GET YOUR FIX: If you check one mainstream political blog every day, make it the Washington Post's |
Think Progress
You’ve got to like a blog that organizes topics under the tabs “Corrupt Establishment”, “Incompetent Establishment”, “Braindead Media”, and “Radical Right-Wing Agenda.” On this site, part of the vast American Progress conspiracy, Judd Legum and other young writers do a great job of summarizing and linking to news and opinion from both the mainstream media (MSM) and the blogosphere.Raw Story
A self-conscious attempt to create a Drudge Report of the left, Raw Story — created in Cambridge — is a great compendium of MSM and blogosphere links, along with real breaking news, all virulently (but not insanely) anti-conservative. A definite homepage candidate for progressives.
Political Animal
Written by Kevin Drum, this blog’s entries can be a little hit-or-miss, but there’s a lot of good information and commentary there — and even more within the comments section. The best part of the site, though, is on the left-hand bar, which provides rapid links to everything written elsewhere by Washington Monthly contributors — including Michael Kinsley, James Fallows, Timothy Noah, and others well-worth reading.
Tom Paine Uncommon Sense
This site, part of the Institute for America’s Future, still has some growing up to do: the editors don’t blog enough, there aren’t enough user comments, and they should provide brief summaries for the many links to outside news items. But the site is good and will get better — and, being actual DC journalists, the authors have real contacts, info, and insights worth reading.
The Real News Project
Also in its infancy, this is a collaboration of some true top-flight journalists, some of whom, like Russ Baker and Robert Dreyfus, have been doing killer blogging on their own.
Mystery Pollster
If polling numbers becomes your crack fix during campaign season, you need the oddly titled Mystery Pollster — odd because it’s openly written by veteran Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal. On his blog he breaks down all the recent polls and tells you what they really mean.
TPM Cafe
Joshua Micah Marshall, legend of the Talking Points Memo blog, started this site as a more comprehensive, participatory site. Lots of good stuff.
Donkey Rising
Essentially the blog of Ruy Teixeira, author of The Emerging Democratic Majority, this doesn’t contain enough information to require daily checking, but its quality demands periodic peeks.
The Fix
The Washington Post’s political blog, written by Chris Cillizza. If you want to check just one mainstream political blog every day, pick this over ABC’s The Note, et al.
Patrick Ruffini 2008 Presidential Wire
Okay, Ruffini is a die-hard Republican insider, as well as the former Webmaster and chief blogger for the Bush/Cheney ’04 Web site. But go to his ’08 Presidential Wire and you’ll be hooked. It links to everything written about every potential presidential candidate in every national and local media outlet everywhere (with, helpfully, the candidate’s picture next to the link). It even ranks the candidates by the number of times they’ve been mentioned in the past 24 hours, and how they’re trending. A highly addictive site for the politically obsessive.
