Last!

Best of luck over at Mother Jones.

I wonder if you are too centrist for them?

Your work here has been absolutely superb. I look forward to following you. And I wonder when the LA Times will notice your work and select you as a columnist!

Sleep tight. See you on the flip side.

Best of luck and thanks. It will be interesting to see how your voice changes within your new home, back to a California-based publication. I interviewed for a job once there. I didn't get it. I'm breaking my long standing tradition of not patronize places that refuse to hire me. I've already bookmarked the RSS feed for your new home. It says something about a person, when he has to be replaced by two people. I'm fans of Benen and Hilzoy, I look forward to continuing to monitor this feed as well.

I feel like I felt when I watched the last Johnny Carson show...

If any psychologist can explain why I'm feeling choked up over what is basically just a change of url, please let me know.

And just in time for Friday Cat Blogging! Inkblot, do something memorable for Day One.

Why won't Kevin say why he's leaving?

I SMELL SEX SCANDAL!

I only comment here sporadically, but just wanted to say how much I've appreciated your sane and thoughtful work. As someone who usually treats blog comment sections as full contact sport, reacting instinctively from the gut, it's nice to know that my instincts usually align with someone such as yourself.
Your good nature and decency shine through your writing, and although you might not be the most "glamorous" of bloggers, the blogging world needs intelligent policy wonks such as yourself. Any administration would be well served with you in it--let's hope the Obama campaign is reading!
Don't know how thrilled you are about it, but I'll see you at MJ (hey, you know you'll get trolls much worse than me!)

What -- Kevin leaving Political Animal?

Jeebus. Crikey.

What? No shout outs to tbrosz or al?

Thank you!

Political Animal was my first introduction to political blogs. I was soon one of your over-65 groupies! You introduced me to Steve Benen and I swiftly became one of his old-geezer groupies, so this is a change, but not one I can’t cope with!

I love cat-blogging and hope it will continue, but also enjoy the occasional glimpses of Marian’s extraordinary quilting skills.

Politics can get very dreary from time to time, so don’t hesitate to share lists of favorite books, Austin-area Bar-B-Q joints, etc.

You are a decent and thoughtful political writer.

Best wishes!

Kevin, you'll be missed. You've been a daily read here at the Animal/Monthly for me, and I'll have to check you out at Mother Jones. Not the sort of place I usually stick my head (I'm a classical liberal rather than a progressive), but if they're bringing you on board, they've got some smarts, as I already know you do in spades.
Congratulations on great blogging here, and on a great new opportunity there.

Smooth Sailing!

Thaks for all your posts Kevin. Will keep up with your posts over at Mother Jones.

Yours was one of the first political blogs I found. By and large, I've gotten bored/too busy to keep up with blogs, but I still read yours, Kevin. I followed across one move -- I still remember that orange-ish theme.

I'll be seeing you at the new site.

Best of luck. See you over there!

Forgive me if I'm not terribly sad - Kevin's still around! It's just a reshuffling. One major benefit: I doubt McCain has ads occasionally blanketing Mother Jones.

See you tomorrow, Kevin.

Kevin, I want you to be my Vice-President.

!!!!!

I'm floored. The only thing that could be better than Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly would be Kevin Drum with Hilzoy and Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. But alas, it's not to be.

You're joining some great folks over at Mother Jones. I'll be looking forward to reading you there. You're one of my absolute favorite daily reads.

Thanks for all the great insights over the years.

Thank you Kevin. You ability to entertain, inform, and teach, all in the same voice, is a true pleasure, and a credit to citizen democracy.

*

Thanks for four great years. The snobs in the MSM may like badmouthing the blogs, but this site has always served as a slam dunk refutation to their complaints. As a trained political scientist, I'll admit that Kevin's talents as calm reasoner and public intellectual have long made me jealous. I wish my own world of academia was so efficiently eloquent.

Drum, along with Marshall, Digby, and Publius (of Obsidian Wings), is the blogging gold standard. I like Benen and Hilzoy too--they'll be great replacements--but years from now scholars will look back on 2004-2008 as the golden age of Political Animal: the time when reason led the revolution. Luckily, the Bush regime has purged enough of my once proud centrism to allow me to surf over to Mother Jones without guilt. Good luck, Kevin.

Great job, Kevin! You're one of the best.

Good luck! And thanks!

Thanks Kevin! Glad to see awesome successors on this site, and glad to add another site for my reading pleasure. Especially happy that Inkblot and Domino are making the move with you. Cats rule!

Reading the posts of other WM writers, I realize I too must thank Mr. Drum and the internets for making me a better writer. Or at least a texting commenter, something I would not do without blogs, and Political Animal in particular. Thanks for providing the topics and new forum with which to express myself.

Best o' luck, Kevin.

