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Archive for the 'Daily Kos' Category

Four Blogs, Two Candidates and One Year Later

Published by William Beutler on May 7, 2008 in Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, Daily Kos, Defections, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Instapundit, John Edwards, John McCain, Netroots, Online Fundraising, Primary fights, White House '08, White House '12 and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Balloon Juice, The Daily Dish, MyDD and Taylor Marsh

Three’s a trend, and this is Blog P.I.’s third post in a row leaning on juxtapositions; this time, the subject of two posts from late 2006 and early 2007 have converged in a way I certainly couldn’t have imagined at the time. Both were about bloggers’ attitudes toward the presidential campaign then still taking shape, and if one can make any definitive predictions in politics, it’s that you can never make definitive predictions about the future. And this is all the more true on the morning after the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.

  • In October ‘06 it was The Agony and the Apostasy, about the leftward drift of two well-known (onetime) conservative bloggers, Andrew Sullivan and John Cole. Sullivan claims to believe everything today that he believed in the early 2000s, but the day-to-day effect of his blogging is pretty much the opposite. Cole has gone from a Republican supporter of the Iraq war to a sarcastic critic of all things Republican.
  • Then in January 2007, Hillary in Blogistan: On Blogads, the Netroots and Peter Daou, a lengthy reported piece about the Internet advertising campaign directed by Daou, coinciding with the official launch of Clinton’s presidential bid. That post also explored Nevada blogger Taylor Marsh’s incensed reaction to being excluded from the original ad buy. This post also referred to MyDD as “one of the leading anti-Hillary sites on the left.”

So how much does a year change? Quite a bit. The 2006 post wondered about which way the two apostates would break in the 2008 race:

It seems plausible that Sullivan and Cole could support a Republican for president alongside their erstwhile compatriots, but probably not until after the primary is decided.

My answer, hedging as it was, does not seem to have stood the test of time.

  • In the year and a half since, Sullivan has moved his blog from Time to The Atlantic and, in concert with his recent criticism of the Republican Party and conservative movement overall, he has become one of the most prominent supporters of Barack Obama. So much so that The Atlantic published a December cover essay by Sullivan presumptuously titled “Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters.” On the Republican side, Sullivan had preferred McCain over the runners-up, in large part based on McCain’s opposition to the Bush administration’s torture/interrogation policies. Of course, Obama holds the same opinion. Sullivan was no doubt pleased with last night’s results in North Carolina and Indiana, but one cannot escape the sense that he’ll miss the Clintons.
  • Cole, meanwhile, has become an even more constant, if not more ardent, supporter of Obama’s candidacy. Like Sullivan a former 1990s conservative, he acquired no later appreciation for Hillary Clinton. And like Sullivan, he now sees her worse attributes similar to what he doesn’t like about the modern Republican party. He remains a member of the Pajamas Media advertising network which is run and largely populated by right-of-center blogs such as Instapundit and Protein Wisdom. But now he’s also been using the Democrat-oriented ActBlue website to raise money for Obama (and Obama alone) which probably makes him the only blog simultaneously affiliated with both Pajamas Media and ActBlue. As for the primary results, Cole was exultant, apparently staying up most of the night blogging the results.

Clearly, neither are rejoining the Republican camp anytime soon. More interesting, though, is what’s happened with Taylor Marsh and MyDD.

  • At the time, Marsh was leaning strongly toward Edwards and was unimpressed by Clinton. But regardless of her displeasure with the Clinton campaign’s ad buy, barely two months later she had changed her mind and made the case for Clinton. Even before then, her site had started to turn anti-Obama, especially after he dissed her home state by skipping an AFSCME-sponsored presidential forum in Carson City. Since then, she has been one of the most ardent pro-Clinton bloggers and one of the most committed Democratic opponents of Obama. And only just this morning, with the primary results clear, is Marsh shifting again: recognizing that Clinton cannot win, she will oppose John McCain without making the case for Obama.
  • Meantime, MyDD has undergone even bigger changes than the other three. In this case it wasn’t a change of mind, but a change of bloggers: in July of last year, the two principal authors, Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, decamped for an entirely new website: Open Left. Their new blog has now become a new leading anti-Hillary site, as MyDD once was. Meanwhile, MyDD has shifted back to reflecting the opinion of the site’s original founder, Jerome Armstrong. Armstrong stepped up his own blogging and brought in a new contributor, pro-Hillary Todd Beeton. Armstrong had previously been a consultant to Mark Warner, former governor of (and all-but-guaranteed future senator from) Virginia, but since he exited the presidential race more than a year ago, Armstrong has become an unflinching proponent of Hillary Clinton. So much so, in fact, that it has been the source of conflict between Armstrong and his former co-author Markos Moulitsas, to say nothing of the wider leftosphere. Today, Armstrong is sounding a little more apathetic than Marsh, merely affirming that the Clinton campaign has the right to continue on.

