I always liked Chris Bowers’ commentary. In the end, strategery isn’t my cup of tea, so I didn’t read Open Left much, but here’s hoping Bowers finds a new place to blog, if he hasn’t already.
Update. h/t eemom
Reader Interactions
51Comments
Comments are closed.
j low
He is already quite busy at the GOS.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@j low:
Slightly different flavor, though, no?
Scott
That’s kinda depressing. No one can get Hoft to shut up, but no one can keep lefty sites open. Soros should get busy with the sugardaddy gig.
eemom
and AGAIN I don’t get a h/t. : (
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/02/04/mid-morning-open-thread/#comment-2410151
And my Closed Left would’ve made WAY better of a post title, so there.
Console
Bowers was the only one on Openleft I liked to read. I had an account to troll Paul Rosenberg (that was fun) but I haven’t done that in a while.
Comrade Javamanphil
I cannot stand sites that make me click something to get to the actual content (Yes, every fricking restaurant site in the universe, I am looking at you are your damn flash intros!)
fleeting expletive
This snow is making me stabby.
J Smith
As J Low said, he’s been doing pretty solid strategery-like work over at Daily Kos for a little while now. He’ll be just fine!
guachi
I’ll just echo Console – Bowers was the only one on Openleft I liked to read, so I stopped making it a daily pitstop. A multi-person blog really needs consistent quality as I don’t really want to have to religiously scan the author before reading a post.
Davis X. Machina
An earlier, cynical me would say something snarky about gearing up for the 2012 Clinton primary challenge, but I’m better than that now — and Chris is/was better than that. Still, the Rahmcentric theory of the Universe was more or less the local orthodoxy there.
Cris
Jakob Nielsen agrees
pharniel
Comrade Javamanphil – there’s an entire Tumbler for ‘things no one ever said about a restauraunt website’
cleverly titled http://neversaidaboutrestaurantwebsites.tumblr.com/
Paula
You mean Paul Rosenberg wasn’t enough of a draw?
From whom may we find out how Open Left’s closure is symptomatic of the internet Left’s misunderstanding of progressive public opinion in the Van Buren era?
lamh32
@fleeting expletive:
You and me both. I forgot to get enough food, so I hope it last until the ice here in DFW can melt. Of course, I could stand to lose a meal, but still I’m bound to get cabin fever!!!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@lamh32: My kids have been out of school for four days. They were disappointed that it was closed on Tuesday; the rest of the week hasn’t been fun for them.
OT, someone on the front page had better talk about Sarah and Bristol Palin trademarking their names.
Face
Did you know you could trademark your own name?
Does this mean Fox has to pay Pay-lin twice, once for her appearances, and once for the use of her name on her own show? Calling all lawyers–WTF?
j low
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: They say DK4 will have every flavor. A moderate to left paradise where bots and firebaggers can happily live side by side scarcely noticing each other.
freelancer
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’d put my money down on ABL.
Davis X. Machina
Some people are taking the news better than others.
jeffreyw
Random loaves of bread.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@freelancer: I was thinking John, but I bet ABL’s would be funny.
This also seems like something perfect for the Daily Show.
scav
I particularly like the detail that $arah Paylin®’s application isn’t signed: presumably she charges for autographs.
Alex S.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Then I guess I have to call her Granny Palin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@scav: as long as she doesn’t trademark Grifterella, Snowbillly, Former Half-Term Governor of Alaska, Moose-alini or any of her other names, I think this can be got ’round
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Paula:
I hate to laugh when someone is down, but, yeah.
bemused
Two Illinois grade school age nieces were asked by their grandfather why they weren’t out helping their dad shovel snow yesterday. They told him they couldn’t go out because they don’t have their boots, they lost them. When Grampa asked them how they lost their boots, they told them they couldn’t find them after they were playing in the snowbanks. Their mom said the two girls came inside with only one boot out of four. It looks like a boot shopping trip for them since those boots may not surface for awhile.
Boudica
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Don’t forget Caribou Barbie and Bible Spice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Boudica: How could I forget Bible Spice! It was my favorite. Tbogg’s, wasn’t it?
On topic: I saw on the tweeter the other day that Matt Stoller has decided to sit out 2012 because Dems don’t take Wikileaks seriously enough.
superking
What has Open Left done in the last 2-3 years? I read them a lot when they split from MyDD. But it got really boring after a while and they hired some terrible people to write on the front. Paul Rosenberg spent massive amounts of time trying to analyze the world through the lens of an Italian Marxist–Antonio Gramsci (d. 1937). Open Left was just such a pointless exercise after a while.
Carol
I think this may be a warning to those blogs that they can’t just pontificate on politics with such earnestness. I like Balloon Juice because it’s pretty interesting and varied. Sometimes it’s just life instead of just overly pretentious politics.
