(continued)

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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