EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

http://grab.by/8b5N

anyway when i saw ezra klein on tv i was surprised his persona seemed more journalistic glory days upstart young reporter than coddled nerdface technocratic blogger - i liked him

he has an early 80s newspaper look and feel to him

Yglesias has been wrong many times.

Klein meanwhile is a duller writer but his steady crunching of numbers is ultimately educational.

yglesiases willingness to be ambitious and wrong is imo what makes him compelling - like i understand theres danger in utopian thinking but still reimagining the world and its institutions is def one of my hobbies

who has better trolls?

― goole, Monday, January 3, 2011 11:51 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

to answer my own q, i don't really know. klein's comments are pretty boring but i have noticed yglesias' "community" to be especially vicious and repetitive. neither of them seem to really care much but i think both have made gestures to get more involved. terrible drudgery, sounds like, to me.

as far as blogger gossip goes, can anyone verify that there are, in fact, paid trolls out there? i'd hate to think it was mere dedication causing the same people to say the same things in the same place every day

theres only one blog i can think of that has good comments, really feel like 'comments off' should be the default

TNC i assume?

your bløg has good comments joe

yah tnc and lol of course goes w/o saying my blog

btw how much does this trolling gig pay, who do i contact

i know, right

i saw an interview w/yglesias where he was like all my readers really hate me i have no idea why they come to my blog

he was k funny tbh

eh i've watched a few of his bloggingheads's and he comes off like a jerk imo, interrupting, going on and on

ha yeah ive never been able to bring myself to watch a blogginghead and in general id much rather read than watch any news type thing but for some reason i saw this it was a friendly interview at a like blogg convention where they we just joking around

anyway my head says klein but my heart goes yglesias, not sure what to do, prob follow my heart

yglesias is good on urban issues - not that he says anything new, but at least he's talking to relatively wide audience. but still...super annoying on a personal level. I like klein.

Yglesias is a philosophy major in every word he writes and this is awesome about him.

ugh this is gonna be like that week i read glenn greenwald isnt it

neither of these guys is much like glenn greenwald

unless you have some sort of distaste for american journalists, then yes it'll be like that lol

these guys are on the sensible/technocratic side of the great progressive blogger divide - greenwald exists on the polemic/activist shore - which is not to say hes any more or less otm, just that hes harder to take

nah, that was what i liked abt greenwald its just that in the end i was like "wtf this is not my country i dont care"

haha

yeah but usa is in charge of the rest of the countries iirc

when krugman is updating regularly i don't have much of a reason to follow klein too closely - i don't hate him or anything though

[Yglesias is] a shitty writer imo

Actually, typos aside, he's not. He's remarkably concise and clear even if he liberally sprinkles his posts with "negative externalities" this and "regulatory capture" that jargon.

yglesias is embarrassed about having been a socialist and will occasionally mix in some right wing tinted bullshit to try and build a bit of center cred. i have grown to hate him. klein is kind of a young dinner party blogger but i keep the feed there to flick thru. i enjoy greenwald's secular fire and brimstone and i get angry about the same things as him. his biases are so transparent that is is v easy to think critically about what he writes.

maybe ill face the winner of this one off w/greenwald

can't wait

feel like klein is getting sold short here - he was hands down the best all around guy on health care reform

his coverage was comprehensive but his opinions were so milquetoast it was like reading a blog by that dude on gawker

feel like his opinions were pretty otm especially compared w/almost everyone elses which basically added up to OMG PUBLIC OPTION

they both kind of remind me of how a lot of people move to dc and get kind of absorbed into the weird political networky culture here at a pretty young age. dc is so conservative.

would love to run into these guys at a bbq and get into a drunken political argument

since the democratic primaries, even when drunk i try to sidestep political arguments. i ran into weigel at a bar one time but did not pick a fight. he is a good dude imo. that's actually one of the few blogs i regularly read - don't have time/energy to slog through a lot of content anymore.

yeah ive had v little exposure to it but dc political culture seen close up seems v strange

seems so unbearable. lotta people wearing new balances on the weekend and shit.

they r not sexy rip

never trust a libertarian

or a journalist

lol i own 2 pair of new balances

just sayin if u cannot figure how to dress how are u gonna run the country

daria i seen the shoes youre buying, you know what youre doing

new balance are great sneakers, just dont wear them on the weekend or max will shun u

you pride yourself on living in the mouth of the dragon but being fireproof, and then one day you realize it is saturday and you are in whole foods buying ingredients for a cool mac n cheese with a twist recipe you found online, wearing new balance sneakers

^^ gets it

i mean tbh i would rather live in boston than dc, at least some people there have accents

where would ilx end up siding on a boston vs dc poll?

it would turn into an argument about pizza

who was Ezra rumored to be in a polycule with, like a year ago? Caitlin Dewey is posting "three married, big-name journalists are in a secret polycule" as a blind item, and two of them have to be Ezra and Annie, but I can't remember the third, and Google is no help.

gotta be Nate Silver. he manages the spreadsheet

oh Jesus Christ, it was Bari Weiss, wasn't it?

