Kevin Drum’s wife Marian posted this on his blog today:
With a heavy heart, I have to tell you that after a long battle with cancer my husband Kevin Drum passed away on Friday, March 7, 2025.
No public memorial services are planned.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to the charity or political cause of your choice.
A Facebook page, ‘In Memory of Kevin Drum’, has been created as a place for friends and family to share memories of Kevin. I encourage you to post your thoughts and memories there.
Thank you to all the wonderful blog readers who supported, encouraged and challenged him through the years.
He will be greatly missed.
Marian
Kevin blogged his struggles with multiple myeloma and prostate cancer by posting graphs of his biochemistry, treating it like any other subject covered. His work on publicizing the effects of lead was great service journalism. He was a steady hand and, agree or disagree with what he wrote, the world is worse for his loss.
Only comments about Kevin Drum, and his legacy, please.
BigJimSlade
Oh, man. Another good one gone. I’ve read him on and off since the Calpundit days. I hope Marian is ok.
MrRoivas
May his memory be a blessing.
Rosalita
I loved reading Kevin, and celebrate Caturday every week. :(
Martin
This one hurts.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
I am going to deeply miss his blog. He was one of the original bloggers, fact-based, frequent, and always clear and informative. And he had the correct attitude toward his cats (and invented catblogging, BTW, I think).
kindness
I’ve read Kevin through a couple of his iterations. In earlier times his Orange County attitudes used to get to me. At his current (and sadly last) place it wasn’t so evident. Now I feel bad for the times I gave him shit about his OC ways.
Gary Trauner
Kevin’s blogs over the years (and Balloon Juice) have been my “go tos” seemingly forever. Kevin wasn’t just smart, insightful, curious, and mostly correct, but he was obviously truly a good person (and maybe the original cat blogger?). Both of your blogs were incredibly helpful in my three runs for fed office in Wyoming, almost helping me to get the impossible done. We lost one of the truly good people in Kevin. May his memory be a blessing. He will be missed…
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@BigJimSlade: Pretty much the same with me, great loss for the blogging community.
Melancholy Jaques
He was the only one of the big time bloggers that I ever met. He was a friendly guy who always brought his intelligence & wisdom to political discussions while only occasionally bringing an axe to grind. He was the master at using graphs & tables to investigate, then explain issues. He stuck to the facts, even when it went against his preconceptions or opinions. Our discourse will be coarser & less informative without his voice.
Elizabelle
Kevin Drum was a really decent, curious, and generous writer and analyst. I am glad that he and Marian got to see how much he was loved and respected, and that his work found an audience and made a difference.
He was in the odd position, last month, of kind of being able to read his own obituary/tributes when he blogged that his health had taken a serious downturn.
Also: Science helped give Kevin many more years of life. Multiple myeloma is a terrible disease, but he was able it battle to for — what — a decade?
Rest in power. Cats everywhere are tipping a paw to the original cat blogger (that I knew of).
VFX Lurker
I did not read all of his work, but I still remember Kevin Drum’s 2013 article “America’s Real Criminal Element is Lead.” He pointed out the correlation between leaded gasoline, violent crime and teen pregnancy in the United States. I never forgot it.
Rest in Peace, Kevin Drum.
jame
Not ashamed to shed a tear for Kevin Drum, a truly decent human being. Condolences to his family, and the cats, too.
(I followed him since Calpundit days, and he always responded to questions from small-potato me.)
@heymistermix.com
@Elizabelle: He was diagnosed in 2014 so a bit over a decade. He also got prostate cancer during that time. Terrible but he beat them both for a long time.
JerseyBeard
Man this one hurts. Been reading him since 2000 along with Josh Marshall and a couple of others. Kevin always brought the numbers and an even temperament. Didn’t always agree with his conclusions, but never ever ever once thought he was arguing in bad faith.
Enjoy your rest, you earned it.
RepubAnon
A very sad day. He will be sorely missed.
Mike
oldster
Aw, that sucks. He was a good guy who did a lot of good for the world.
geg6
A great loss. My deepest sympathies to his family.
