"Lieberman is going to be taken down, and the message is going to be, 'It's not just enough to call yourself a Democrat -- you've got to walk the walk,' " said conference attendee Diane Masters, an emergency room physician from Freemont, Mich.
Masters, 61, typified one surprising element of the convention: Although the blogosphere is widely assumed to be the province of the young, much of the audience was middle-aged or older.
Moulitsas says survey research shows that the average age of his readers is 45.
The weekend played against type in other ways. Daily Kos is often fierce in tone, bristling with condemnations of Bush, the mainstream press and centrist Democrats, such as the Democratic Leadership Council.
The conference demonstrated some of that fervor, with one person asking Boxer why Democrats had not talked more often about impeaching Bush, and audiences often hissing at the names of reporters considered too sympathetic to the administration, such as Bob Woodward of the Washington Post or Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times.
Yet the overall tone of the weekend was less strident, more relaxed and more selfdeprecating than that of the website -- or, indeed, of most political gatherings.
After hissing at the mention of favorite targets like Woodward or Miller, members of the audience often broke into laughter, as if aware of the way they themselves were fulfilling a stereotype.
