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Is this one of the FIVE best politics weblogs?
I don't think so. I like what I've done here, and there are some moments of brilliance, but it's not even one of the ten best left-of-center weblogs, not in a world where there's Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum Anne Marie Cox and Pandagon and Atrios. (I didn't even make the ballot for "best new blog" at the lefty blog award blog.)
But The Decembrist did make Forbes online's list of the five best political blogs. So I won't complain about that, although it wasn't the Forbes list I was aiming for. Of the other four best, Wonkette is the only one I've ever read. (And certainly more deserving.)
Forbes says this about me:
Read a few political posts by Mark Schmitt, and you might get the idea that he's a conservative. He's not, but he thinks it's funny when people get him wrong. "I think of myself as a liberal," says the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based blogger. "But I think I'm a lot more respectful of conservative arguments. I think people react to the tone more than the content.
I guess it's funny. I will accept a spot in the "Five Best Conservative-Seeming Liberal Weblogs" category. I'm not sure how anyone gets the idea that I'm conservative, but I have had a few comments that this suggest that the Decembrist is a little less ideologically driven than some counterparts. And I am at risk of being disinherited (or fired) over my respect for Senator Lieberman and my support for school vouchers, so -- hey, maybe I am a conservative. No, really, I think most of the good left-of-center blogs have a similar orientation, which Kevin Drum identified some months ago:
Most lefty bloggers are actually pretty moderate liberals: me, Josh Marshall, Atrios, Matt Yglesias, Jeralyn Merritt, Brad DeLong, etc. (Atrios is a hardnosed partisan, but his politics are actually fairly centrist liberal. Surprise!) Most righty bloggers are actually libertarians, not conservatives.
It's an interesting point, and I think it actually has a lot to do with the vitality of this little subculture, which James Wolcott captured well in Vanity Fair this month. (Speaking of which, someone else commented that this issue of Vanity Fair is not worth buying except for Wolcott's column about blogs -- not true: First, of course, there is Keira Knightley. But there is also the article about Sharon Bush's divorce from Neil Bush. I can never get enough of the utter shallowness of the Bush family, and the tale of poor Sharon trying to get some attention from her formerly dear in-laws is a good window on this creepy family.)
The only other thing to say about this Forbes.com list is that it includes a poll to vote on the best of the best five political blogs. At the moment, The Decembrist has only seven votes. Now, I probably don't deserve to win, and I don't even mind coming in fifth, but I would like to break double digits. So help me out, please, people. Thanks.
(Update: Doubled my vote total in twenty minutes! That's good. You can quit now.)
Posted by Mark Schmitt on March 26, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
Dude, I just voted for you on Forbes.
I have a great book for you to add to your reading list, one that's a little more practical than the grad school tomes you've listed on your blog (though I did enjoy Wilson's Victorians myself):
MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country
Cheers!
Posted by: Mark Kerr | Mar 26, 2004 8:11:28 PM
Definately, and I'm not just saying that.
Remember, back a month or two ago there were a spate of postings on better known blogs to the effect of "holy Sh*t why haven't I been reading this guy all along". Yglesias came late to the party but said decembrist posts are "the best thing since sliced html code."
I think the reason people like you so much is that you provide insightful commentary, calmy and rationally and regularly. Pretty much every post has a good, suprising, and thought-provoking idea in it. The ideas are usually right too...
Posted by: samiam | Mar 27, 2004 1:30:47 AM
I think there a different types of blogs. There are those that try to link to every story in the news, those that try to comment on every issue, those that pull apart the main issue of the day (whatever it happens to be), and those that end up with a new post every 2 days when the author actually has something smart to say. The Decembrist is the best blog I have found is that last category.
Posted by: Rich | Mar 27, 2004 9:32:30 AM
Your blog is definitely one of the best out there. It's the only one on the Forbes list that really rates. Their selection is kind of strange.
As for others: Left of center, I like Josh Marshall's stuff a lot, and Kevin Drum, and The Editors of The Poor Man (henceforth known as "Manservant Hecubus"), and most of those people on Crooked Timber; and Yglesias is always a fun read, though he says things that are infuriatingly wrong pretty frequently, which is part of the fun.
Nearer the other end of the political spectrum from me, there are a bunch of group sites on which I mostly like just one guy's writing: Eugene Volokh, Bruce "Flit" Rolston, and Paul "Sgt. Stryker" Palubicki are all in that category.
