Anybody who watched the Virginia Senate race this year knows that Senator-elect Jim Webb ran a savvy Internet campaign. He hired bloggers, leveraged YouTube, played bloggers and the press off each other and off soon-to-be former Sen. George Allen.
But we may just now be learning how savvy his campaign really was: Last evening, conservative Virginia blogger Shaun Kenney posted this unsourced but possibly legitimate report:
If you are a Virginia blogger, chances are that the Webb campaign has an opposition research book on you. Bloggers that made the cut include Chad Dotson, Jim Hoeft, Ben Tribbett, Waldo Jaquith, Josh Chernila, Lowell Feld, Jim Riley, J.C. Wilmore, Jon Henke, and a host of others. These are not your typical background checks either… a significant amount of money was spent crafting the kind of opposition research one would typically find on a candidate running for public office. It seems as if the Webb campaign made a strategic decision to unleash this opposition research if something damaging came out against their candidate, simply to personally slander the blogger making the claim.
Slander might not be the right word here; assuming the dirt was true, “smear” would probably cover it just fine. Many of Kenney’s commenters wanted proof. None has surfaced as yet, but they did get the next best thing in an apparent confirmation from liberal Virginia blogger Ben Tribbett, who is Not Larry Sabato:
What I have been told by some reliable sources is that Shaun’s report is very close to reality. However, I am hearing that the list of bloggers researched is “smaller” than Shaun’s list, while the amount of information compiled on those bloggers chosen is “very large” … The staff involved can not keep their story straight. One person pointed out they had a report done on them, and we should feel complimented, and another denied any such thing existed. I’m hearing “yes” on J.C. Wilmore, Jon Henke, myself and Lowell Feld, and working on confirmation on others. If this list stays slanted to the Democrats, we can assume these reports were generated for potential retribution instead of proactive research.
That bloggers in opposing political camps are giving credence to the story is what makes it credible, and the Webb campaign targeting bloggers in opposing political camps is what makes it interesting. (There is another reason why this story is notable, and we’ll get to it shortly.) Of course, let me add that right now this story remains purely a rumor. Repeat: There is no actual evidence to support these claims, only the integrity of the bloggers involved. End disclaimer.
It might come as a minor revelation that political campaigns would look into the backgrounds of bloggers who oppose them, but as long as the oppo research stays on safe legal ground, there’s nothing particularly controversial here. But what of the supposed research into Webb’s allies — and employees? Feld heads up Virginia’s biggest liberal blog, Raising Kaine, and was employed by Webb as netroots coordinator. Why on Earth would he want to risk alienating his chief ally in the blogosphere?
Easy: To protect himself. Everybody who follows politics at least casually knows about oppo research, but the flip-side of that seamy-but-crucial campaign activity is what’s called self-research.
It shouldn’t be too surprising that the Webb campaign would do this, if they did this. Recent history gives us good reason to assume that politicians are wary of bloggers, certainly more so than traditional volunteers (who do not make a point of expressing their opinions in public).
Recall not just the blackface controversy in this year’s CT SEN race — after which Ned Lamont unconvincingly blurted to reporters: “I don’t know anything about the blogs” — but also the infamous “screw them” moment in 2004, where then-rising blog star Markos Moulitsas callously dismissed the deaths of American contractors in Iraq.
Some Virginia bloggers assume this research might have been used for character assassination, but what’s more likely is the Dem-side research was done to decide whether to hire Feld in the first place, and whether to associate with other bloggers. Do we really expect that a Senate campaign wouldn’t do this kind of due diligence?
There is certainly some political risk in doing so; bloggers often don’t like being part of “poltics as usual,” and that’s certainly what this is. If Webb really was cagey enough to research not just his opponent’s allied bloggers but his own as well, many think that would put him over the line from “shrewd” to “paranoid.” Indeed, it would be highly cynical of Webb to imagine that Feld might turn around and start attacking him before the race concluded. But it’s less cynical to think that someone not on his payroll — Tribbett, Jaquith, Wilmore — might do so. In politics, cynicism pays. And where it comes to the blogosphere, right now every campaign is making it up as they go along.
Wilmore, who writes The Richmond Democrat, does not think that this is necessarily Webb’s doing:
I don’t think this story is about Jim Webb. I think it’s about Jessica Vanden Berg, and it seems to me that this is really two stories.
The first story is that the Webb campaign did oppo research on Republican opposition bloggers. To me this only makes sense. Members of Allen’s “A-Team” and “B-Team” had certainly injected themselves into the political process and were fair game. For my part, I know for a fact that I was oppo’d by the Allen campaign. I have no complaints on that score …
The second story is where the controversial part of this incident lies. Did Jessica Vanden Berg authorize opposition research on prominent Democratic bloggers who were allied to (and in some cases employed by) the Webb campaign? Were research dossiers or “books” compiled on some of Webb’s key supporters? It’s an important question. It implies that we were considered threats to the Webb campaign, which is odd, because most of us were involved, to some degree or another, in getting the Webb campaign off the ground. …
No, it seems unlikely to me that we were perceived as a threat to Jim Webb. But were we a threat to Jessica Vanden Berg? Were we were oppo’d for that reason? Did Vanden Berg — feeling threatened by the dialogue occurring on our blogs — authorize oppo research on us to shore up her own position within the campaign?
He followed up, e-mailing Vanden Berg for confirmation or denial. And a denial he got:
We don’t have an opposition research on you. We don’t have any opposition research books on any people who blog.
