Daily Kos

I've heard about Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and his political blog Daily Kos, but never really got into reading it on a consistant basis. But with my keen interest in the 2008 presidential election, I may need to make more of an effort to keep tabs on the "goings on" on his blog. I find that there's great political opinion over there.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Daily Kos or political blogs in general, the following is a good description in a nut shell:

"This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable."

Daily Kos apparently has been conducting regular straw polls of the Democratic candidates for president. As many of you know, I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I think that the results of this straw poll are strong indicator that there are many other fellow Democrats out there who do not want Hillary to win the nomination for president.

Here's some snippets:

A record number of respondents participated this month, with over 22,000 votes cast in the straw poll. And, in the true spirit of the MoE, the numbers changed little after the first few thousand votes were cast. At 6K votes, it was Edwards 37, Obama 27. and Clark at 14. The final results are, respectively, 35, 28 and 17.

Click HERE for the actual poll results.

Bayh dropping out really shaked things up. Just kidding.

The big news is that despite Obama's announcement, he got no boost. The "market" had already factored his candidacy into the equation. This will be in marked contrast with other polls which will undoubtedly show an Obama surge as many non-political folks start seeing him for the first time. Rasmussen will have one of those later today.

What I didn't expect was the sharp drop in Clark support. It looks like many of his supporters are getting tired of waiting for a decision, and Edwards is scooping them up. Remember, Edwards' announcement in New Orleans and subsequent publicity blitz came after the last straw poll, and it appears he made a good impression.

One other note -- I forgot to add "other" and "no freakin' clue" to the answers for a second month in a row. That was stupid. So the trendlines are a bit screwy because of that. And they'll be screwy again next month when I (hopefully) remember to add those answers back in. So yeah, I suck. Thankfully, this isn't a scientific poll.