How did a baby-faced blogger become a power player in the Democratic establishment? An online-only version of Radar Magazine's interview with Markos Moulitsas, the man behind Daily Kos

Not so long ago, a lot of Democratic politicians didn't know what the hell a "kos" was, much less why they might want one on a daily basis. But after the party's gangbusters performance in the 2006 midterm elections, capturing more congressional seats than they had in decades, Markos Moulitsas—founder and leading light of Daily Kos, a progressive political blog that draws about 20 million visits a month—has emerged as one of the most prominent and powerful voices on Team Blue.

Not without reason: Plenty of liberals credit him and the members of his online community with spearheading last year's electoral landslide. While the well-shod consultants who've long ruled the party establishment were busy warning Dems against the dangers of being perceived as girlish pinko surrender droids, Kos's free advice was to take a firm stance against the war in Iraq. (That the Kos community has become a formidable fund-raising machine offered some extra incentive to toe that line.)

High-profile proof of his newfound elite status in the party was on prominent display last summer when seven of eight Democratic presidential hopefuls (Joe Biden was the exception—he had a book to hawk) appeared at the YearlyKos convention in Chicago. By contrast, the Democratic Leadership Council—an insidery corporate-funded organization that Kos casts as the synthetic Ivan Drago to his populist Rocky in the internal battle of the Democratic party—drew exactly none at its annual hoedown.

Radar recently caught up with the grassroots guru to talk about the 2008 presidential field, the Republican skeleton in his closet, and the nasty rumor that he's a covert CIA operative.

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Radar: Did you ever imagine you'd be labeled as a Democratic kingmaker?
Markos Moulitsas: It's by people who really don't understand how this thing works. The candidates didn't come to YearlyKos to kiss my ring. If I endorsed Hillary Clinton on the Daily Kos tomorrow, 90 percent of the comments would be "Fuck you!" [Laughs.] In the netroots community, we've created an environment—and by "we" I mean bloggers and people like me—where we're teaching people to think for themselves.

I started blogging in early 2002, then I applied to the CIA.

Were you surprised she showed up at your convention after you called her "a passionless machine" in your Washington Post opinion piece last year?
If she didn't show up, she would've suffered repercussions accordingly.

Meaning what, exactly?
If she wins the nomination, she'll need us to win the general election. One of John Kerry's problems was it took months for netroots people to decide to fight for him in general. It was kind of like, "Oh, I'll vote for him, but don't expect me to waste my weekend campaigning on his behalf." I think the Hillary people realize that they're really gonna need the netroots to rally behind her candidacy if she's the nominee—and the best way to achieve that is to give us proper respect.

So you didn't have to woo her to get her there?
Oh, I didn't do anything. I mean, she was invited. She just took longer than most to agree to go. I think her advisers were worried that she'd go and people would throw rotten tomatoes at her.

I mean, they did to a certain extent. She was booed pretty roundly.
Oh, when she sits there and talks about how wonderful Washington lobbyists are—I mean, you don't have to be Hillary Clinton to get booed in that situation.


KOS TV Moulitsas at the YearlyKos convention in Chicago
In that same Post piece you also said that you thought Hillary would fail as a candidate in the same way Lieberman did in '04. But according to Vegas oddsmakers these days, she's got the nomination locked up.
I wouldn't go that far. But there hasn't been anybody else who's really engaged people. Obama draws huge crowds, but then he gives them nothing. He's running it like a front-runner as opposed to a long shot. So, I think it's really a failure on Obama's part.

You're still publicly undecided.
And privately. My choice will be Edwards, Obama, or Richardson. I love Edwards's rhetoric, but he's running against history. We have the chance to nominate the first African American or woman or Latino, and he's the white guy. For me it's going to come down to whoever has the clearest position on Iraq.

What would you like to see the next president do about the war?
To get out as soon as possible with absolutely no residual forces.

You're perceived by the mainstream press as very liberal. Do you consider yourself a leftie?
People are hung up on this left/right thing, which is completely ridiculous and stupid. I'm not a traditional liberal in any sense. I'm very libertarian. I'm working on a book called The Libertarian Democrat. The label is just a way to try to demonize and marginalize. I speak of myself as a liberal—but as a way to try to bring the word back and reclaim it. Sort of like "queer." Obviously, I don't think it's a bad thing to be a liberal though. It is a bad thing, on the other hand, to pretend that centrism is inherently good.

