A conversation about the politics of the commenters on the Althouse blog.

There was an open thread on this blog last night, and while many of the comments were about the Super Bowl...

Patriots getting schlonged.

Bigly.

Coin toss wins. What a rip.

Like Hillary beating Bernie in Iowa caucuses.

Cubs... Trump... Pats... I'm liking the way things are going.

... there was some interesting talk about the politics of the Althouse commenters.

Jack Wayne said:

I think everyone that reads this blog has noticed the increased number of lefty commenters. It started about 6 months ago. At first I thought it was a paid Soros performance trying to sway the election. Find a moderate blog and swamp it with lefty sentiments. It kept up after the election and now we see a determined effort to bring down Trump. What I'm having trouble understanding is the end game and why pick on Althouse? The end game is Pence followed by Ryan. Is that a reasonable goal? I think not but lefties are acting nutty right now. The other question of Althouse is more opaque. The best I can come up with is that the lefties feel the need to herd Althouse back into the fold. But I think that effort is doomed. Any lefties in the know are welcome to tell us what you are trying to accomplish.

Henry responded with:

What I've wondered for a long time is why the comments section has so many social conservatives in it, ranging from instapundit-style libertarians to outright misogynists. The question in my mind isn't why so many lefties, but why the balance has always been against them.

Jack Wayne said:

Henry, my POV is that lefties are not rational, hence they are the target in a blog that does not delete comments like so many lefty sites do.

Yancey Ward said:

Henry asked why Althouse draws so many from the right side of the political divide?

The explanation is fairly easy — she pulls no punches for the most part. I know from her writing that she leans left, but she almost never tolerates bullshit from either side — so there is something here for people from both sides to both agree with and disagree with. However, the main reason the commentators here lean right more than left is simply this — she doesn't delete their comments for simply disagreeing with her — a very rare thing for bloggers who are to the left.

Since I won't generally even read a blogger who practices such censorship, I noticed about a year ago that I was suddenly down to just Althouse who could be identified as a liberal, and who had a comments section. I have lost some bloggers on the right, too, who do this, but nowhere near the percentage. My theory is simply that liberals and progressives are just less tolerant of differing opinions, and the commenters from the left are less likely to frequent a comments section where they might encounter an actual opponent.

And you know what — I think her commenters have probably had an effect on Ms. Althouse — she definitely has drifted to the center in the last 4 years.

Of course, we could all just be commenters paid by Putin.

"Prof. Althouse - Prof. Volokh said he was going to continue microaggressing. How about you?"

Says a commenter on a post from a couple days ago called "Eugene Volokh gets a memo from his employer (the University of California) about how to avoid 'microaggressions' and he doesn't like it very much."

What Volokh said was (mocking the university's aggressive definition of microaggression):

Well, I’m happy to say that I’m just going to keep on microaggressing. I like to think that I’m generally polite, so I won’t express these views rudely. And I try not to inject my own irrelevant opinions into classes I teach, so there are many situations in which I won’t bring up these views simply because it’s not my job to express my views in those contexts.

Unlike Volokh, I don't "like to think that I’m generally polite." I dislike (and avoid) thinking that, because politeness is subjective, and I'm afraid to count on the belief that other people will think that I'm polite.