I don’t think so..:

abundance in the streets, abundance in the sheets

dont let anyone tell you being a liberal apologist for right wing bigotry is an easy job

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:of56nmyuqzvjta7qlf7gwht6/bafkreihve33jvh6pshsuxuj4bojscy5va3o2glhaij3v6wc6d2o4hescae

Surprised Klein's latest laundering of Chris Rufo hasn't prompted any commentary here yet! Amazing how he *keeps doing this*

I waited for lag00n to do the disgusting task.

As I mentioned on Bluesky, Rufo's whole project is to launder his vile ideas through "respectable" outlets. The minute you agree to interview him, you've let him win.

ha i saw it and was like you know what not today xp

I haven't watched, but it's also notable that it's one of his longest episodes. He usually goes 60-75 minutes; this Rufo suck job is more than two hours long.

I really think if the dem nom ends up being anyone left of like Pete or Josh he’s going to be the one to write the NYT’s “Liberal Case for Vance”

I don't think that. For as much as Klein likes to give voice to people on the right, my sense is that he remains committed to a basic liberal worldview. (In fact, this worldview is part of what makes him want to have public conversations with people he disagrees with.)

While some leftist ideas undoubtedly make him squirm, he's not really a reactionary who blames the left or is motivated by resentments. In fact, it's hard for me to imagine a left-wing candidate *who could actually win the Dem nomination* who would turn off Klein.

honestly that’s fair. they’ll have to task some other jackass w it

For as much as Klein likes to give voice to people on the right, my sense is that he remains committed to a basic liberal worldview.

He holds normie liberal views, but in the classic "a liberal is someone who won't take their own side in an argument" mold, he will spend 25 hours a day platforming people who would happily watch his execution.

it's hard for me to imagine a left-wing candidate *who could actually win the Dem nomination* who would turn off Klein.

I think the definition of "who can actually win the Democratic nomination" is going to change a whole lot between 2026 and 2028. The comparison to the Tea Party is bullshit because the Tea Party was always an astroturf project, but the comparison in terms of depth of anger and willingness to burn shit down is dead on. I think the Colorado primary elections tonight are going to reveal that a whole lot of extremely pissed-off voters are rising up out of the earth this year, and the institutional Democratic Party is not ready for that. If a genuine leftist uprising takes place, Klein will absolutely be out there supporting whoever seems most like a polite, sensible Romney Republican.

yeah I have to agree

Rufo is doing a “maybe the things on the right have gone too far” schtick, which mostly means attacking Alex Jones and Tucker.

I agree that Dem voters are more willing to support leftist candidates than before. I just don't know what a "genuine leftist uprising" in a Dem presidential primary would look like, especially one that would force Ezra Klein to abandon the party.

I think Ezra would have voted for Bernie in a general election. I think he would vote for AOC. I am struggling to think of an elected Dem at the national level that he would not vote for against a Republican. (Maybe Darializa Avila Chevalier? But she wouldn't be nominated even if she were eligible to run.) Are you imagining this uprising being led by some obscure figure who isn't even involved in the party?

jaymc, why the hell do you care what or who Klein believes in?

Who cares What's In His Heart? If we hadn't already known, the Rufo interview solidifies him as someone who wants candidates he can sell as porridge to his interview subjects.

I just get kind of annoyed with what seem to me like misconceptions about what motivates him.

i get annoyed that ezra klein breathes my air, i wish ill upon him

I just get kind of annoyed with what seem to me like misconceptions about what motivates him.

― jaymc, Tuesday, June 30, 2026 8:06

I'm not gonna pick a fight, but what has he said in three years that makes him a Thinker that the Dems should take seriously?

To call Ezra Klein a “thinker” is to be playing pretty loosely with language, I reckon

I'm not asking anyone to take him seriously.