New Deal democrat
Agree with what so many others are saying. Kevin Drum was always fact based and thoughtful. Even when I felt confident that he was wrong about something, he always made me think.
And the circumstantial evidence that he was right about the effects of lead appeared overwhelming.
All things must pass. He left the world a better place for his being here.
Sandia Blanca
Like many others here, I followed Kevin’s posts regularly back in the early days of the blogosphere. He was always worth reading, and his cats brought a personal touch to the otherwise very serious world of political blogs. Very sad to hear of his passing.
wmd
Kevin was scrupulously ethical. When data went against the liberal consensus he would hold our collective feet to the fire and push us to honesty.
he’s been a must read for me going back to his Mother Jones days.
Rest in Power Kevin. You did much good and provided light in dark times.
Mousebumples
Never read his blog, that I can recall, but cancer sucks.
May he be at peace, and may his memory be a blessing.
satby
I was a reader since his Calpundit days. With no updates we could only hope, but in vain. Rest in peace Kevin, you did great work here.
Princess
I liked his attitude. I’ll miss him.
Elizabelle
@@heymistermix.com: He was so good about keeping his readers informed of his treatments, and what was available out there.
I’d forgotten about the prostate cancer too.
Wonderful guy.
Mai Naem mobil
Kevin’s blogging was just insightful and his graphs were such a nice way of laying out data. No emotional stuff, just the numbers. Just an awful loss and just when we badly need someone like him. RIP. Condolences to Marian who has been riding an awful rollercoaster.
Elizabelle
@JerseyBeard: That is a great point.
Kevin never argued in bad faith. You could draw your own conclusions, but he was an ethical writer.
Suzanne
Mr. Suzanne has been a loyal Kevin Drum reader since the Calpundit days, and he is very sad to hear this news. I was a less frequent reader, but always appreciated his work when I did. He’ll be missed. I hope his family is comforted to know that he made a positive impact on so many people.
spoot
This blog is my first morning read and then Kevin’s.
I will miss his devotion to facts and proof, gentling pricking hot air balloons of propaganda and bombast, mostly from the Right, but also from the Left. One more voice of sanity lost.
Ohio Mom
I was steeling myself for this news ever since Kevin’s post last Tuesday titled, “Everything is getting worse.” I hope he had an easy passing and I wish all the best to Marian as she learns to navigate this new world without Kevin.
Like a lot of others, sometimes I was irked by his conclusions — sometimes he was no panicked or angry enough for my tastes — but that happen less and less in the past few years. Either he changed or I changed or we both changed.
I hope Marian keeps his site up, or at least finds a home for his lead posts. At least half a dozen times I have pulled up, texted or emailed those posts to people saying dumb things about crime-related issues (typically spouting that garbage from Freakonomics).
We are all smarter and better educated having followed Kevin. That lives past him, as does Cat Blogging (which I am sure he is the inventor of).
Elizabelle
@@heymistermix.com: It’s good to see you here, MM, and to have this post open to comments. Moar of that.
Hope the new site is going swimmingly.
Just look at that parking lot
I first started following Kevin about then years ago when he was with Mother Jones. Reading him led me to this site. I learned a lot from him about how graphs and percentages could be manipulated(on both sides) to prove their point. He was really good at pointing out what could look impressive was really bullshit.
Adios, Kevin.
OldManGamer
I will miss his posts. I got reading him about the same time as BJ – 2001/2002. And while I may have rolled my eyes at some of his conclusions/determination, he was always a good read.
EthylEster
His last post was classic Kevin Drum. Summarized things and showed a chart.
Glory b
@Ohio Mom: Yes, I saw that and my heart dropped.
But I hope he had an easy passing and that he knew he was loved and his intellect respected.
zhena gogolia
I’m sorry for him and his family. I didn’t read him much but he seemed intelligent and sincere. RIP.
