If by a "political blog" you mean a blog devoted solely to the discussion of political parties, political figures, political fundraising, political races and campaigns, and partisan political battles, then I disagree with you. This site was established as a blog dealing both with politics in that sense, and a broader discussion of ideas and issues less directly tied to electoral politics. There was a department called America Abroad, which was devoted exclusively to foreign affairs - and not just with what some politician of the moment might be saying about foreign affairs in his campaign - and that department was one of the most active areas on the site. There was, and still is, a Book Club, that has treated books by a variety of scholars concerned with issues other than partisan politicking. The Book Club has appeared lately to be dying, given the relatively low number of comments generated by most of the posts.

But it is true that the design, commercial and editorial choices the operators of the blog have made recently are turning it into more of a "political blog", in the style of Kos, Ny DD etc. - which in my view is a shame. To me, it looks like the decision was made to sell advertising by pandering to a less discerning crowd of political junkies who are just looking for their daily fix of horserace crap.

The news is there, that's no problem.
The problem is that seemingly the interest for what to do about the news does no longer exist neither at the Cafe nor in America.

There is a difference between discussion of global affairs and mere news about global affairs. I used to come here because it afforded opportunities to read extended pieces by people like Chalmers Johnson, and to be able to engage Johnson in a discussion of what he had wrote. Or someone involved in the formation of US foreign policy might write something, and we could then engage that person with our complaints about those policies. There are still posts like this, but for some reason there are not as many interesting people around anymore to discuss them, and they don't seem to sustain extended discussions and debates.

Thanks LBS. I personally understand the addiction you are talking about. And I don't want to suggest for a moment that it doesn't matter which candidate is ultimately elected, or that it is not very important to work to elect the candidate you prefer.

But while that is going on, it is important to continue to create space for the intelligent discussion of substantive issues, with some measure of depth and with some detachment from the most excited political passions of the moment. In the United States, there are elections all the time. We can't keep taking holidays from seriousness during election seasons on the excuse that elections are so important that nothing else matters.

One reason Bush was able to lead us into a war so easily in 2002 and 2003 was a lack of effective Democratic resistance. And one reason Democrats offered such futile resistance is because the quality of foreign policy knowledge, debate and discussion in the broad Democratic Party community was very poor at the time. There were pockets of well-informed discussion. But the fact is that most of the major Democratic constituencies are dominated by domestic policy concerns, and the party leadership is consumed by politics, that is, by the business of contesting and winning elections. There was a sense at the time that Democrats just don't "do" foreign policy and national security, and were eager to get the war debate off the table, turn the discussion back to national security, and return to the business of trying to win the 2002 election.

I fear we're in roughly the same position now. While there is somewhat more foreign policy debate now than there was in 2002, it is superficial and confined to the level of dumbed down campaign talking points. It's still all about the elections, and serious public statesmanship is in short supply.

Recently, Iran came up for discussion, mainly because Bush attacked Obama's Iran policy, Obama and his supporters defended that policy, and McCain jumped on board with the Bush attacks. But the discussion was extremely superficial, because everyone immediately got down into shilling on behalf of their candidate. A large number of dubious contentions that both camps are making about Iran are allowed a free pass. Where Iran is concerned, the public is still wallowing in ignorance and drowning in propaganda. So if Bush decides on military action, it will be very difficult to avoid another outbreak of jingoistic mass stupidity.

The same is true of the recent "gas tax" debate. The country is facing a huge economic problem from soaring fuel costs, but instead of an intelligent discussion of the best approach to take to this problem, we got nothing but endless repetition of campaign talking points, and a lot of "gas tax, yes!" and "gas tax, no!" chearleading. Even the economists who chimed in seemed caught up in the political fever, and I personally found it difficult to get straight answers based on careful economic analysis as opposed to armchair guessing from economist-pundits.

And this is the problem with our national press and has been for some time now - the childish, gossipy, small minded digs at candidates.

That's a good point. And it is actually longer than one year. Clinton and Obama officially started their candidacies, I believe, in January and March of 2007. By the time the election takes place, the campaign will have been running about 21 or 22 months.

Thanks you for waiting for those second thoughts Wolf1739. And it sounds like we're in agreement that something has gone a bit wrong when a site that was designed to be a place where people could learn more about issues of great importance, thoughtfully examine those issues, and develop ideas for addressing them, has become a site where people come instead to avoid serious discussion of those issues by engaging in the emotional substitute of partisan bickering about campaign minutiae.

That's what I mean when I complain about "team sport politics". A lot of political discussion reminds me of nothing so much as sports talk radio. People invest emotionally in a team, and then argue very passionately about the struggles of that team. But of course sports is a diversion.

Yes, that is my impression as well. And while I can see that part of the issue is the out of control mass phenomenon of election frenzy, something neither Andrew or Josh can do anything about, I do think some more aggressive editorial direction could help.

Can't this issue easily be addressed by creating a separate section for current events? You can currently designate your post "Muckraker" or "Election Central". The Muckraker recommended list is not the same as the EC recommended list.

If election-related posts were all directed toward Election Central (checkbox when posting, allowing only one section to be selected), and there were a separate Reader Blog list and separate recommendations for each section, that would improve things greatly. The people who wanted to discuss elections only wouldn't be disappointed, as they would still have a place to do that, and there could be cross-pollination between the two sections by providing a list of recommended posts from the other side on each front page. In other words, the Election Central recommended posts could appear on the Cafe sidebar, but in a separate list of their own, along with a separate list of recommended posts from the Cafe itself, and vice versa. In the meantime, there would be a way for good posts about non-election-related material to get noticed and everyone would be happy. :)

Please note, Genghis, that neither Dan nor Guest nor I said we didn't like politics (I don't know where you came up with "distain"). It's just that it doesn't seem to make sense to have two separate sections that have both been completely taken over by political discussions to the detriment of any other sort of discussion.

I suspect that even were we to institute this change, politics-related stuff would seep into the Cafe. It's just the season and we can't get around it. But it would allow other material to be posted much more easily and also start to build the site for when the election is over.