by DemFromCT [courtesy of Daily Kos]

The Decline of the Angry Left

The signs of change are unmistakable. Over the last year, the Kossacks themselves seemed to be waning -- the number of monthly page views on the site is down dramatically.

– Dan Gerstein, February 2, 2008, WSJ

Sometime on Sunday, we will pass the one billion page view milestone. Half of that is going to be from the last two years. Given that we were written off for dead by concern trolls like Dan Gerstein, who don't understand the dynamics of Presidential politics (but sell themselves as consultants, regardless), that's not a bad achievement.

Let's see some pretty pictures, first monthly and then cumulative page view traffic.

Traffic is driven by the news (something Gerstein, in trying to compare last year's non-election cycle to years with elections, doesn't get), and when there's political news to discuss, people turn to Daily Kos. We've doubled our viewership compared to last year, and sustained that through the primaries. ct and the technical crew have made this transition nearly seamless, and there's more to come between now and November.

So, when you hear that the site is losing viewership, do what bloggers do – click the link and check the data for yourself.

by Jane Hamsher [courtesy of Firedoglake]

Matt Taibbi writes beautifully. I can't really think of anyone around today who can match his gift of language and his political insight; his ability to gaze unflinchingly at the decay infesting the soul of the American body politic is something unique. If his enfant terrible status wasn't secured when he was forced out of Uzbekistan for writing an article critical of the country's president, it certainly was by

by The Huffington Post News Team [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

She has ruled it out, but a prompt withdrawal from the contest for the Democratic nomination offers Sen. Hillary Clinton the prospect of major rewards....

by kos [courtesy of Daily Kos]

So Hillary Clinton will go on Bill O'Reilly's show on Wednesday.

But it's good! Because Obama supporters told me that going on right-wing propaganda outlets is a great idea, joining such luminaries as Lanny Davis, Joe Lieberman, Dan Gerstein, and Harold Ford.

by kos [courtesy of Daily Kos]

Lieberman, about a week ago:

Well, I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will —and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me.

Ross Douthat responded at the time:

[G]iven how the landscape looks right now, Lieberman sounds an awful lot like the Rockefeller Republicans of yore, who would complain about how a "small group of extremists" in the conservative movement were hijacking their party and dooming it to defeat, even as those same extremists were leading the GOP to national successes that the Jacob Javitses and Christine Todd Whitmans and Lowell Weickers could only dream about.

It may have been a "small group on the left" that helped push the party in the right direction, but it was the huge American majorities in 2006 that endorsed our efforts and helped us take control of the House and Senate. We are now poised for similar gains in 2008 not because of Lieberman's loser dead-end politics, but because the Democratic Party has convincingly moved beyond them.