In the last few days leading up to the Michigan primary yesterday, the liberal and once popular website Daily Kos started to encourage its readers to get involved in the open Michigan primary by doing something they wouldn’t normally think of doing. The Daily Kos told its all-liberal readers to pick up a Republican ballot and vote for Rick Santorum. The Daily Kos’ idea was to give Rick Santorum a primary victory in Michigan, deny Mitt Romney a win, and cause chaos in the Republican primary. Readers responded with enthusiasm at the thought of helping Rick Santorum win the Republican nomination because they believed he was the weakest candidate to take on President Obama.
The Daily Kos went into a full out campaign – even sending out an email blast to its Michigan readers. The day before the Michigan primary, Jonathan Martin of Politico tweeted: @jmartpolitico: The 8500 MI’anders on Daily Kos email list got note today: “Please vote for Rick Santorum…”
While most all of the mainstream media journalists ignored the Daily Kos’ campaign, some on Twitter questioned just how effective the Daily Kos could be. After all, as Martin pointed out, they only had 8,500 supporters in Michigan.
Immediately, the power of the Daily Kos and its uber liberal founder Markos Moulitsas was on display. Political strategists were wondering if the Daily Kos still had any power or if the liberal class has moved on to David Brock’s Media Matters for America.
Markos’ campaign for Santorum went into over-drive. He tweeted and re-tweeted messages all day Monday encouraging and celebrating his supporters’ missives about supporting Santorum.
But the media’s prediction that Santorum would make Michigan a race or possibly even win it turned out to be spin. Romney easily won the state despite Markos’ campaign. And we learned that the Daily Kos’ power isn’t what it used to be.
Richard A. Grenell has nearly two decades of experience in all aspects of communications and public affairs. Grenell has served as the primary communications advisor for public officials at the local, state, federal and international levels, as well as for publicly traded Fortune 500 ranked companies. Follow Richard on Twitter.
used to be, or never was?
Exactly.
When KOS was backing underdog Democrats and raising money for them not one of them won.
KOS is just a loser site.
I feel a twinge of equivalence coming on, stop me before I list all of the right wing loser sites…
Excellent comment. Look for $25 bonus in your account.
If he pretends to be a king maker, he has to eventually make a king. Instead, all we have seen is pretense.
No apostrophe on its. Automatic firing if I was your editor.
No, he did it right. “Its” is proper for the possessive pronoun. “It’s” is proper as a contraction for “It is.”
“the Daily Kos and its uber liberal founder”
There is no error in this phrase. The apostrophe replaces the contracted letter “I” in “It is”. It is not used for the possessive.
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BTW, I dispute that Romney “easily” won Michigan. He knew he was in a fight, poured enormous amounts of cash into the state, and won by a scant few percent. In 2008, he crushed the competition, and somehow, he’s slid way back in support even though his competitors are much weaker this year.
He also had Ron Paul running attack ads against Santorum even though Paul noted he wasn’t trying to win this state. That’s very skilled politics, but the guy knew he was in a fight in Michigan.
In fact, it would have been embarrassing to Romney had he not won. Winning is simply what everyone expected. Six months ago, folks expected he would win this state by twenty points.
Half of the democrats voting in the primary did not vote for Santorum. And a lot of those who did vote for Santorum were responding favorably to robo-calls by Santorum… in other words they actually crossed over to support the guy rather than trying some dirty trick. Santorum does so much better among independent voters than Romney that I do not take at face value the idea democrats want us to nominate the guy who appears to be more electable. I think this is a deception.
Lastly, Romney has criticized crossing over to vote in the wrong party’s primary as “disgusting”, but in 2007, he actually boasted about doing exactly that to democrats.
I wonder how much of Mitt’s 2008 result was more because of McCain and his statements such as “Those jobs aren’t coming back” than the Romney himself. McCain later credited his big loss there with Mitt being Michigan’s “Native Son” (to use his words) but I think McCain just showed a taste of how tone deaf he could be.
“No apostrophe on its. Automatic firing if I was your editor.”
If I were your editor, I would introduce you to subjunctive mood. “Automatic firing if I WERE your editor.”
See what real Michiganers think of local son Mitt:
http://www.freep.com/videonetwork/1479146955001/Voters-sound-off-in-Mitt-Romney-s-childhood-hometown
CR… and yet they still voted for him… imagine that? Lesser of two evils? Kind of like life, no simple answers.
Good point. I think the calculations were that the Dems may have raised Santorum’s numbers a few points. Still, Rick will get some more delegates as a result.
The weakness of Barack Obama aside (and I think he is far weaker than the pundits on the left would have us believe), we should not be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. It is Leap Day, so even Maureen Dowd can be right for once! That Mitt is so vulnerable now does not auger well for the general election.
Many Dims in Michigan cannot read, thus Kos is casting his (relative) pearls before (absolute) swine.
’2. Robert
No apostrophe on its. Automatic firing if I was your editor.’
