On Friday, it got to be too much for Alegre, a diarist on the flagship liberal blog DailyKos, who frequently writes in support of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our online community has tried to accomplish in this world,” Alegre wrote Friday evening. “No more.”

Objecting to the tone of attacks against Mrs. Clinton and her supporters on the blog, the diarist called for a “writers strike.”

“This is a strike – a walkout over unfair writing conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won’t ‘work’’ at DailyKos again,” Alegre wrote, promising to come back only “if we ever get to the point where we’re engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches.”



The blogosphere has never been known for its polite, gentle discourse, and while fiercely partisan, being a Democrat does not make one immune from attacks from the lefty blogs (see Lieberman, Joseph I.). But now, the major internal divisions within the Democratic Party seem to be splitting liberal bloggers. So what happens when the unity enforcement mechanism becomes disjointed?

Alegre’s post attracted a strong reaction, both negative and positive. The comment board was shut down about 5.5 hours after it was posted, with 1258 comments.

One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”:

“Why should this site and Kos profit from the traffic we add to DailyKos, and the sense by outsiders that it represents the netroots as a whole?” the blogger asked, adding later, “But I just don’t see how people come back together on a daily basis after a falling out like this.”

Another poster challenged Alegre’s assertion that “DailyKos is not the site it once was thanks to the abusive nature of certain members of our community.”

From jdodsonvls:

The only difference is now we’re attacking a candidate whom YOU feel strongly about. Sorry. It happens. But if you don’t understand why we dislike her, if you don’t understand that she stood opposed to the blogroots for years, that this community grew into what it is today despite her, not because of her, then you’re right, perhaps this isn’t the blog for you. You see, decentralized though we are, I’ve always felt that the vast majority of bloggers share a point of view. Out with the old way of doing politics, and in with the new. To many of us, Hillary Clinton, every bit as much as Joe Lieberman, typifies a wing of the Democratic party that is anathema, a wing that is responsible for the party’s downfall, and complicit with the rise of radical conservatism.

Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, spoke to Jake Tapper of ABC News about the so-called strike, which he said was really more like a “boycott.”

“But whatever they call it, I think it’s great,” Mr. Moulitsas said. “It’s a big Internet, so I hope they find what they’re looking for.”

Many feel that one of the other major liberal blogs, MyDD, tends to attract bloggers more favorable to Mrs. Clinton. If the rift lingers after the primaries, the organizational value of the blogs could be compromised.

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice blog writes: “Where progressive and moderate bloggers and commenters used to get worked up arguing about George Bush, there now a real angry, scolding tone in many comments left by Clinton and Obama supporters.”

He continues: “In short, the strike/boycott is a symptom — and with so many months to go until the Democratic convention, the prognosis for true Democratic Party unity going into the election seems ‘questionable.’”