Inside the Mind of the World's Most Powerful Liberal Blogger

TAPPER: What's the lesson for Joe Lieberman from this, no matter what happens, whether he wins this primary or whether he wins the general election? What's the lesson you want Joe Lieberman to have learned?

MOULITSAS: Well, no matter how much I would write about the race -- and remember, all I can do is blog about it. All I can do is write about a race ...

TAPPER: And tell people to send money.

MOULITSAS: A couple, you know, a couple of tens of thousands of dollars, Lieberman is going ...

TAPPER: And do a campaign commercial for his primary opponent.

MOULITSAS: Well, nobody knows who Markos Moulitsas ...

TAPPER: Well, if that were true, then he wouldn't have done a campaign commercial with you -- Ned Lamont -- right?

MOULITSAS: It was fun. It was a fun ...

TAPPER: I'm just saying you've done more than just write about it.

MOULITSAS: Right. But I don't think Joe Lieberman would have anything to worry about had he tended to his constituents back home. His job is to represent the people of Connecticut. If the people of Connecticut aren't happy with the job he's doing, they're not going to give him another shot. And there's nothing I could do to tell the people of Connecticut that Joe Lieberman wasn't good enough for them. They're going to make that decision for them. The most I can do is help nationalize the race, drive a lot of attention to it, sure, cut a commercial ... but that's it.

TAPPER: Forget Joe Lieberman, what's the lesson for Democrats in general?

MOULITSAS: Well, that the lesson has to be that they have to represent their constituents. They have to -- and here's the key. I mean, this is what goes wrong in Washington, D.C. I think these senators and congressman and media people go to Washington, D.C., and they get sucked into this vortex and they lose touch with what's happening out in the rest of the country. That's the problem. Lieberman's problem isn't that a couple of bloggers don't like him. His problem is that he has lost touched with the people of Connecticut.

If these elected officials refuse to lose touch with their constituents, if they spend more time outside D.C. than inside, if they spend more time talking to constituents rather than pandering to the D.C. elite press corps, I think they're safe.

There's nothing I can do to get -- for example, Hillary Clinton. She voted for the war. If today I said, 'I want to target Hillary Clinton, I want to support her primary opponent,' I would get laughed out of town because she has delivered to the state of New York. People in New York like her, she's responsive, she spends a lot of time in New York and she's delivered. Joe Lieberman has not delivered -- that's his problem. His problem isn't a bunch of bloggers writing about it.

TAPPER: You say he hasn't represented his constituents. He may well win the general election if in fact he runs -- he loses the Democratic primary but runs as an independent. Anyway, he's still favored to win the general election. So is it not that he doesn't represent Connecticut constituents, it's that he doesn't represent, in your view, his Democrat constituents, the Democratic base of his party?

MOULITSAS: Well, I mean, we'd like him to be honest about his party identity. If he doesn't want to be a Democrat, great, run as an independent going into a Democratic primary. Don't try to be everything -- don't try to have it both ways. He talks a lot about his integrity, yet he doesn't have the integrity to respect the will of the voters in an election, which is exactly what's happening. If he doesn't think he can win a Democratic primary, great. Drop out of the party, run as an independent and let the chips fall where they may. I don't necessarily think that Lieberman can win a three-way race in a general election.

TAPPER: What happens if the way this plays out is that the Republican wins in Connecticut? For whatever reason, the Republican wins. If you enable a Republican victory in Connecticut, haven't you done exactly the opposite of what you're trying to do?

MOULITSAS: Well, this is a fairly -- it's a reliably Democratic state. We're very pragmatic about these things. If Lieberman loses the election and Lamont wins, Lieberman drops out, Lamont would win. I don't think there's any question about that. I don't think anybody thinks otherwise. The problem comes if Joe Lieberman does not respect the will of the electorate. We live in a democracy. We live in a world where nobody has a God-given right to their seat, they have to make the case, and it's a party system. And if he refuses to abide by the democratic will of the people of Connecticut, that's not my fault. That's the fault of Joe Lieberman and his lack of respect for the voters of his state.

