Kevin Drum, 1958-2025
One of the OG political bloggers is gone.
Kevin’s wife, Marian, posted this at 8:52 Pacific Time:
With a heavy heart, I have to tell you that after a long battle with cancer my husband Kevin Drum passed away on Friday, March 7, 2025.
No public memorial services are planned.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to the charity or political cause of your choice.
A Facebook page, ‘In Memory of Kevin Drum’, has been created as a place for friends and family to share memories of Kevin. I encourage you to post your thoughts and memories there.
Thank you to all the wonderful blog readers who supported, encouraged and challenged him through the years.
He will be greatly missed.
He will, indeed.
I haven’t been reading him or other bloggers a lot the last few weeks, as I’ve tried to keep up with the avalanche of news and personal fallout of the new administration’s attack on the civil service and upheaval of longstanding foreign policy traditions and just stumbled on this by accident as I was catching up.
Kevin had been running the Calpundit site on the old Blogspot service for just a few months when I started OTB in January 2003, but a few months was an eternity in blog time in those days. I followed him almost from the beginning as I built my blogroll and we had many excellent back-and-forths over the years.
Given that he was on the West Coast and I on the East, we only met once, at a New Years Eve party hosted by one of the “Juice Box Mafia” gang, likely Matt Yglesias or Julian Sanchez, almost twenty years ago. He always struck me as a decent, thoughtful guy.
He’d been battling multiple myeloma since 2014, with many ups and downs over the years, so his passing isn’t a complete shock. Still, a loss to the blogosphere. My deepest condolences to Marian and all who knew, loved, and read him.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall has a thoughtful tribute. The nut ‘graph:
I think more than anything I admired Kevin’s restraint and his caution. Blogging is a hustle and the incentives for hyperbole and breathlessness are endless. That makes most people easy to ignore. But Kevin – who had a whole career in the normal person rat race before he started this – sweated the details. He had a serious mind for facts and numbers and he knew how to work with data. His posts were always overflowing with numbers and charts and levels of detail and nitty gritty I couldn’t pile into my brain because I was too scattered and unfocused. When he said something you had to take it seriously. When he disagreed with you you knew it was time to re-check your work. Kevin was almost all signal and very little noise. That was his defining mark.
That’s high tribute, indeed.
UPDATE: And another from his former Washington Monthly colleague, Paul Glastris:
From its earliest days, the political blogosphere was diverse. Ideological bloggers were attacking each other in the high plane of ideas, hack bloggers pouring over polling data and election news trying to find and formulate winning messages, and academics—mostly economists but also political and social scientists—adding their wonky knowledge and expertise to the national discussion. Kevin didn’t quite fit into any of these categories. Yet he was fluent enough in all of them that he could comment on just about anything anyone else was writing that caught his attention in ways that would catch other people’s attention. With his wide range of interests, Kevin helped turn the blogosphere’s often-disparate discussions into a larger, more integrated, and engaging conversation. And he did this without a hint of pretense or pedantry.
[…]
Kevin identified as center-left but called himself a moderate—a word that described his politics and disposition. Much blogging back then—like social media commentary today—was driven by the writers’ emotions, suffused with hyperbole, and aimed to rile readers up. Kevin was almost exactly the opposite. Curiosity rather than outrage fueled his writing. Judiciousness and skepticism rather than self-assured know-it-all-ness characterized his prose. He had virtually no patience with the Bush administration and its combination of hubris and incompetence. But neither was he much interested in internecine battles to pull the Democrats ideologically one way or another. He understood the importance of the horse race aspects of politics, but he really cared about the nature of the underlying issues—war, inequality, crime, climate change—and sleuthing out the proper policy responses. His politics followed his policy views rather than the other way around.
A rare quality—and rarer still among those able to draw an audience to a political blog.
Kevin was the very first Blog I started reading regularly and inspired my short-lived hand at it. He was always level headed, thoughtful, and interesting. It sort of got to the point where I thought I knew him. I guess that’s how things go.
Reset in Peace Kevin Drum
From a cat guy.
RIP
Calpundit was one the first blogs I ever read.
My condolences to his family. He will be greatly missed.
I think he represented the left of center ideal that many of us hoped for when blogging started. He had a definite POV but supported it with data and evidence. Plus, he was willing to criticize his own side when he thought they were wrong. Since I am a numbers guy I will really miss him for that alone.
Steve
Too young, too soon.
Definitely one of the first blogs I started reading, along with Atrios, Roy Edroso, Yglesias, Obsidian Wings, Unfogged, and a few others. I remember the blog having a pretty good comments section. He always seemed like a patient and kind man to me. RIP.
I’ve been reading him until the end. His recent posts on his health were quite concerning, so I’m not shocked at this news but am sad for his friends and family. Gone way too soon.
He usually had an interesting perspective and was really good with data and charts. He always struck me as a decent guy.
Fuck Cancer.
I’d not kept up with him since about 2010 or so, but used to read quite often in the noughts.
Always struck me as both insightful, and a decent human being.
A sad loss to the world.
My condolences to those who loved him.
“May his memory be blessing”
Kevin helped me make it through the Bush 2 years. I was always impressed by his moderation when the trend was for extremism being the way to get views. Going to miss him.
Great pic. He will indeed be missed.
Very sad – but not surprised – to read this. He will be missed. 🙁
Everyday is cat Friday.
He was always smart and quite logical. I discovered him during Dubya’s term.
I had been reading KD since the beginning of his Mother Jones days (maybe a bit before that), and it feels so weird that he is no longer with us. I have to resist the urge to head over to his site to see if he has posted.
However, I had braced myself for the news from his wife that he had passed due to his last few health updates.
He has been in my thoughts and prayers for quite some time and shall remain so for the foreseeable future. RIP Kevin Drum, you have earned the right to experience some peace from your suffering.
He was a shameless bad faith Democrat hack.
@Paul L.:
I’m sorry Mommy didn’t hug you.
@Paul L.: “He was a shameless bad faith Democrat hack.”
When you’ve also called someone a “shameless bad faith Republican hack” right after they’ve died, maybe we’ll take you seriously. Oh wait, you’re not looking up a list of terminally ill Log Cabin Republicans, RINOs, Never Trumpers, or McCain/Romney supporters now, are you?
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone called you that online after you’ve passed away. You know, the whole “do unto others . . . ” bit (i.e., the Golden Rule). 🙁
He’s been more and more sporadic over the last several weeks. Poor guy. May his memory be a blessing.
I loved his graphs and his down to earth approach. He was so low key that when he got worried you knew it was really bad.
@Paul L.:
And you’re a d*ck. He was more careful and thoughtful than a good chunk of the blogosphere.