You inspired me to take up blogging and I'll always consider myself one of your blog-children (even though I'm older than you :-)

I'll be reading Steve and Hilzoy here and you and Laura Rozen at MoJo. Same good reads, different urls that's all.

Warmest regards, Cernig @ Newshoggers

Thanks Kevin. You rock. At least when I can understand what the hell you're talking about.

Let me echo Cernig. I have been inspired by you, and I am acutely aware that any modest successes I have experienced as a blogger trace back directly to you and Washington Monthly and that first big link. I will be eternally grateful.

And besides that, you are one of about five people on the face of the earth whose driving doesn't scare the hell out of me!

It will seem weird reading you with different background noise. I tend to associate the voices on the screen with the look of the space behind the words.

Anyway, best of luck.

Wow, I remember when you left your earlier site (but I don't remember the name!) and came over to Washington Monthly. Why am I feeling anxious about this change? Four years ain't so long, although in internet years it's more like two decades.

I'll just follow you over to Mother Jones. See you tomorrow!

I just did a little experiment using Google Trends: a comparison of the Google popularity through time of the VP candidates: Word Face-Off blog. Biden came out on top, for what it's worth.

"No one could have imagined Kevin Drum leaving WM." - Condi Rice

good luck...

Noticed one great thing about Kevin's new home already: full text in RSS. Over the past month, as I began to use RSS pretty exclusively, my reading of this blog has dropped off. I'd still check the teaser text but would only occasionally click to see the full deal. Here's hoping that Political Animal starts providing full text in RSS (include ads if you must). I'd love to keep reading these pages.

Congratulations and good luck. Thinking about your history here, it's interesting: Josh Marshal led me to Kevin Drum back when he was CalPundit. Kevin led me to Washington Monthly and now I'm a subscriber (impatient subscriber, why doesn't the Monthly come every other week?). Kevin, you also led me to Publius, who led me to Obsidian Wings, where I got familiar with Hilzoy who is now going to help take up the reins here at the Monthly... Small world you high-profile political bloggers live in.

Anyhow, it's probably a good time to reflect on one of the things that has impressed me most about Kevin Drum and Washington Monthly... When they brought Kevin on board, they made the very brave decision to transform their homepage into a political blog, with Kevin front and center as their main blogger. Big gamble (the homepage-blog, that is, choosing Kevin was a pretty safe bet), but it seems like its paid off and I respect them all the more for it. Hey, Washington Monthly honchos, if you're wondering, that decision netted you at least one new subscriber, me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Kudos all of you, and if you'll excuse me, apparently I have to go bookmark *another* blog.

Kevin,

Good luck!

Discovered your blog about exactly four years ago and have been a loyal reader ever since. Great job. And Political Animal is the only blog where I read the comments - how I miss the days of Norman and tbroz (sp?)

As one of the folks that was reading Political Animal before Kevin associated himself with WM, I'm really curious why the name "Political Animal" is staying here at WM once kevin leaves.

Its not like the url here is "www.politicalanimal.com (that belongs to someone else).

So did Kevin sell "political animal" to WM, because WM wants to fool its readers into thinking that the blog associated with the current URL maintains the credibility that Kevin has developed over years and years of blogging?

Bye Kevin. To reiterate, you presided over one of the most articulate, well-informed, yet playfully clever and snarky herds of commenters (and trolls!) on the Internets. We also loved your cats (one way to tell if someone is evil is, they don't like cats or Cyndi Lauper! - well it's about 93% accurate.) Have a good time at the new digs and I plan to visit soon and from time to time. I will keep an eye out for "Al" and other infamous trolls, not just articulate regulars here like SecularAnimist, [Blue Girl, Red State], and PTate. (Heh, the way "Al" appeared so fortuitously often at the top, with such archetypally and paradigmatically worded conservative talking points, I once speculated if he was beyond human ~ "Is "Al" really an Al-ien?" To add to the mythos, some say he died and his "work" has been taken over by someone/s using his handle, perhaps even including some of us regulars looking for fun ;-) )
I also look forward to the MoJo regulars and new handles popping up thereat (uh, that may actually "be a word.")

explain why I'm feeling choked up

It is the feeling of loss that has many long time commenters choked up, including myself. Mr. Drum was a great informal group leader, but it was the people who populate comments who have created a sense of community that will no longer resemble what it was once was now that Mr. Drum has left Political Animal. Some commenters will follow Drum to MoJo and some will stay and some will not do either. A few might even change their posted by name. Familiar names and their appreciated opinion or snark can no longer be counted on to be found at their once familiar place.

Take good care, Political Animals.

"As one of the folks that was reading Political Animal before Kevin associated himself with WM, I'm really curious why the name "Political Animal" is staying here at WM once kevin leaves."

I'm also puzzled by that, as I thought Political Animal was a sly reference to Kevin's kitties.

It was CalPundit Leila...