Intimidation by liberal bloggers, says one conservative pundit, has forced the Democratic candidates to show up at the second-annual YearlyKos convention in
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News Channel is certainly not friendly to the liberal blog the DailyKos, calling it a “smear merchant” and comparing some of its postings to material coming from the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Upon finding out that seven of the eight Democratic candidates have committed to attending a convention of the Kos namesake (and applauding Sen. Joe Biden for not attending), he told viewers that the candidates must be afraid of being criticized by DailyKos and MoveOn.org.
“When you get these presidential candidates afraid of a website, oh, my God, how are they going to deal with al Qaeda?” O’Reilly said Monday.
The banter appeared to have shamed the sole corporate sponsor, the airline JetBlue, into asking to be left off the YearlyKos convention’s website, according to a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, which O’Reilly called sympathetic to the DailyKos “hate site.”
Gina Cooper, the executive director of the YearlyKos convention, found the whole thing ridiculous.
“The thing with JetBlue, it’s just marketing, it’s capitalism. Why would they not want to market with us?” Cooper told U.S. News yesterday.
One thing O’Reilly missed is that the blog and the convention are separate entities. DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas told U.S. News that he gets more credit than he deserves for the convention. Members of the DailyKos community approached Moulitsas last year and asked if they could use the DailyKos name to brand a convention of “netroots” activists. Moulitsas agreed and the first convention took place in June 2006. Moulitsas has sat back and observed the planning of this one, though he plans to attend this weekend’s festivities.
The campaigns are clearly excited to get their candidates in front of more than a thousand “netroots” activists. Elizabeth Edwards wrote on DailyKos why her husband is glad to attend.
“The decision was easy: The opportunity to talk, to listen, to question, and to learn from the people who make online the center of real political dialogue that YearlyKos offers is important,” she wrote. “Unparalleled, really. And so John will be there, there with you.”
--Nikki Schwab
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