November 4, 2005
Name the rational, intelligent liberal blogs.
Go ahead. It's a subject that came up in the comments today on another post. I'm not looking for attacks on liberal blogs or facile comments that there is no such thing. Help me compile a list of well-written, insightful liberal blogs, especially to help conservative readers who want exposure to a nice mix of opinion. Maybe we can refine it into a top 10 list.
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As far liberal blogs go, the one that comes to mind is Talking Points Memo. I'd argue that it's insightful and well-written, despite being pretty inflammatory about a lot of subjects.
Mine are very similar to the ones above.
TalkingPointsMemo.com
Matthew Yglesias
Kevin Drum
Mark Ark Leiman [sic, but that's how I always read it in my browser]
Mickey Kaus
Brad DeLong
Can't think of any that are rational and try to argue logically. The ones I do visit are all pretty shrill ..you know calling for Bush impeachment and Cheney is the source of all torture.
There is a a very prolific blogger in the philly area called Suburban Guerilla. It is a very well written blog (former journalist) but she has the conspiratorial and anti-business craziness too. It's too bad. You cab see for yourself at www.susiemadrak.com
One beef I have about lib blogs is it's all NATIONAL politics all the time. They don't pay attention to nor value local and state issues or try to get those fixed too.
Libs seem they are too big to stoop to that level unless they think it will affect electoral college or SCOTUS.
Kaus is the only one of those listed so far I read regularly, the others will get my interest through links from time to time (though rarely).
The premise that you need to read a liberal blog to get the liberal viewpoint, in my opinion, starts out with a very faulty assumption.
What's wrong with reading the NYT or BBCNEWS.COM, or watching The Situation Room, with Wolf Blitzer?
The reason that reasoned opinionated writers who aren't all screedy and shrill seem to proliferate on the right and not the left is that the left of center viewpoint is well articulated by the establishment press, and defines academic dogma, so why would a moderately left of center speaker compete against them?
(or from the other point of view, if you feel disenfranchised and new media tools give you access to an audience why wouldn't you take adavantage?)
(Prof. Althouse's battle against the misrepresentations of Judge Alito's decisions are a perfect example, the distortions are coming from the established voices, not just the fringe)
Sorry if I've strayed off point, but I defend my actions on the grounds that the frame for this discussion doesn't recognize the full reality of the situation.
What I'm really trying to say is that there isn't a dearth of left leaning argument, it's just absorbed more fully into the herd of mainstream discourse, so the urge to be a maverick is far less than for someone who leans to the right and the few left leaning mavericks who do exist usually do so over a single issue or over a worry that groupthink is damaging the ideas and party that they love (which description fits Mickey Kaus to a T).
There are some liberal blogs that tackle local/state issues. I don't know how many there are in other states, and I can't speak for their quality or depth, but there's one in Minnesota, http://minnpolitics.blogspot.com, and the one in Massachusetts that had the liberal Alito clerk's perspective, http://bluemassgroup.typepad.com/blue_mass_group/
Instapundit is the only liberal blog I read every day.
btw, I just looked at Joe Trippi's blog and his blogroll is 100% or so far left whackadoodles. It seems to me that right-leaning blogs are a little more generous in their listings.
And I have seen Trippi on TV (many times) and I believe he is one of the most overrated people in America.
Re Andrew Sullivan's blog, he is a one or maybe two-trick pony if you have the stomach to picture that.
Lastly, great topic Ann. Have a nice weekend everyone!
The premise that you need to read a liberal blog to get the liberal viewpoint, in my opinion, starts out with a very faulty assumption.
Oy.
AndrewSullivan.com
Oy.
Kausfiles (He calls himself "a committed Democrat".)
Oy yoy yoy.
Instapundit is the only liberal blog I read every day.
Oy yoy yoy yoy yoy.
Zogby poll: Majority of likely voters support considing impeachment
over Iraq, 51-45 percent ... Among all adults surveyed, the numbers were higher: 53 percent supported impeachment, while 42 percent did not. The poll, which has a +/- 2.9% margin of error, interviewed 1,200 U.S. adults from Oct. 29 through Nov. 2. Zogby last polled likely voters on impeachment in June. At that time, 42 percent supported considering impeachment, while 50 percent opposed.
