Yearly Kos 2006 Convention

Yearly Kos 2006 is the first convention of American political blogs. It started on June 9 in Las Vegas.

What is the real power of political blogs? Is it new media against old media? Marcos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of Daily Kos, started the Yearly Kos 2006 Convention saying that the old media are no longer the gatekeepers, also that Republicans have failed us because they can't govern; Democrats have failed us because they can't get elected. So now it's our turn.

These are provocative declarations - but a very free style is characteristic for blogs, which are free as in free speech and free as in free beer.

Actually the Convention gathered only bloggers from the Democratic spectrum along with many Democratic politicians with electoral ambitions (for the Capitol Hill this year, for the White House in 2008): Mark Warner, Bill Richardson, Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark among others.

Hillary Clinton was absent - she's unpopular in the crowd of Democratic bloggers, who consider her positions not enough combative.

Of course, the world of political blogs does not end at the boundaries of Yearly Kos. There are also well known political blogs that share Republican positions - they were absent at the event in Las Vegas. The fact is that Democrats realized much faster than Republicans the potential of blogs in the political struggle.

Adam Nagourney and Maureen Dowd analyze these things in the NY Times from last Saturday.