Somewhere in the vast and skeptical middle (maybe closer to middle-left than middle-right), Photodude and Amygdala are endlessly great, and deserve more attention than they currently get; it apparently pays more to be ultra-partisan.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | Mar 27, 2004 8:41:47 PM
Yet another good reason to pick up that Vanity Fair is the piece called "Hack the Vote." Since, as Harper's points out, 29% of the electorate will vote on electronic voting machines that produce no paper trail -- the subject deserves attention.
Posted by: ned | Mar 29, 2004 1:25:32 AM
Decembrist: congrats on the recognition, even if the source seems odd. The blog is deserving. Whenever there's confusion about key terms--here liberal and conservative--it's time to reconsider their usefulness, or better, ask why the confusion. One way of thinking it through: when there is a consensus on basic questions of political economy--today's is, historically speaking, right of center--the outlet for lively political debate, outside the not unimportant details of economic or foreign policy, becomes the realm of culture. Hence the "culture wars," the most recent of which is the debate over gay marriage. Here is where the actual labels have real purchase; on matters of the distribution benefits and burdens in a capitalist economy, they have less meaning. Part of that has to do with the intracies of economic policy making, where differences can be hard to bring out in ballot box effective ways outside the standard (and often demagogic--on both sides of the aisle) appeals to pocketbooks. But it also has to do with the consensus: when it comes to basic structures of the economy there is no ideological rift significant enough to generate meaningful oppositions. What we have instead are incoherencies: Republicans and Democrats as "social liberals" but "fiscal conservatives;" the pro-business liberalism of Clinton and its dialectical spawn, the "compassionate conservatism" of Bush. There's a longer history, too. The Socialist tradition, because of deeply entrenched individualist sensibility and a good deal of political coercion, never had took deep root in this country. The clearer line between right and left that vibrant, sometimes ruling socialist coalitions and parties created in Europe and elsewhere never really existed here (and are fast dissappearing abroad, too). Sure, socialist ideas penetrated the mainstream, and even the American state, but usually in subterranean and watered down fashion. More important is the legacy of the late 19th and early 20th century progressive reformers. Their work was well-meaning and certainly valuable, and motivated by a politically diverse set of concerns. But preserving the social order by taming its excesses, rather than correcting the fundamental imbalances that create, in perpetuity, those excesses, was the goal. The era's limits are best articulated in its favorite son, Teddy Roosevelt: individualist, imperialist, and protector of the American "race," he attacked corporate malfeasance in a way that would no doubt be welcomed today, given the reticence of the current president on similar misdeeds. But to him, any many others, the monopolies and trusts of the era were moral aberrations, rather the inevitable consequences of the system itself. Legislation would address the issue of monopoly, sort of. But surely, the cycles of excess continues on.
Posted by: R Wells | Mar 30, 2004 11:16:28 AM
This is a good blog, but not a great blog. Honestly, you just don't post frequently enough.
Posted by: hankporter | Mar 30, 2004 1:44:48 PM
No offense and I do come by here with regularity but I voted none of the above. It's a crowded field and I think there are plenty better than you. (The war blog category is diff from the political blog? and lt smash is in both?)
Posted by: Frank | Mar 30, 2004 11:56:00 PM
I can't argue with the last two comments.
Posted by: Mark Schmitt | Mar 31, 2004 12:36:00 PM
I just voted for you. Please send the check to my PO Box.
Posted by: vachon | Mar 31, 2004 4:05:20 PM
Actually, I think it is definitely one of the best blogs I've ever read. I am a huge fan of the "essay" school of blogging- you don't blog often but when you do it's a good long read and pure gold.
The Decembrist is at the top of my RSS list for this reason.
Posted by: a lesser mongbat | Apr 2, 2004 12:53:28 PM
Any "libertarian" leanings of the right wing bloggers have been shown to be a lie by their uncritical support of the war on Iraq (the invasion of a country which had not attacked us, which was no threat to us) and their uncritical acceptance of George W. Bush as their Lord and Savior and their acceptance of His big-government big-spending agenda as Holy Word to be defended against all comers. If you look at real Libertarians, like Harry Browne, Lew Rockwell, or etc., and compare what they have with, say, Instypundit... well, it's like comparing champagne with grape Koolaid. There just ain't no comparison.
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