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.)