The Nutroots Are Self-Destructing

The battle going on in the Democrat party is splitting one of the left's major nutroots blogs:

On Friday, it got to be too much for Alegre, a diarist on the flagship liberal blog DailyKos, who frequently writes in support of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our online community has tried to accomplish in this world,” Alegre wrote Friday evening. “No more.”

Objecting to the tone of attacks against Mrs. Clinton and her supporters on the blog, the diarist called for a “writers strike.”

“This is a strike - a walkout over unfair writing conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won’t ‘work’’ at DailyKos again,” Alegre wrote, promising to come back only “if we ever get to the point where we’re engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches.”

The blogosphere has never been known for its polite, gentle discourse, and while fiercely partisan, being a Democrat does not make one immune from attacks from the lefty blogs (see Lieberman, Joseph I.). But now, the major internal divisions within the Democratic Party seem to be splitting liberal bloggers. So what happens when the unity enforcement mechanism becomes disjointed?

Alegre’s post attracted a strong reaction, both negative and positive. The comment board was shut down about 5.5 hours after it was posted, with 1258 comments.

One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”:

“Why should this site and Kos profit from the traffic we add to DailyKos, and the sense by outsiders that it represents the netroots as a whole?” the blogger asked, adding later, “But I just don’t see how people come back together on a daily basis after a falling out like this.”

Every now and then I'll scan DailyKos to see what the KosKooks are saying, and it's pretty clear that the site from the head guy down is overwhelmingly pro-Obama. Unfortunately, the nutroots have never learned how to have a civil discussion on any issue (that part of their development was somehow skipped), so consequently, it's no surprise that they're at each other's throats now.

Just as I expect the Dem party to have a real problem trying to unify once the nomination is settled, sites like Kos will probably suffer long-standing if not permanent divisions because of this fight.

A win-win.