TAPPER: But if he runs as an independent and then he and Lamont split the vote and the Republican wins, haven't you done the exact opposite of what you're trying to do?

MOULITSAS: Absolutely not. What we have done is ... that we have played by the rules. Joe Lieberman hasn't. And Joe Lieberman, at that point, has delivered the seat to a Republican.

TAPPER: What races are you involved in now? Obviously Lieberman in Connecticut ...

MOULITSAS: There are two races that we're particularly excited about in 2006. One of them is the Senate race in Montana, and the second is the senate race in Virginia. In Montana, we have a guy named Jon Tester. He won the primary against an incredibly well-funded opponent, well-known, higher name recognition. It wasn't even close. He won by 25 points. In Virginia, our guy, Jim Webb, again ran against an establishment-backed opponent, had a lot more money. Jim Webb, in fact, didn't run a single television campaign ad, did only one direct mail piece, and still won the race.

When we talk about -- when we talk about people power, now I talk a lot about people power politics, where we're getting more and more individuals involved, as opposed to the issue groups as involved with the big money. Regular people getting involved, those races proved that an under-funded, lesser- known candidate with an army of supporters, with the real people powered army, could actually win those kind of races. And I think both of those candidates are extremely great choices to defeat their Republican opponents in November.

TAPPER: So how powerful are you?

MOULITSAS: Not very -- not very. Like I -- my so-called 'power' -- extends to the ability to nationalize, to talk about a race.

TAPPER: You have 500,000 -600,000 independent unique visitors -- readers a day. That's more than a lot of major metropolitan newspapers and ...

MOULITSAS: And it's, you know, the power of that actually is the audience, it's the kind of people. In a large newspaper, some people are reading sports, some people just do the crossword puzzle or read the funnies.

TAPPER: You're making my point. These are involved readers, and you have almost -- maybe not even almost -- you have complete control of what's on the front page. If something is not to your liking, it doesn't have to remain on the Web site, right?

MOULITSAS: No.

TAPPER: Everything stays on the Web site?

MOULITSAS: Yes, essentially. Unless, I mean, we have the extreme limits, which, you know, racist kind of material.

TAPPER: But generally, my point is, this is -- this is more power than an editor in chief of most newspapers in this country.

MOULITSAS: Perhaps. I don't know how you measure that, to be honest. I like to liken myself more as a mayor of a big city, because you have people and they're doing their own thing and they're communicating with each other. I don't control the flow of communication. I don't have complete veto power over what's being discussed. On rare occasions, I have basically said, 'This topic is off limits.' But it's very rare -- I think it's happened twice.

TAPPER: What are those topics?

MOULITSAS: It's where you have 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I have no patience for people who want to say that the Mosad was behind 9/11 or George Bush was behind 9/11 or anything like that. I mean, I find that stuff utterly ...

TAPPER: So that stuff was taken off the site?

MOULITSAS: That stuff it's, it's actually on the site, but those people, you know, I ban that kind of, that kind of ...

TAPPER: And what else was the other issue?

MOULITSAS: In 2004, there was -- there were a lot of claims that there was fraud in Ohio. And for several months, people, you know, kept talking about how George Bush stole the election in Ohio. And after enough of that, I thought, 'OK, the evidence isn't there. This is being counterproductive at this point. If you have new evidence that would indicate that, then by all means, you know, share.' But the same discredited, so-called facts were regurgitated over and over again, and finally I got tired of that. I thought it was destructive. I also banned that type of diary.

And I think, in a case like that, what the problem wasn't necessarily people saying that the election was stolen. It's they were making claims that it was voter-box stealing, when in fact, I think a really strong case can be made that enough people were disenfranchised in Ohio that perhaps that was the margin of victory for George Bush. And instead of focusing on the, on the real problems in the electoral system, such as ballot-box access, having people put in felon voter rolls when they were not felons, not enough boxes in poor neighborhoods, in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods while out in the suburbs, there can be an in-and-out voting in 15 minutes.

