc Cassidy]

I remember going on Daily Kos for debate purposes years ago. They were a bit looney but honestly quite reasonable and easy to get along with. It was kinda of interesting seeing a left view on subjects too.

It's a shame to see what it's become, I had a good time on the site.

 

[JU 199]

I have a belter of a kos diary for you all. Some random user would like an explanation for why African Americans voted for a candidate notorious for her super predators speech and her racist campaign against Obama.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...Black-People-To-Explain-Why-They-Vote-Hillary
Archive: https://archive.is/20160228223108/h...Black-People-To-Explain-Why-They-Vote-Hillary

I was not going to bother saying anything.

But here goes:

This expectation that we black people have to explain ourselves to the satisfaction of white liberals is tiresome and demeaning.
Well, I was not going to bother saying anything, but as a black man, I find this diary to be powerfully offensive, petty and free of substance. Even the title, “Black People don't have to explain why they vote Hillary”, is a straw man argument dripping with condescension and faux black victimhood in order to promote a presidential candidate who has strongly supported policies that have decimated the black community for her own political gain.

In the 1990’s, simultaneously, the Clintons destroyed the manufacturing job base with NAFTA, ended “welfare as we know it” and got “tough on crime” with 3 strikes laws and much harsher sentencing for crimes involving crack as opposed to cocaine. Therefore, legal means of income for poor communities were severely restricted and the punishment for illegal means of income became harsh. This was a war on lower income Americans generally and the on the black community in particular. We are still suffering from it today. The Clintons made billions for big corporations by enabling offshoring and showed they could be as tough on minorities as the Republicans to gain favor with the racist, white conservative base. The consequences of these right wing policies have been so severe and the Clinton role so undeniable, that Bill has recently publicly apologized… now that "they” are running for office again. Hillary was not the president then, but she gave full-voiced support to all of these policies — on camera, repeatedly.

This sudden concern for … our hurt feelings over some remark Hillary made twenty five years ago is remarkable and terribly transparent.

Hillary’s “superpredators” remark was not merely something she said twenty-five years ago. This was the most powerful first lady in history, the most powerful woman in the country, a national leader, saying on television that America was right to be afraid of a certain group of children that were less than human. They weren’t just “gangs” of kids anymore. They lacked empathy and conscience and therefore did not deserve to be treated as human beings. These words came from an occupant of the White House. This dehumanization is inherently racialized. White America did not hear this message and think of their own sons and daughters — and they weren’t intended to. And now, Hillary has the audacity to stand next to black mothers whose children have been slain by the police in cold blood and be offended… while running for office.


Then there was the ugly racism in her campaign against Obama in 2008.

Now the original diarist comes to this forum, the purpose of which is the open exchange of information and opinion in pursuit of moving the country in a more liberal direction (at least that’s how I see it) and claims she does not need to explain her choice to support Hillary because… racism.

I think this part of the original diary is my “favorite”:

I would answer your queries, but honestly it has been answered a million times, by hundreds of thousands of black people, and if it is not understood by now, it never will be.

So the original diarist does have (secret) reasons why we (of all races) should overlook the ugly truths about Hillary and race, but she is above articulating them on a Democratic forum because that’s giving in to white people??

Okay. I’ll play. I’m black, and I sure as hell want an explanation. I missed the meeting where these hundreds of thousands of black people explained it millions of times. I’m not the only black person who feels this way. Are we racist too? I find it deeply troubling that Hillary Clinton (of all people) could become president of the United States - primarily due to the support of black Americans.

Racism is far too serious and consequential a thing to be misused this way. It is petty to broadly accuse (likely liberal, Democratic, even progressive) white people of racism just because they are curious why a large number of black people appear to strongly support a candidate with Hillary's record. The question has merit. The original diarist is free to decline to explain her Hillary advocacy (obviously, which is why the title is a straw man), but it is unseemly to try to suppress the discussion with vicious ad-hominems and charges of racism.

The paternalism of those we call allies, who rant and rage and lash out on us with a mighty fury, ‘for our own good!’, to help us desperate, uneducated, ignorant, uninformed, needing of their guidance souls, become as enlightened as they and finally, finally by GOD vote in what they know, from their pedastal of progressive purity, is in ‘OUR BEST INTERESTS!’ is demeaning and horror inducing. See, they know much better than our dense, weakminded selves what is best for blacks. They remind us day after day how much they know about what we should think, do and want, and how we should vote. How could they not?

This indignant and angry claim not to need to make a case for Hillary, combined with the weirdly intense personal attacks on Bernie supporters strongly suggests that the diarist’s (absent) argument for Hillary is lacking.

I suggest you all have a read of the comments. They're gold!

 

[chimpburgers]

Progressive-splaining doesn't roll off the tip of my tongue well at all. Whoever made that up should be kicked in the ballsack.

 

[ActualKiwi]

Progressive-splaining doesn't roll off the tip of my tongue well at all. Whoever made that up should be kicked in the ballsack.

Preferably with hob-nailed boots.