Jackie
Kevin’s Friday Cat Blogging is how I first discovered him. Ink Blot and all his and Marian’s subsequent rescued cats was my Friday night respite from politics and the news. I slowly started reading his other articles, but following along with their cats was my go-to.
I hope Kevin’s passing was gentle and that Marian has all the love and support she needs.
beckya57
This one hurts a lot. Like some others, I’ve followed Kevin since the Calpundit days. He was one of the very first bloggers I read, and unlike some of my other early follows he never turned into a jerk contrarian. I’m also a cat person, and yes I remember when he invented catblogging, and his sadness at the loss of Inkblot, under painfully similar circumstances to John’s loss of Tunch. I’ve always admired his commitment to data, and have taught his summaries of the lead-crime research in my classes. I’m so sad for Marian, who he obviously loved very much. There’s a FB page in his honor. Marian asked for donations to preferred causes in lieu of flowers, so I’ve donated to both a UNICEF fundraiser (trying to plug the massive USAID hole), and the Irvine CA Humane Society (Kevin being an Irvine resident). Encourage others to donate to their preferred causes as well.
rikyrah
RIP
Phuck cancer.
Thor Heyerdahl
RIP to a great blogger and deepest condolences to his family and friends.
JMG
Read Kevin for close to two decades. A model opinion journalist. No opinion without facts to support it. An obviously kind and decent person. BTW, a pretty fair amateur photographer. A very sad loss for his readers. All my best wishes for his loved ones, for whom the loss is so much greater.
CaseyL
Awful news.
I’m another one who started reading Kevin at Calpundit, and moved to wherever he was posting. I *think* I started reading him for the Friday Cat Blogging, and stayed for his always-excellent writing and analysis. Even when I disagreed with him, which was not infrequently.
He was almost always even-keeled, so the few times he got angry in his posts were all the more noteworthy. (I clearly remember his fury during the 9/11 Commission Hearings, when the GOP tried to smear Richard Clarke.)
Kevin had fought his cancers, plural, so long and so hard, and kept us all up to date. (The things I know about cutting edge cancer treatment…!) He deserved to recover, dammit, and will be terribly missed.
My heart goes out to Marian, and to his kitties.
Elizabelle
We should assemble a timeline of the Drum kitties.
Loved that he named one after Grace Hopper. Her co-kitty Hilbert is still around.
dmsilev
Sigh.
It wasn’t really much of a surprise, those last few updates over the past two or three weeks made it clear that he was in a bad way, but it’s still jolting to read.
I think I started following him when he was writing for Washington Monthly, and then stayed with him as he moved to Mother Jones and then to his own blog. Didn’t always agree with him, but certainly the posts where he made the case “this is what the data says, deal with it” were incredibly valuable.
dmsilev
@Elizabelle: Inkblot I think was the first that he blogged about. Then after his passing, they got Hilbert and Hopper. After she passed, Charlie the kitten.
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: Yes. The beloved Inkblot. Much loved, but came to a bad end. I thought he had another kitty during Inkblot’s tenure too, but …
cintibud
RIP Kevin. I followed him religiously when he was at Washington Monthly, then off and on since then. Echoing everything said above about his writing and ethics. Thanks Kevin, you lit a lot of lights.
DougL
Like many others I began following Kevin in his calipundit days and then thru mother jones. He was an every day read for years but I kind of lost track of him a bit over the past decade. He was always a good writer and a force for reason and data over emotion. He was one of about ten bloggers (hi Digby!) that helped me get thru the darkness of the Bush Jr years, but when Obama came along I moved away from many of them. This blog is kind of the last one standing for me. God knows the darkness is so much grimmer than even we imagined then. I’m sorry to lose his voice. All my sympathies to his family and irl friends. He was by every indication a good man.
Ohio Mom
The eulogy post at LGM had some smart comments; Josh Marshall says he’s going to write something later, doesn’t want to shoehorn everything into a couple of tweets? Skeets? What are they?
I hope Marian sees these threads, and finds some solace in them.
Even though in recent years I read Kevin just about daily, I’m feeling I didn’t appreciate him enough.