And if I WERE your editor…
And were I your editor…
If I were your editor…
Heh, if Steven Colbert couldn’t get Dems to vote for Herman Cain after he dropped out, obviously KOS couldn’t get them to vote for Santorum.
No one is gonna hold their nose and do that just to queer a primary.
Attempts to meddle always fail. People vote for who they want to win.
Used to be? Like, back when they tried to get Joe Lieberman out of the Senate?
Is this one of those “Ten years ago today on Instapundit” headlines?
Kos went all out for that rich (read 1%, the kind of money they don’t mind when it’s leftard money) buffoon Red Ned Lamont in Connecticut against Lieberman. He even showed himself in a couple of ads. Lamont was spanked by Lieberman, and Lieberman was running as an Independent.
So much for Kos’ supposed power.
I’ve always counted on the Daily Kossack to pick my losers for me
Markos Moulitsos is a mean-spirited twit, and the Daily Kos is a daily exercise in resentful futility. Why should anyone be surprised at this latest failure?
I seem to recall that the DailyKos’ record in the 2004(?) elections was perfect. Perfect fail.
I can’t help but wonder if the Kos campaign didn’t actually have the opposite of the intended effect. There seem to be still a lot of GOP voters who are on the fence, and they might have voted Romney just to defeat the attempted sabotage.
Every time I see a picture of Markos Mouliwhatshisname, I find myself thinking that I’m looking at a picture of what the title character from “Ratatouille” would look like if he’d had a full size spiral-cut ham rammed up his *SELF-CENSORED FOR UNSAVORY MENTAL IMAGES*
YMMV.
Never was. Ever major campign he has endorsed failed except one–ousting Joe Lieberman from his seat in the Democratic primary—which only led to Joe beating the new Democrat in the general election.
DailyKos always was and always has been an echo chamber made up of sock puppets galore and their true population far smaller than they want to admit.
I must take exception to claims that Daily Kos never had power. At least here.
Not so fast. Santorum got 53% of the democrats who voted in the Republican primary. That translated into 46,000 votes. It is reasonable to believe that a very large percentage of these votes were the DailyKos/RoboCall dems who were doing ‘fake’ voting. Another note. Santorum won those who “strongly supported the tea party” and also those who “strongly oppose” tea party. Both with 45%. Romney only got 18% of the dems who voted in the primary. Seems to me, the whole ‘hilarity’ campaign had some teeth. Get ready for more in Ohio and others.
i’m looking at the numbers on the eixt polls from wapo…
2008…
independents, 25%-217k.
republicans, 68%-591k.
democrats, 7%-61k.
2012…
independents, 31%-309k.
republicans, 60%-598k.
democrats, 9%-90k.
the story isn’t that the dailykos/dems drew 29k more to the polls…please note that only 53% of self reported dems voted for santorum, which means they were largely nullifed by the 47% who didn’t…the 6% margin suggests a net total of less than 2k for santorum.
the story is that independent participation increased by 42%, 08 to 12.
I think the Kos campaign did get Santorum some votes, enough to help him by maybe 2-3%. However, I think the tactic also pissed off a lot of repubs, especially when Santorum endorsed it in a robocall, and that probably cost Santorum any votes he might have gained by the tactic, plus a few more.
It’s funny to think that had the right decided to get into Democrat primaries to vote for the most extremist, far left liberal, it would have been Obama anyway. That simply proves that, in a media culture where far left ideas are always considered mainstream, there’s really no beating the left at this game.
site meter had kos well below his daily average for yesterday and today. not sure what the average was based upon…
apparently, ‘operation hilarity’, was about as entertaining as scooping the litter box.
the premise was flawed from the get go…
daily kos disciples in michigan should go out for an hour, hang out at a polling place with republican primary voters, and vote for a guy they loathe, just so everyone at kos, who isn’t a michigan resident, can get a chance for a chuckle.
the real reasoning, in the sub rosa, was the rather sanguine view that, santorum would be easier to collect moderate voter in a general than romney.
the guise of ‘hilarity’ is subordinate to the doubt that is creeping into them that obama is very vulnerable, unable to pivot, and needs all the help he can get.
looking over other exit polls…
(coffee dripping from my nose):
usatoday actually creates a set of catagories as follows-
liberal/moderate-39%
somewhat conservative-31%
very conservative-30%.
sirens on the first category-
moderates and liberals are close enough that they can be place in a group together? please.
The power and influence of both Kos the person and Kos the blog have been highly overrated since day one. His record of success in pushing candidates is dismal indeed. Just ask Sen. Ned Lament.
– lamenting.
Socialists love democracy because they rig or influence every election they can get their hands on.
I think the dems should vote for Santorum campaign might have backfired and ended up helping Romney. I suspect a lot of repubs were pissed off by the tactic, of voting for somebody you would never support in the general just to cause trouble, expecially when Santorum endorsed it in a robocall. I think it also caused many repubs to think that if leftist dems want Santorum to win, that might be a reason to support Romney. I think it caused a defection of undecided repubs to Romney.
i keep getting these really lame e-mails from Kos, just about every day; even though i don’t go to that site or sites of their ‘comrades’…