Those are real problems. And people are still fixated on, you know, the boxes -- the black boxes were stolen. That, I thought, took the focus away. And then actually de-legitimize actual conversations on voter rights issues that actually, you know, voter right violations that happened in Ohio.

The rule is really is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's all we're saying. And when people make accusations without proper supporting, it's really frowned upon in the Daily Kos community, because we want to be reality-based. We want to be a reality-based community. We don't want to be one that's just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. I think I'd rather leave that to the Republicans -- that's what they do.

TAPPER: You said to a Swedish newspaper, Swedish magazine, "I wouldn't want to be senator or congressman. I'm able to influence politics much more effectively doing what I do. The only way I could exert more influence would be if I were president." I mean, there's a certain acknowledgement in that quote that you have a certain amount of influence.

MOULITSAS: There is influence. But actually, that quote really doesn't speak too much to how powerful I am. It speaks to how not powerful the average senator or the average congressman really is. I mean, there isn't -- a president is very powerful, especially when you have the George Bush model of presidencies where laws don't matter, you can do a signing statement and ignore the Constitution, ignore the Congress, ignore the Supreme Court. So presidents are powerful, especially under the current regime.

TAPPER: But you're saying you're more powerful than the average ...

MOULITSAS: I'm saying -- I don't know, I wouldn't say that. But, you know, you're in the Senate ...

TAPPER: Isn't that kind of what you said?

MOULITSAS: Perhaps, but really it was not the intent.You are one of 100 votes in the Senate. You're one of 435 in the House. You're one small piece in a much bigger -- in a much, much bigger hole.

TAPPER: My point: You are the most powerful liberal blogger.

MOULITSAS: Well, yes. So, yes, I'm a big fish in a small pond, essentially. And to me, that's more interesting, and I feel I liked it a lot more than being one of 435 or being one of 100.

TAPPER: OK.

MOULITSAS: So that's -- it's not that, you know, I'm more powerful than a senator. Obviously, I'm not. But in my little, in my world, and it's a small world. You know, I did this commercial -- you talked about this commercial for Ned Lamont, who's running against Joe Lieberman.

TAPPER: I've never been asked to be in a commercial. It's kind of a prestigious thing.

MOULITSAS: There were 40 supporters at this shoot. It was a day-long shoot. This is Ned Lamont who, according to all the writers, like David Brooks, the only reason Ned Lamont has any supporters is because of the bloggers, right? There were 40 supporters there -- only two even knew what a blog was. I was blown away. I was shocked. Because I thought, 'OK, at least half of these people are going to know what a blog is, right? Because we're so loud.' I mean we're, you know, we're kind of a flavor of the month, and everybody's talking about us and writing about us and doing shows like this one about bloggers. I thought more people would know it. They did not. They didn't know what a blog was. They didn't care what a blogger was.

Ned Lamont has motivated them, excited them, because they heard them on the radio, they saw [him] on television, they saw him in a kind of traditional places where people had done politics in the past -- not the blogs. So it's a small pond. And we have a disproportionate amount of influence in the process, but nowhere near the influence that a lot of people like David Brooks claim we have.

TAPPER: There's a lot of harsh rhetoric on your Web site.

MOULITSAS: Oh, yes.

TAPPER: People are attacked personally. People -- it's not just political disagreements. Sometimes it's this reporter, this member of Congress, this Democrat, this Republican are, you know -- and then pretty salty talk.

MOULITSAS: Yes. These people act like, you know, they say a bad word and their ears will bleed or their eyes will pop out or something. I don't understand where this Victorian purity thing came from. I was in the Army, I learned to talk the way I do in the U.S. Army. And we don't mince words. In politics, I don't see it any different. I see it as a battlefield. We didn't create this political environment, the Republicans did. The Rush Limbaugh[s] and Ann Coulter[s] created the world we live in, and for too long, Democrats tried to keep the high ground. Oh well, we're not going to go down in the muck with them.

And,the bottom line is that they've been winning and we've been losing, and it isn't because a couple of people use a potty word. It's because they were aggressive, they promoted their side very effectively, they riled up the troops, they motivated their supporters, they made sure their base was well-nourished. And,we're not seeing -- we haven't traditionally seen anything like that on the Democratic side.