Another poll of American adults conducted in early October by Ipsos, the agency used by the Associated Press, found that 50 percent supported Congress examining the issue, while 42 percent opposed.
You folks reading Instapundit, Althouse, Kaus, and Power line to get your liberal fix may want to ask yourselves why these staunch liberals and moderates haven't been covering Valerie Plame (both Instapundit and Ann Althouse have declared it to be too complex, and something most Americans do not care about.
You may also want to ask yourself why you disagree with what most of America is thinking.
And you may want to ask yourself what your responsibilities to this nation are in terms of your studying this issue.
heartsoulandhumor.blogspot.com
Mark Daniels
You may also want to ask yourself why you disagree with what most of America is thinking.
Quxxo, would you have a link to the hard poll numbers as opposed to a blog? The blog doesn't provide one although they do provide a few tables.
The Xoff Files (Wisconsin-based)
David, that's a really helpful breakdown.
Many of the ones I frequent, have already been mentioned.
If you consider Michael Totten to be still a liberal (he does, although he's the classic centrist, and therefore, is not to many of his co-progressives' taste), then include his blog. It certainly qualifies under "civilised discussion" too.
Michael J. Totten
And of course, there's Harry's Place, albeit Harry himself left in September 2005.
BTW, do you know that "Harry's Place" has been Wiki'ed?
It's being considered for deletion, since there is a distinctly sour and unneutral tone to the piece.
No Wiki for "Althouse"...yet. I checked. :)
Cheers,
Victoria
David Corn.
I don't read him that much (a little dry), but noone's mentioned him yet. Apparently, he hooked up w/ the Pajamas Media scene.
Definitely if you think you have some responsibilities to the nation to study the Plame issue, you could turn to David Corn.
btw, I just looked at Joe Trippi's blog and his blogroll is 100% or so far left whackadoodles.
I've noticed that about leaning-liberal blogs too!
Also:
I once observed to Eddie on his blog, when he mentioned that there was a surfeit of liberal blogs, as compared to conservative ones.
I told him, that cannot be true.
The merest glance at the top 10 Highest Being TTLB Ecosystem tells a very interesting tale: 8 righties led by Instapundit and Malkin, 1 leftie, 1 non-political blog.
Daily Kos does get more traffic, but that's because they're a forum.
I shudder to think the traffic Instapundit and Malkin would get if they were too (including Michelle's racist replies, since that's the reason she and others do not dare -- the vitriol from the other side is frightening).
It seems to me that right-leaning blogs are a little more generous in their listings.
I'm the kind of person who always casts an eye at a person's blogroll, first thing.
It tells me a lot about the person.
And I'm sure it has not gone unperceived that Instapundit and Althouse, as two examples, blogroll such left-leaning blogs as Wonkette, Daily Kos, and Matt Yglesias.
Last time I checked Parakeette and Daily Krass, they did not.
Heck, even I blogroll two progressive blogger sites.
Cheers,
Victoria
Self-described liberal Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. Writes about the media. A true believer in the First Amendment.
Norm Geras - Normblog
Harry's Place
Jeff Jarvis - Buzz Machine
Jay Rosen - Press Think
Someone wanted to know about Daniel Drezner. He self-identified right of center at the beginning of the Iraq war, but I believe he voted for Kerry because he disliked the doings in Iraq post war. So, too, I believe, the mildly right leaning writer(s) at Oxblog - Patrick Belton, among them. But iIt's been a while since I read that blog.
By the way, the right side of the blogosphere is reading up on the Plame Game -- tons of stuff, but our narrative involves a completely different factset than yours.
Someone above mentioned Centerfield. I post there, and don't consider it to be so much of a Democratic site, any more than it's a Republican site. As I see it, it's mainly a meeting of minds for a bunch of pleasent well-behaved folks from the moderate wings of both parties, and a few people who consider themselves as centrists apart from either party.
I can only assume that the person who recomended the Huffington Post as an example of a non-shrill liberal blog was being fascetious. It was an interesting proposition for about ten minutes, but the joke ceased to be funny a long time ago.
Who would Scoop Jackson read??
Juan Cole is intelligent, but seems dominated by all the most negative consequences of that fact. He's the guy who intimated that Steven Vincent was killed because he was having an affair with his translator, a foolish act he was led to by his lack of Cole-level familiarity with the pride of Arab males. Vile condescension. Just nauseating. Strikes 1, 2, and 3. And there are more available.