And that’s what also makes this story interesting. This denial rules out more than just oppo on Jaquith, Wilmore, Feld, Tribbett and other Webb supporters, but Allen’s A-Team members including Dotson, Riley and others. The Webb camp didn’t do any research on anyone who blogged the campaign? Not even on Henke — a paid adviser to the Allen campaign?
This answer is either untenable or too revealing. Maybe they weren’t so savvy after all — perhaps we’re only finding out that they were lucky.
In any case, this one started in the blogosphere, but if these questions are to be resolved, the MSM just might have to step in.
P.S. Henke has published his own oppo file, to the best that he can recall:
When I was about 5 years old, I stole a quarter from a girl named Jennifer Weidler. It was a Bicentennial quarter, which I thought it was very cool-looking. I’ve always regretted that.
P.P.S. It’s also worth noting that Tribbett is no fan of Vanden Berg’s, though it may be immaterial to the facts in this case.
P.P.P.S. Also worth noting, a contributor to Raising Kaine, not Feld, added today:
My sources at the campaign are saying this simply isn’t true.
He probably means transition team, as the campaign has concluded. That said, it would be nice to know how many sources each blogger is citing, and which of them actually worked with Vanden Berg.
The Blogosphere is the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel
Call me crazy, but the blog launched today under Tom DeLay’s name — he said tonight on Hardball that he’s not actually writing it (”I’m not a very good writer”) — is not half-bad. I’m not saying that it’s great, or that it will even be accepted by the rightosphere at large (DeLay has many detractors on the right), but that whomever set it up clearly knows what they’re doing.
But then, one could argue that Tom DeLay is no longer a politician, just another conservative activist, so perhaps he’ll be willing to take on opponents in a manner sitting officials never are. To wit, the latest post at the time of this writing bashes Jimmy Carter for his “apartheid” book, and another post applauds Michelle Malkin for slamming Kofi Annan — just like a regular old conservative blogger.
His blogroll rings true, including just about every standard big-name blog of the rightosphere save Instapundit, and even includes Mickey Kaus (incorrectly listed as “Kaus Files”), the favorite liberal of many a conservative blogger.
Blogger “carnivals” — edited round-ups of self-submitted entries — are a mainstay of the blogosphere, and DeLay is promising a “Carnival of Conservatives” every other Friday. We’ll see exactly what that means, but it certainly sounds like a commitment to being an active participant in the political blogosphere.
What’s more, the content management system appears to be either WordPress or Movable Type, and even if not, it sure looks like a site powered by one of those traditional blogging platforms. It even claims to be protected under Larry Lessig’s Creative Commons license — which is somewhat amusing; DeLay does not strike me as a typical adherent of copyleft provisions.
Best of all, liberals are allowed to comment, at least so far. Holden of First Draft, the the owner of many ponies, has the third comment in this thread. Comments by new users are moderated, and Holden was critical but polite. One assumes that profanity is a red flag [Update: Yep] — an issue liberal and conservative bloggers do not see eye-to-eye on — but if DeLay’s team continues to let dissonant views through, the site will be the better for it.
What’s more, Holden is listed as unregistered, and as yet one need not even provide an e-mail address before commenting — something many traditional blogs do not allow.
Not that the site is entirely praiseworthy. It’s not such a big issue that he’s not actually writing his posts — few politicians do — but this disclosure does not appear on the site, though some posts do go up under his name. Even a shared byline would be nice, to give some idea of who is responsible for word choice.
For example, one contributor goes by the moniker NJ Conservative. No indication whether that person is the same as this NJ Conservative. Another is billed as NH Conservative, so the odds are these are merely anonymous contributors named for their state of residence. Will nobody post under their own names?
Meanwhile, if you want to sign up for his new political action committee, GAIN (Grassroots, Action, and Information Network), you’ll have to download a MS Word DOC, provide references, pay $52 “at the time of acceptance” and e-mail it back or upload it to the site. That’s not as bad mailing it back, but it is cumbersome. And if you’re posting this to the Internet in the first place, why require references?
Additionally, Jackie Kucinich of The Hill (and yes, daughter of you-know-who) reports that GAIN is supposed to be like a conservative MoveOn.org. I’m not sure if the analogy is hers alone — the organization’s about page doesn’t make that comparison, not that you’d expect it to — but I do know that MoveOn.org doesn’t require a membership fee upfront.
These parallel institutions, activist group and community blog, currently operate under two separate ethoses, and chances are one will eventually prevail. Time will tell which one supersedes the other. DeLay being a hardened Washington power player, I’ll predict that the blog’s best days are right this moment — one vitriolic blogswarm and the comment section could become as closed as DeLay’s former political operation.
But he is also the consummate politician, willing to go on Hardball on the day he resigned, and if he can keep smiling through the blog fights that surely lay ahead, he just may have something here.
Update: Ahem. Well, it seems that the original first post has been deleted from the website, or at the very least altered. A scandal? John Amato at Crooks and Liars seems to lean in that direction. The original DeLay post was saved and has been reposted here, with the first 111 comments available here.
It doesn’t appear that DeLay wrote anything compromising in the first post, but when you read those comments, you can see why it might have come down. Warning — “language” follows:
And:
Plus:
Also:
An unregistered user claiming to be DeLay writes:
A lone voice protests:
Okay. Again, call me crazy, but it sounds like the problem here was that they didn’t have their comment moderation system ready to go at launch. That’s a blunder, to be sure, but this is not a case of DeLay’s team removing an embarrassing or erroneous post of their own (although I am confused as to why the original text of that post was removed). Lefty bloggers say civility is overrated, and while there are circumstances where they have a point, this is not one of them.
Amato implies that Democratic voices are censored from the site, but as I’ve demonstrated above, that isn’t true. But it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.