Is Ezra Klein the DLC's Gen Y recruit as the "face of today's young liberal"?

[brentspeak]

Somebody ordained this individual as some sort of Official Liberal and elevated him to a prominent position in the mainstream media circus.

Like a good suckup to the corporate elite, Ezra Klein http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/the_senate_democrats_disappoin.html">thumbed his nose at the Democrats' attempt to end corporate tax credits for US companies which outsource jobs. Like a good DLC apologist, he ineptly http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/29/public-option-not-the-cor_n_247027.html">rationalized not pursuing the public option while simultaneously http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/how_does_the_individual_mandat.html">shilling for the private insurance mandate.

And then this from his Twitter account yesterday:

http://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/27041995470

Real talk: Demanding financial disclosures from the Chamber of Commerce will not help Dems win the election.

Really? Speaking as someone who's been disappointed by both Obama and the the Democrats in general over the past couple of years, I can say that their well-justified volley against the US Chamber of Commerce has motivated me on their behalf for the first time in a long time. I'm more eager now than last week to GOTV for Democrats this election cycle. Klein can go choke on his latte.

[Name removed]

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[Hello_Kitty]

2. K and R. eom

[ibegurpard]

3. ezra klein liberal

"rofl"

[Name removed]

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[FSogol]

5. We ridicule the right for having to have enemies and then we do the same thing.

:shrug:

[jonnyblitz]

6. K &R. nt

[jefferson_dem]

7. How dare he!

Off with his head.

[brentspeak]

11. So you agree with Ezra Klein's opposition to the Democrats' agenda?

Interesting.

[jefferson_dem]

16. I disagree with your lame effort to impugn Ezra.

When was the last time *you* were on board with the Democrats' agenda?

[brentspeak]

21. Ok, so we've established that you agree with Klein's bashing of the Democrats' agenda

And we've also established that you're unable or unwilling to respond directly to the content of the original post, but instead can only manage to directly attack the OP personally.

[PVnRT]

28. Do you agree, then, that going after the CoC's funding irregularities is a loser?

[kentuck]

8. He seems like a very intelligent young man to me.

:shrug:

[DCBob]

9. Ezra is very smart young man.. he is entitled to his opinions..

as are you.

[brentspeak]

12. He's smart enough to know how to carve a niche for himself as some sort of "liberal" policy wonk

But as far as real-world value to the public is concerned, if he's really so smart, what has he ever been right about?

[DCBob]

13. When it comes to "liberal" policies there are very few that are clearly right or wrong..

most are complex issues that are "best judgments" given the situation.. we may never know who was right or wrong in our lifetimes.

[brentspeak]

23. Uh, yeah...

I'm looking up the definition of "amorphous nonsense" after reading that post.

[KoKo]

10. He writes like DLC...but then that's what he is. Nothing wrong with that

or Jane Hamsher being a Lefty Liberal. But, some would hold up Ezra over Jane. I would prefer both speak...since we should be open to all views.

[craigmatic]

14. That 3rd way nonsense doesn't work. It only peels off conservative repig voters to help dems

win by a hair. Clinton ran on it and barely got in both times. In 1996 he ran as a nonmovement dem and didn't help dems running for congress, The way Obama ran was the right way. Bringing the young, poor, and minorities to the voter booth expanded the playing field and gave Obama a landslide which helped down ballot dems.

[Tarheel_Dem]

15. Unrec for brentspeak, but kick for Ezra. I'm just glad there are "reasonable" Dems

on the teevee, sometimes. :bounce:

[Name removed]

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[Tarheel_Dem]

18. +10000

:thumbsup:

[AtomicKitten]

19. Ezra Klein is a liberal journalist.

DLC? Riiiiight. That must be why Assclown Andrew Breitbart put a $100,000 bounty on Klein's Liberal Listserv.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/andrew-breitbart-puts-a-100000-bounty-on-ezra-kleins-liberal-listserv.html

Re: Klein's JournoList"
In February 2007 Klein created a Google Groups forum called "JournoList" for discussing politics and the news media. The forum's membership was controlled by Klein and limited to "several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics." Posts within JournoList were intended only to be made and read by its members. Klein defended the forum saying that it " that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions". JournoList member, and Time magazine columnist, Joe Klein added that the off-the-record nature of the forum was necessary because “candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations private”.

The existence of JournoList was first publicly revealed in a July 27, 2007 blog post by blogger Mickey Kaus. However, the forum did not attract serious attention until March 17, 2009 when an article was published on Politico that detailed the nature of the forum and the extent of its membership. The Politico article set off debate within the Blogosphere over the ethics of participating in JournoList and raised questions about its overall purpose. The first public excerpt of a discussion within JournoList was posted by Mickey Kaus on his blog on March 26, 2009.

Members of JournoList included, among others: Ezra Klein, Jeffrey Toobin, Eric Alterman, Paul Krugman, Joe Klein (no relation to Ezra Klein), Matthew Yglesias, and Jonathan Chait.

On June 25, 2010, Ezra Klein announced in his Washington Post blog that he would be terminating the Journolist group. This decision was instigated by fellow blogger Dave Weigel's resignation from the Post following the public exposure of several of his Journolist emails about conservative media figures.

Klein had justified excluding conservative Republicans from participation as "not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology".

[brentspeak]

22. Is Andrew Breitbart a member of the DLC?

And is Joe Klein a "liberal"?

It doesn't matter if Ezra Klein is a card-carrying member of the DLC or not (the OP title assumed most people would understand it to be facetious). It doesn't matter if he calls himself a "liberal" or not: His writings are basically interchangable with those of the DLC's Progressive Policy Institute. Which is to say, they are fairly useless and don't reflect the views of the Democratic rank-and-file. The links I provided demonstrate his writings don't even reflect the White House' or Congressional Democrats' agenda. In what real way is Ezra Klein an actual "liberal" in today's sense?

[Name removed]

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[brentspeak]

31. You appear to be getting exhausted avoiding making any substansive remark

"He really is a liberal because I say so! You suck! I'm not going to respond to the content of what you write; instead, I'm going to personally attack you!" is not intelligent debate.

[AtomicKitten]

32. Just another drive-by character assassination from you based on your embarrassingly flawed analysis.

[Name removed]

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[boppers]

24. He's what, 26?

He may be a Y, but he's no millennial. Millennial kids have an entirely different ethic, and *they're* the ones just starting to vote.... his day in the sun as "the face of youth" is over.

[Odin2005]

27. Us Millenials started being born in 1982, so he is one of us, unfortunately.

[Jennicut]

30. Y/millenials are the same thing. Y's/millenials were born 1982 to 1995.

Would you rather be like us Gen Xer's and have to claim Sarah Palin as part of your generation? Ezra Klein is not that bad in comparison.

[grahamhgreen]

25. Yes. Sums him up exactly.

[flpoljunkie]

29. Ezra Klein strongly supports the Fair Elections Now Act, public financing of federal campaigns.

He came from the American Prospect--not the DLC. He's a journalist, not a politician.