David: Yes, good list.
I carry on e-mail conversations from time to time with Josh Marshall, most recently spending much of a day (shh)trying to sort out his insistence that Joe Wilson cannot be justifiably accused of dishonesty or disingenuousness when he appeared on the public scene in 2003.
I don't quite get it; I think he may in the end be backfilling in a rationale for what Wilson said and wrote or "actually meant;" on at least one piece of debate his argument became "I know things you cannot, and I can't tell you what I know;" but I think Josh is basically a straight shooter. I think he's a little unhinged by W, but in a different way than a typical Kos-sack in that before the war, his attitude was similar to many people here: it may have to be done, and so on.
Then he got really pissed by, and spends his time obsessively detailing dishonesty he sees in the administration. Some of it is somewhat convincing, some of it not; he tends to ignore mitigating perspectives and caveats. And I asked him once, aren't your original reasons for thinking the war was maybe worthwhile basically still in place?
David Corn I think tries most of the time too, and has managed to anger his base at times; Roger L Simon's recommendation on top of my own perception that way means something to me. With him, when he writes something dumb, like finding a way to excuse some inane statement from Oliver North, I have a feeling he knows he's defending the indefensible, and just figures oh the hell with it, it's not worth it.
Kaus is good, although based on their own apparent rule that when a guy becomes rational, he's no longer liberal, the liberals here may be right that he isn't really liberal.
I sample a lot of the ones listed here, and the best of them are not bad, but it is still far too frequently that at the nub of whatever argument they're making you'll find a little ignored crucial detail, or something. The kind of thing that makes me say: this guy has to know he's being dishonest here, doesn't he?
Happens a lot.
Nobody has mentioned the lefty feminist blogs. Feministe has good bloggers and a reasonable comments crowd.
Majikthise is very smart and well written, focusing on liberal politics, analytic philosophy, and feminism.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/
My top 10 lefty blogs would definitely include Josh Marshall, Mark Kleiman, TAPPED, Balkanization and Body and Soul.
I also like Moon Over Pittsburgh and sometimes Brendan Nyhan among the smaller ones.
And if you are looking for Iraq or Middle East news - Liberals Against Terrorism, Abu Aardvark and Juan Cole. Cole might be shrill and personally dislikeable - but he's got a wealth of knowledge on the area and usually some great links to a lot of stories you wouldn't otherwise see. Put another way, you can learn a lot there without liking or agreeing with him.
Juan Cole, snort. Yeah, he's a "good liberal". If you like them of the anti-semitic variety. I still remember when he blamed the burning to death of the four contractors in Fallujah on that bridge by the Sunni "insurgents" on some measure that Israel had taken that week.
It is an axiom of thought according to his ideological bent that there is no Muslim malfeasance but that it can be attributed to Israel as a root cause.
Again, in case I wasn't clear - Juan Cole's blog is a good place for news - not necessarily analysis. You can not like what he says, I don't like everything he says, but he does throw together what I find to be an informative set of links to events in the region on a daily basis. And since some people were making lists that clearly equated "liberal" with merely people who don't love all of Bush's foreign policy (like Drezner and the OxBloggers), I just thought I'd note that.
It occurs to me though that I left one of the most impressive "liberal" blogs off my list - David Niewert's Orcinus. I don't visit there very often, but I find his work to be extremely well argued at times. And he's actually gotten me to change (or at least open) my mind on a few points in the last year or two. And his is probably more the type of lefty blog that this list is supposed to be about.
Scott,
I echo your mention of Orcinus; I just came across it recently and like it. He does his research.
Liberal blogs that I read regularly:
Crooked Timber
Bitch, PhD
Matthew Yglesias (on TPM Cafe)
Ed Kilgore (on TPM Cafe)
Brad DeLong
Mark AR Kleiman
(Cranks on some subjects, but generally good blogs).
Timothy Burke (Easily Distracted)
Only sort-of a blog--more like a magazine than a newspaper.
I loved Left2Right, but it seems to have died.
I'm not sure how you characterize:
Andrew Sullivan (only sometimes is he conservative).
i'm not sure if it's liberal or extremely conservative, but
jesusloveseverything.blogspot.com
is an interesting and funny blog.
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