Can I mak a confession? After a while I could hardly tell the difference between MyDD, Open Left, and FDL. All blaming Obama for everything, accusing him of being basically a tool for the corporatists on every single thing. It gets a little wearing at times. Basically I think Obama is doing as well as he can under the circumstances, and far better than any Republican that could have been elected.
David Brooks (not that one)
It was a place to go in 07-08, if you were a Hillary supporter and couldn’t stand the institutional hatred on certain other (primarily orange) sites.
eemom
aw thanks AWABJ. I’ve never seen my name in lights before. I am totally blushing.
JMC_in_the_ATL
Open Left? Was that the one with Big Tent Dem and that ridiculous woman? I can’t remember her name now.
Paula
@Carol:
Well, I could deal with earnest. If a blog exists to do politics all the time — even the “strategery” aspect of it — that seems worthwhile if you have the necessary research and reporting skills to augment your ideas. But that’s a big IF — the problem with those three sites was/is that there seems to be a lot of people who mostly talk to each other to confirm their own ideas about stuff without going further. They are not, first and foremost, sites from which you can glean new aspects of history or information. In other words, it’s just like most social networking/fandom forums on the internet. After a while, it get’s to be like a dog chasing it’s own tail.
[In any case, that was what was most laughingly stoopit about the whole “veal pen” idea. Despite every technological advantage available to them and a new generation primed to pay attention to liberal politics, they somehow needed to know whether or not they had Obama’s approval …]
taylormattd
@Console: And any place that puts David NATIONALLY SYNDICATED COLUMN Sirota on the front page is just bleh.
taylormattd
@Davis X. Machina: LOL!
taylormattd
@Davis X. Machina: My god. How fucking nutty do you have to be to believe that a site that routinely front-paged crazed, anti-Obama screed by David Sirota and others was actually too pro-Obama?
Jesse Ewiak
EdLeft was the only good thing (aside from Bower’s more lucid moments) that was worth a damn on OpenLeft at the end.
Nick
Oh no, now who will post elaborate conspiracy theories and tell everyone things will never get better until we do something completely unrealistic.
Carol
I wonder about the money aspect. Yes, I’m underemployed, but I have three blogs and a website, and I have yet to make dollar one off of any of them. But all I have to pay is my domain and hosting fees, which are modest to say the least.
Why couldn’t they, with far better support, keep their doors open at least a little? I know that if the time isn’t there, it’s hard to keep up a blog. But these guys have far more money and free time than even I have.
lol
Bowers is the David Brooks of the Professional Left and his colleagues at Open Left are rarely any better. He’s already moved down the street to GOS so this doesn’t really change anything.
But in the spirit of things, here’s the piece that probably best encapsulates Bowers’ idiocy as a pundit and the general narcissism of the Netroots:
Obama Campaign Post-Mortem – Oct 29, 2007
It is ironic, really. During 2006 and early 2007, I always thought that the netroots would end up being the downfall of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, it turns out that losing the netroots has been the downfall of Barack Obama’s campaign, resulting in the rise of Hillary Clinton. We did determine the outcome, just not in the way I expected. I think we should have seen it coming, but the future is always hard to predict. While it is disappointing, it doesn’t really make me sad. Hopefully, at the very least, the downfall of Obama’s campaign will serve as a warning to anyone else in the Democratic Party who wants to harness the activism of the netroots to win, but who distances him or herself from the netroots in order to look palatable to the establishment. You can’t throw us under the bus and expect us to still support you forever. If you throw us under the bus, well, there are better things we can do with our lives then continue to support you.
IM
@JMC_in_the_ATL:
That is Talk Left.
IM
@lol:
Well, never predict the future and all that. But now I remember my problem with Bowers. He always said netroots.
And somehow I always had the suspicion that netroots = Bowers.
Davis X. Machina
@taylormattd: Faith is a powerful and amazing thing.
John
Bowers as the Brooks of the left seems pretty spot on. He is occasionally alright, but a) he isn’t all that bright; and b) he takes himself and the “netroots” incredibly seriously in ways that quickly become obnoxious.
Everyone else on that site was even worse. Open Left and other, similar sites were a great reminder that the ranks of people who I probably agree with on most substantive policy issues are full of people who just aren’t very bright or insightful and have very little that is interesting or useful to contribute.
eemom
@Nick:
Oh, I can think of a few who will step up to the plate.
lol
That reminds me, what’s Matt Stoller up to now that he’s finished running Alan Grayson’s political career into the ground?
Here’s the Stoller companion piece to the one above:
Obama is Done, Sep 12, 2007
At what point does the Professional Left realize their track record isn’t any better than Bill Kristol’s?
Sko Hayes
@David Brooks (not that one): I have to thank Jerome for that.
DK became quite unbearable for a while.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lol:
Zounds! is that the first mention of the great ‘under the bus’ moan?
Nick
@lol:
like consistently complain you’re being thrown under the bus until people stop reading your Web site and you have to shut it down.
Paula
Holy shite that stuff’s worse than the handful of stuff I (forced myself to) actually read from Open Left!!!