In the last couple of weeks, Ms. Kohn has, among appearances on Fox, put forth the argument for President Obama’s re-election, discussed women voters and the election and debated whether Ann Romney has been treated unfairly by the women of “The View.” “If this is grilling, I don’t think anybody has been to a barbecue,” she said.

In August, Ms. Kohn, who also writes for Salon.com and posts on Twitter constantly, won national attention with her Foxnews.com critique of the vice-presidential candidate’s Republican National Convention speech, with the innocuous headline “Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words.” (Those were “dazzling,” “deceiving” and “distracting” and the commentary called the speech “an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”)

Although Fox News never put Ms. Kohn on the air to discuss the post, the viral phenomenon collected 2.1 million unique hits, putting it among the site’s top five original posts for the year.

Ms. Kohn, who is 35, has a law degree, has worked at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and has run a feminist organization. Her unorthodox trajectory into punditry began in fall 2009, when she left her job at the Center for Community Change after six years of organizing communities, working on issues including welfare reform, health care and immigration.

“I was one of those people on the left who was frustrated, and there were a bunch of us, that the institutional progressive movement had, for lack of a better word, had sewn its lips to the rear end of the White House,” she said, adding that her organizing work was never about party politics. “I was about movement politics, about ideas, about vision, about how to get regular people engaged in the process of making the world a better place.”