Salon: Warner to be given prime speaking slot at Kos Convention in Vegas.

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Wed May-31-06 03:54 PM
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Salon: Warner to be given prime speaking slot at Kos Convention in Vegas.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/31/armstrong/print.html

The Blogfather

Jerome Armstrong introduced Democrats to the Net. But can he sell Mark Warner?
By Michael Scherer

May. 31, 2006 | Jerome Armstrong, aka "The Blogfather," greeted me recently in the office of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner's political action committee, a block of brick and glass that overlooks the Potomac River in old-town Alexandria. Long before he helped pioneer the netroots movement by launching the blog MyDD in 2001, Armstrong served two tours with the Peace Corps, in Costa Rica and Sierra Leone, and was arrested repeatedly at protests with EarthFirst! and Greenpeace. He then spent a year and a half at Buddhist monasteries, meditating sometimes for 14 hours a day. It's an odd résumé that has left him with a calm, almost Zen-like demeanor, a rare feature for a political consultant in the overcaffeinated world of presidential politics. Shunting the traditional preppy blazer and tie, he wore short sleeves and dun-colored Levis.

But then Armstrong, 42, bills himself as a different kind of consultant, an online insurgent who, with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, aka Kos, is leading "a bloodless coup" in national politics. "We are at the beginning of a comprehensive reformation of the Democratic Party -- driven by committed progressive outsiders," Armstrong and Moulitsas write in their recent book, "Crashing the Gate," which sold 5,000 copies online before it was even published. Something is certainly happening. Guest blogging at DailyKos, which gets about 4.5 million page views a week, has become a rite of passage for Democratic bigwigs, people like John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Elizabeth Edwards (under a pseudonym) and Nancy Pelosi. Many of Armstrong's former blogging pupils, who are known by critics as the "Blog Mafia," have been recruited to work for 2006 House and Senate campaigns as varied as those of Connecticut's Ned Lamont, New Jersey's Bob Menendez and Ohio's Sherrod Brown. And next week, roughly 1,000 blog faithful are set to descend on Las Vegas for a four-day conference with the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, party chairman Howard Dean, and at least three presidential hopefuls.

<>Moulitsas says he does not identify Warner with the DLC, especially when compared to other prospective presidential candidates. As for the lack of recent rants against the organization, he says he no longer rails against the DLC because he does not want to raise its profile. "I realized that the more I talked about them the more relevant they became," he said. "That was my realization last summer." As for his friendship with Armstrong, Moulitsas makes no apologies. "There is no doubt that Jerome impacts my thinking and my thinking impacts his," he said. "The fact is that Jerome and I talk a lot."

<>Next week, Warner will be given another opportunity in Las Vegas, at YearlyKos, the first national liberal blogger convention. According to the schedule, Warner is the only presumptive presidential candidate who is scheduled to address the entire convention, as the host of a Saturday lunch. He will appear in person, without any bells or whistles, without online video streams or blog endorsements. Just like politicians of old, he will have to take his message directly to the people.