And suddenly, bloggers come on the scene, and we're aggressive, and we're unapologetic of what we believe in, and every once in a while we use an f-word. That's not a bad thing. That's what war looks like. That's what a battlefield looks like. And if someday we want to have some kind of DMZ zone politically where everybody stands off and backs down, and OK, Ann Coulter can go retire and Rush Limbaugh is going to go retire, but OK, but Markos, you have to take off, too, I'll consider it.

I don't necessarily have any designs in being in politics for the rest of my life. I don't necessarily think that this is the best thing for our country to have an environment so polarized that the political discourse is this aggressive and this nasty. I don't think it's a good thing. But until we see a sort of backing off from the Republicans that have created this environment, I don't see a reason why we should hold off and act any differently.

TAPPER: I guess I understand what you're saying, but it seems like a lot of the vitriol is aimed not at your Republican opponents but at Democrats who are considered insufficiently Democratic, reporters who are considered biased, people who might be considered, at least in some way, allies -- or at least neutral parties -- who are targeted often as opposed to Republicans. And the same could be said about actually your targeting of Joe Lieberman. And would it not be better or more strategic to target the so-called "enemy," the Republicans, as opposed to others who may or may not be on your side or at least 'neutral?'

MOULITSAS: Yes. And I think that's an absurd characterization. The right has been working the media for decades and made sure to push the discourse to the right. If you look at the Sunday morning talk shows, it's hard to see Democrats or true, unabashed liberals sitting on any of those panels. It's always a far-right crazy Republican and maybe a moderate Republican and then a media person, which, I guess, is supposed to be the liberal counterpart, which that's not really what's supposed to be, you know, that's not what we're supposed to see. That's not what we should be seeing on those shows.

So we are pushing back on the other side. And, to me, it's really interesting that the media for so long has let the right bully it into moving -- in skewing its coverage to the right -- is now apoplectic over the fact that we're demanding that they do their job properly. We're not saying lie, we're not saying follow, you know, listen to the Democratic talking points. We're just saying, don't, like, don't fall for these lies, look for the truth. There is a truth out there. This is not a subjective world. Look for truth when we can find it. And don't be afraid to talk about [it] for fear of being labeled liberal.

I mean, we live in such a crazy world where even now conservatives are accusing George Bush of being too liberal. Anything that cast out conservative ideology is quote 'liberal' in their world. That's what they live in, right? We don't operate like that on our side. We're just saying, you know what, be fair, be balanced, be honest, look for truth and don't be afraid of saying that. And if you don't, then we're going to remind you about it. And, you know, that's not a bad thing. And reporters, I think, have a very thin skin ...

TAPPER: A comment a lot of people cite as an example of the harshness of your rhetoric on your Web site is after four contractors were killed in Fallujah, you wrote these are mercenaries making money off the war, screw them. And I wonder if you regret having written that?

MOULITSAS: Yes, I don't regret that at all. I mean, the blogs are a raw, emotional medium, and they are what they are. And they're not measured conversation, they're not edited, they're raw. And at the time, the context, the reason I was so angry is that same day that those four mercenaries were killed, five U.S. Marines were also killed, and they were completely ignored by the media, by the traditional media. And I wear combat boots, my allegiance is with my brothers and sisters in uniform, not with people who are there to profit from the war.

And it wasn't me, that the liberal blogger, casting aspersions to these mercenaries. I mean, the U.S., the Pentagon has basically said over and over again that they're a threat to U.S. forces there. And so, they're a problem, and yet people who are more concerned about their deaths than they were with people in uniform.

TAPPER: I don't know if they were more concerned ...

MOULITSAS: They're absolutely more concerned.

TAPPER: ... it was the graphic, they were burned, they were, they were, you know, it was a very ugly affair when they were killed.

MOULITSAS: And every day our service members are getting burned and graphically killed in Iraq. And they're page B29 now. I mean, they're back of the page newspaper story.