Which brings to mind Bill Clinton. According to conventional wisdom it was his ability to play the middle that made him such a formidable politician.
I personally think Bill Clinton destroyed the Democratic Party. He was a survivor and was under assault by the right wing, but he worked to protect himself at the expense of his party. We lost control of Congress during his tenure. So to me what's dangerous is this notion that having a strong idea about the future of our country is inherently bad, because it's partisan.

If Hillary wins the election, do you think she'll have more of an incentive to listen to progressive activists than her husband did?
Yeah. There was no mechanism to really hear those voices when her husband was in office. I mean, you had the old liberal establishment, which was basically labor unions (which were on the decline and represented fewer and fewer people), and then the issue groups. There was nobody else to really represent and communicate what a progressive vision was. And now there is. I know that politicians now, at least the smart ones, are keeping a pulse on what the blogs say about them. So, Hillary may not be everything that I'm looking for, but at least I know there's a mechanism by which—whether she likes it or not—she'll be exposed to a cross section of what people around the country really think.

Does this mean political blogs have officially grown up?
Last year [Hillary Clinton pollster] Mark Penn was still totally dismissive of the blogs. I suspect that my op-ed piece was an eye opener—like, "What the hell is a blogger doing in the Washington Post?!"

David Brooks recently sounded off against you, saying that your influence is overestimated.
Brooks is a typical Beltway blowhard. He claims we aren't relevant, then won't stop writing columns attacking me and the netroots. That sort of speaks for itself.

Do you have groupies?
Yeah, I get recognized on the street and asked for autographs and stuff. What's weird, though, is that I'm trying to build this ethos where everyone can be a leader, and then people come up to me and act like I'm some kind of celebrity—although in a very small pond. Let's keep this in perspective.

Do you think people pick on you because you look like a teenager?
I do think that works against me. People try to marginalize netroots by talking about us living in our parents' basements—being so young and so naive. But the average age of a Daily Kos reader is 45. These are regular American people with families who care about health care and education—and it can be hard to deliver that message when you look like you're 12. If I looked my real age, 36, it would help from the side of having people take me seriously. Gravitas, you know? I don't have that!

When you were younger you were a Republican. Why the flip-flop?
The rise of the Christian Coalition in the late '80s and early '90s. The increasing authoritarian streak versus the libertarian side. Besides, I was stupid.

Do you still hold opinions these days that the young Republican Kos would endorse?
I'm a free-trader. I believe in minimal regulation for small businesses. I like to make a lot of money.

How are you doing on that front?
I could always do better. I'm definitely a capitalist.

You've been aggressively critical of big-name Democratic consultants like James Carville and Bob Shrum. What would they say about you?
Probably that I'm arrogant and an upstart, and who the hell do I think I am. They're the big boys and they're the professionals, and they just wish all the kids out in the sticks would shut up and let them do their job. And I would say, "How many races did Democrats win in the past 20 years?" Not very many. "How many did we win last year?" A lot more. It was because Democrats were finally realizing they could go out on a limb and run on strong progressive values—like opposing the war—and win. And I think we're going to see more major gains in next year's election.

Critics have accused you of caring more about winning than principle.
That's outrageous. The goal is not winning for the sake of winning, like, "I just got to level 10 on my Xbox." The goal is to get people in power who know what they hell they're doing. I grew up in the midst of a civil war in El Salvador, where politics had life and death implications. So my experience tells me it's important to win. You can lose with all your convictions intact and that's great—now we have George Bush with hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq because of the left's insistence, via Ralph Nader, on putting purity above practicality.

I found this surprising: You almost joined the CIA as a covert operative a few years ago, after starting Daily Kos. Did you apply for a job or were you recruited?
I applied. I also applied at the State Department, but only the CIA showed interest. I was underemployed, and I didn't have very good job opportunities at the time. It was something that seemed to be up my alley. I'm interested in politics, I'm interested in foreign relations, I'm interested in analyzing stuff and writing about it. The interviewing process took a year, between security checks and all sorts of psych evaluations and drug tests.

Do you think the Agency's interest in you had anything to do with the fact that you were becoming influential in liberal politics?
I wasn't then. This was late 2002 and nobody knew I existed. I started blogging in early 2002, and it was around that summer, probably, that I applied. I don't think they knew about Daily Kos until I disclosed it. Part of my extracurricular activities and whatnot.

Would you have quit blogging had you taken the job?
That was a decision I had to make. They actually asked, point-blank, "Are you willing to give up this political stuff to work for us?" And, after I thought about it long enough, I wasn't. It would have been a weird life.

This is an excerpt from the November issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.
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