Journeywoman
@Elizabelle: They also had Domino. I can’t remember if there was another in there as well.
Just gutted by this news, though I’ve been expecting it. 😢
Rugosa
@Elizabelle:
I couldn’t put a timeline together but there were also Jasmine and Domino pre Inkblot.
Craigie
I started reading Kevin in the Calpundit days and for a long time his was my only regular read. Plus I felt a certain affinity with him because we are almost exactly the same age and both grew up in Southern California. I will miss him and his calmly rational voice. And the nerdy graphs which were always so informative.
ssdd
I was an on again/off again reader since the Calpundit days. Was on again for the last eight months or so, and I’m glad I had a chance to catch his work one last time.
mn grubert
@VFX Lurker: that Leaded Gasoline bit he did.. I remember it too.
Read him since the oughties.. CalPundit
Sorry to hear about his passing..
beckya57
@Elizabelle: yes, Jasmine IIRC.
Elizabelle
Domino indeed. And I had forgotten Jasmine.
Glad that Marian has two kitties to help her in what is now a too quiet house.
Baud
Big loss. RIP.
Elizabelle
I bet Kevin’s oncologists and other doctors and healthcare staff miss him terribly, too.
Don_K
Wow this really really sucks. I first found Kevin from Andrew Sullivan’s blogroll and instantly recognized a fellow data nerd. For years I followed him every day, but recently my reads became less frequent because it’s all I can do to keep up with BJ, LGM, Joe My God, and DKos. I thought Kevin was a little too MOR, but he was always honest and brought receipts in the form of data and my beloved charts. As a fellow two-time cancer diagnose, i identified with his fight in recent years.
And hell, he liked cats.
SW
Always admired Kevin whether I agreed with him or not. I will miss his voice and his honesty.
bbleh
Been reading him since the FIRST Calpundit days, when blogging was new and fresh, and Kos and Atrios were still young and optimistic!
Alas for his family and his audience. But he made a BIG difference! We should all try to do so well.
jonas
Drum was one of the original blogfathers — popped up in the early 00’s as Calpundit to comment on the Iraq War and Bush maladministration, in addition to cats, of course. Started reading him along with Cole, Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan and Daily Kos to just kind of get an all-around perspective on a world that seemed to just get crazier by the day. I should have learned to pace myself.
Elizabelle
Now: are there any MSM journalists we would feel this badly about losing, and relatively young?
James Fallows is a favorite. Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times is superb.
But I think most of the thoughtful people are not providing content (used to be called, “journalism”) for the Sulzberger and Bezos vanity projects. I guess some good stuff gets into the Vichy Times sometimes. As an outside opinion piece.
The rest have been jettisoned, or quit and are on Substack and other sites.
Will you cry over Dana Bash?
Unabogie
He was my first read every morning. Just a beacon of data and reason where BS and motivated reasoning reigns supreme. Very sad news.
Tazj
I don’t remember when I started reading his work, maybe he was on the blog roll at Dkos? I don’t know but I enjoyed reading what he wrote and liked when he posted pictures of his cats. RIP. From what I’ve read he seemed like a really good guy. Condolences to his family.
brendancalling
I haven’t read him in some time—not for ideological reasons, just hasn’t been on my radar—but I sure do remember Calpundit, which was a daily read for me at the time.
I’m glad he’s free now.
RSA
I met Kevin back in 2005, when I was living in Venice and he had a weekly get-together at the Santa Monica farmers market (at least I think that’s right–it’s been a long time). I was excited! He was a Web celebrity, one of the founders of individual political blogging as a thing. He had a circle of really smart friends and was genuinely a nice guy.
Andrya
Kevin Drum’s blog was the first blog that I read, and I read it every day since I discovered it. He did amazing work, especially in establishing that lead abatement, not mass incarceration, drove the decline in crime rates since 1990.
Rest in power, you will be missed.
peter
Like many here, my reading of Kevin Drum started in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq war. He was a voice of reason. I’ve learned a lot from his blogs over many years, and I always admired and appreciated his fairmindedness and clarity. Never met him, but he was clearly a mensch. The blogosphere is diminished by his loss. RIP.
