I have no idea whether or not she's been banned per se, however, it is a really big deal to Kos and his group of main page posters for everyone to understand that anyone who is running for an office or who diarists support for an office MUST under any circumstances had a D after their name.
I used to go round and round about it with them during the Harold Ford Jr FAILED Senate run when I would tout the Green candidate, Chris Lugo.
I have no doubt in my mind that the reason they get so hot about it is because if they don't rail against non-Dem candidates, they (the Kos people) won't get invited to play in the Inside the Beltway Reindeer Games.
For me, this is all bound up in the strategy vs substance debate. For them, it is about winning and having control and being a part of the DC power structure and getting fat checks for consulting and such; for me, it is about being right and doing the right thing and making the world a better place.
The Kos hierarchy have let everyone in the Beltway define the game for them in such a way that they cannot win in a new way, they can only get in the current game that is rigged to help those within keep winning. The Kos gang has to get down in the mud with the rest of the pigs in order to get called up to appear on CNN as an "analyst".
Note the monthly front page diaries touting the greatness of Markos "making money". For them, it is about working in government and getting rich. For me, government is not a product to be bought and sold and marketed. Sure, anyone working in government should get a paycheck for doing whatever they do but it isn't about just the paycheck or how big the paycheck is.
Being elected by your peers to represent them and their interests is an honor. The payoff should be that honor, not the fat paychecks and the doors it could open to becoming independently wealthy as a consultant or lobbyist. This is where America has lost its way. With its idolization of getting on TV and glorification of power, America has made its citizens into ADD victims who only see the prize not the struggle or the journey. Rarely does anyone want to take the journey, they only want to be at the destination and therefore we have a nation of people who are looking for shortcuts and are willing to bend the rules in order to get the prize or be transported to the destination.
So, when Markos and his buddies "warn" Sheehan that her posts on running against Pelosi are not welcome, they are losing sight of what is right and only holding what they have been convinced is the prize in mind. They think that getting the power or getting the power in DC into the right hands is the way to their goal of American being a better place (whatever that might entail for them). They're convinced that only someone who puts a D behind their name should have that power, but in a world of Evan Bayh's and Joe Lieberman's how in the hell can that be true?
Were there no conservatives in sheep's clothing, then I might agree, but there are and it may have worked in the past but it is clear that Americans are tired of artifice, of finagling, of being marketed to, of being hustled, of pigs with lipstick, of strategy. Americans want substance. Americans want people to say who they are try to stick with that. If something comes along that changes one's mind (within reason, no one can believe that you're pro-choice one week and then pro-birth the next when you announce your candidacy), then let us know why and how it did it. Americans are, for the most part, reasonable.
Dailykos is not what it used to be, but that's possibly part of the journey. It's trying to go corporate and I can't fault Markos for wanting to turn a buck, he's got two kids, for christ's sakes; however, there are some things more important than turning a buck. Government, in its truest form, is the will of the people manifest to protect themselves from harm and a tool for helping the people, as individuals, come to compromise or agreement on the rules for dealing with the issues of our day so that we can function as a society as harmoniously as possible*.
When factions lose sight of this goal, in regards to government and its functions, only then do we arrive at where we are today. A nation without as harmonious a society as possible because individuals have it in their minds that controlling government to their own ends is the goal and in order to do that, they do not think of everyone having an equal shot at that power based on their individual positions on the issues of our day but on their ability to keep from getting kneecapped because they refuse to bend to the will of those who are already in power who insist that anyone who wants to get in power must wear their own personal Star of David in the form of a D behind their name.
*I have no idea if that has been said before by greater minds and mouths but it was about as succinct a description of what government is, in my mind, that I've ever heard in my life.
