97% White "Daily Kos IS NOT THE BASE, never has been..."

DailyKos: 97% White

I saw this enlightening comment over at DailyKos today (intelligent poster, but he'll undoubtedly be banned soon), and I think posting his/her comment here is the best way to acknowledge his/her bravery there, over at DailyKos, where censorship is a de facto part of the blog's mission statement:

Daily Kos IS NOT THE BASE, never has been... (0+ / 0-)

...and the last two days around here is demonstrating why it will likely never become that in the near future.

Here is some data I continue to post because I think we need to see who is who on DK and just how unrepresentative of "the base" it is in reality. Of course there have been other examinations done that back also reached the same conclusion.

The netroots and the grassroots are not the same thing. They share overlapping goals, but there is a huge difference in those who tap keyboards, and those who knock on doors.

The netroots simply must become more diverse in terms of race, class, education, and more before it can seriously claim to be "the base".

Arte the netroots a part of the base, absolutely, but is it "the base", no it is not unless one is very inclusive as to what constitutes part of the netroots.

Another key distinction here is that the grassroots is thinking about winning the next election cycle, while the netroots continues to have loud voices cheerleading self-marginalization. The idea that the country is left to Republicans and more wounds are inflicted upon the poor, the working and middle classes (which again aren't well represented on DK or the popular netroot blogs), then there will be a massive outcry and turn to the Left is a continuing netroots fantasy.

Progressives can only become the dominate governing force if we continue to show up. The price for that dominance is voting through your disappointments. If you are not willing to pay that price, as conservatives have for the last 40 years, then you aren't serious about governing, and the Progressive movement, isn't a movement at all, much less "the base".

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." ...Bertrand Russell

by sebastianguy99 on Tue Dec 01, 2009 at 12:24:18 PM PST

A couple of years ago, just before I was banned from participation at DailyKos, I pointed out in an article at DailyKos that there was a larger percentage of Black delegates to the Republican Party Convention than there were Black participants at DailyKos. With only two percent Blacks, I have had to ask myself, "Is DailyKos A White Supremacist Group"?

Since then, the contrast has become even more shocking. The Democratic Party has a Black President and the Republican Party has a Black national chairman, but nothing has changed at DailyKos. The blog still has only 2% Black participation and has dipped to ZERO percent Latino participation, as the data shows above.



Those who defend MAMZ from assertions that he is callous toward Latinos and Hispanic issues should take note of this data: 1/2 Salvadoran blogger MAMZ cannot attract a statistically visible number of Latinos to his blog, from anywhere in Latin America, even though his wife is Cuban. Maybe it's because of what MAMZ has called his "detached selfishness" toward Latinos:

And as I left the ugly reality of racism behind, it struck me that what was such an easy and trivial exercise for me would be impossible for anyone whose skin color or religious persuassion (sic) made them the target of bigotry and discrimination. They would never be able to escape who they were. "Student opinion: Escape will only breed ignorance" , Markos Moulitsas, Northern Star, Northern Illinois University student newspaper, September 2,1993.

I would only add this to Sebastianguy99's observations: DailyKos' administration is not "leftist", is not "liberal" and is not "progressive". The owner of DailyKos, Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga, (MAMZ)*

• comes from a Salvadoran oligarchy family;
• his family has received a one million dollar loan guarantee from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for globalization efforts;
• MAMZ himself admits that he supported Ronald Reagan even as MAMZ was a (Hitlerian?) youth;
• MAMZ was a precinct worker for anti-abortion Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, who led the Clinton impeachment hearings in the US House;
• MAMZ opposed ALL gay service in the US military;
• MAMZ served in the US Armed Forces (very progressive thing to do)
• And then MAMZ trained and worked at US CIA offices in Washington for two years;
• Now he operates a virtually all-white blog where men outnumber women by a ratio of 2:1.

If this is what it means to be a "leftist" "liberal" "progressive", then we really are up the creek without a paddle. It's hard to define exactly what MAMZ and his blog are, but it's easy to perceive what they ARE NOT! MAMZ wants to "crash the gates" of the Democratic Party and remake the party in his own image. If his personal history, family history and current activities, and the management of his blog are any indication (and they are) of MAMZ values, then the Democratic Party is better of without being "crashed" by Markos Moulitsas.

If the Democratic Party had the atrociously, overwhelmingly white male demographics of DailyKos, the President Obama could never have been elected, we would not have a Democratic Congress, and John McCain would be president right now.

* Find citations and links for all of the above facts in the right sidebar.