A Ghost to Most
RIP. I used to read him back in the day, before I tired of talkers.
ChrisSherbak
He made an impact on me and so many others. Mr. Rogers taught us to look to the helpers, Kevin Drum taught us to look to the data. His memory will certainly be a blessing.
Elie
I was afraid this was coming!
I am so very sorry that we will miss his intelligence and insights.
Wishing only the best to Marian He will be missed
Papa Boyle
I will miss his graphs.
wonkie
Wow. I am sad. I haven’t been a regular reader in quite a while, but Kevin gave me my introduction to blogs. Every day I started out with his Washington Monthly blog–this is back with Gen Clark was in the Dem primaries. I’d read his posts, then go over to his blog roll and cruise up and down. That’s how I found Obsidian Wings and it might be how I found Balloon Juice. I am sorry for his suffering and sorry for his family.
Ohio Mom
Atrios put up a short obituary, where he explains the history of Friday cat blogging. Yes, it was started by Kevin, then his employer told him to stop, so Atrios took up the mantle.
I don’t go over to Atrios all that much but I don’t think he Friday cat blogs anymore. So perhaps this grand tradition is over now that Kevin is gone.
anitamargarita
@Jackie: this was my experience of Kevin Drum too. Friday cat – blogging led me to his policy/political stuff. RIP, May his memory be a blessing.
CatRadio
He was a good man: a gift, and will remain so, because his words have a place in history.
Pennsylvanian
I express my most sincere condolences.
“Knowing someone” on the internet is absurd! But there was a brief time when we crowd-sourced reliable voices. I remember blogrolls!
I cried when we got the report about Inkblot. I remember to this day the news.
I am tired and feel weak in my soul right now.
The sun will rise in the east. That’s all I’ve got.
Rest easy, Kevin Drum. Thank you for your contributions. You will be sorely missed.
JML
I’m really quite bummed about this, but I’ve been bracing for it for a while. Because Kevin was so open and honest about his health, he really let people know and prepare. Doesn’t make it any less sad, but he battled cancer as hard as anyone.
Always felt like Kevin was consistently one of the most intellectually honest bloggers we’ve ever seen. He could admit to being wrong. He brought facts and data (and many many charts) to his arguments. He cited his sources.
I always thought he was one of the truly great deflaters of meaningless BS out there. 3 paragraphs and and a chart and suddenly the liars and scammers were exposed again. We need more of that, not less these days, so losing Kevin right now hurts a bit more. But damn if this administration and its constant lying wouldn’t have given him an aneurysm…
Plus, one of the great cat bloggers of all-time.
MobiusKlein
Been a calpundit follower for ages.
The trolls in the comments there were horrid, and made me appreciate the lively discussions here, even with the oft times anger we share at each other.
The world needs more Kevins, fewer trolls.
adm
This is (I think) literally the first comment I’ve ever left on a blog despite lurking on many for at least 20 years. It’s bizarre to feel so affected by the passing of someone whom I’ve never met, but whose words were always amongst the first I read in the morning. Like many others have said, I often disagreed with his views, but he was always worth taking seriously. I will miss him deeply.
Now, hopefully the BJ community will stay healthy so I can remain safely ensconced in the shadows.
RIP Kevin
KimK
I came to Balloon Juice and Kevin Drum almost 20 years ago through the auspices of Andrew Sullivan. I had to let go of Andrew a couple of years ago because he just went off the rails but I have been a daily reader of both Balloon Juice and Kevin lo, these many years. My husband and I have been checking Kevin’s page for weeks now, wondering how he was doing as he had chronicled his struggles in such a very Kevin way, with charts and analysis. I was surprised that I just burst into tears when I read Marian’s post. He was an all around good guy and the world is a lesser place without him.
Thank goodness for Balloon Juice in these awful times!
Rest in peace, Kevin.
Nelson
A damn shame. Good bye, Kevin.