The Graying Blogosphere

By Perry Bacon Jr.

The crowd at yearly Kos, the Daily Kos' bloggers' convention in Las Vegas last week, was predictably politigeeky. Glued to their laptops, the bloggers wore their liberal hearts on their lapels. (The most popular button showed Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, reviled for his pro-war position, kissing George W. Bush.) But in defiance of the image of the blogger, the crowd wasn't young.

That was surprising to the would-be presidential candidates there, though the average blogger at Daily Kos is actually 45. Wesley Clark marveled, "I'm not the only one in this crowd with gray hair!" New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson mentioned the TV show Dallas, then said bloggers might be too young to get his allusion. An exasperated middle-aged attendee yelled, "We're not that young!" Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner seemed most clued in. He kept the speech at his late-night bash short and curried favor with a medium appreciated by all ages: free food.