Taken as a whole, the four websites defy categorization, dissimilar in cause and effect, except in that their content has changed dramatically over time. And I am sure that whether McCain or Obama takes the oath of office next January, I don’t want to make any predictions about which candidates each site will be supporting in 2012.

What If They Held a Federal Election and No One Noticed?

Published by William Beutler on December 12, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, 527s, Congress, Daily Kos, Elections, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Local Politics, Midterms '06, Ohio Politics, Online Fundraising, RNC, RedState, Special Election, Virginia Politics, Washington Post and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Last night Republicans retained two House seats in special elections called to replace members who passed away earlier this year. This morning, Captain Ed led his recap with the observation:

Had the Republicans lost their two special election contests to replace deceased GOP House members, one would see the papers filled with analyses of the coming debacle for Republican hopes in 2008. Now that they have won both handily, expect most to either ignore the races altogether or chalk up the wins to local Republican strength.
Indeed, about the closer-watched Ohio election the Washington Post merely ran an AP story on A02; the Viriginia story ran on B05 in the Metro section. Neither buried, but neither featured. Had Weirauch had won, the anti-Republican mood of ‘06 would seem to be continuing. So it’s kind of funny where the Post chose to cut off the wire report:
But Democrats had high hopes about Weirauch’s chances against the younger Latta. This was her third run for the House, and last year, against Gillmor, she received the biggest share of the vote — 43 percent — of any Democrat in the district’s history.




I noticed the same dearth of barking from the blogs, too. Here’s everything the Memeorandum algorithm deemed significant this morning:

Memeorandum recap of December 2007 special elections

And the whole story was off the page by the beep of twelve.

Daily Kos featured just one recap of the special election, which seemed very bitter even after explaining how the NRCC had spent a big chunk of its cash on hand:

The Republicans are still trying to pretend that 2006 was an aberration. Yet they have to go all-out, it seems, to hold the ground they already have. Yes, I was hoping for a better performance in this district. Yes, I’m disappointed.

Meanwhile, the RNC’s Jason Richardson said nyah in a post for GOP.com and at RedState, focused not on the party committees, but on the extra-party support apparatus:

Weirauch had heavy support from the DCCC, Daily Kos, Act Blue, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, Harry Reid, and EMILY’s LIST. We were severely out-manned in Ohio and Virginia and this is what they have to show for it? We came to the game to win. All in all, the liberal blogosphere should take heed: You’re not as powerful as you think and it’s about results not PR.

To be sure, these were retentions and the Virginia election was never much of a contest. But the Ohio race between Republican Bob Latta and Democrat Robin Weirauch was a focal point of both parties in recent weeks, with both parties’ house committees pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the district. Online, Slatecard and Big Red Tent both spotlighted the race and sent out fundraising pleas; Slatecard raised $1,908 from 21 supporters. Meanwhile Weirauch apparently collected more than $93,000 from ActBlue, some $15,600 raised by the Daily Kos/Open Left-backed Blue Majority and $12,300 by Wesley Clark’s WesPAC.

One race was obviously a dud and the other would prove to be one, too. It’s hard to nationalize a special election, and there was no Paul Hackett. In fact, there was barely an Iraq debate — though the Democrat in the Viriginia race, Philip Forgit, was an Iraq veteran. So the leftroots raised more money, but the rightroots (if not Rightroots) ended up with the win. But neither the leftosphere nor rightosphere owns this win or loss. This race just wasn’t won or lost online. And if it was a status quo election, Republicans have to be pleased with that.

Update: I somehow managed to miss Eric Pfeiffer’s understated observation, posted just after the beep-beep of twelve-thirty:

Bloggers Respond With Restraint to Yesterday’s OH/VA Special Elections

At least.

Does Markos Moulitsas Need President Bush?

Published by William Beutler on December 9, 2007 in Atrios, Barack Obama, Daily Kos, Hillary Clinton, Instapundit, Internecine Battles, Karl Rove, Lamont v. Lieberman, MSM, Netroots, Newsweek, Rhetoric and William Beutler. 0 Comments

A couple weeks back, I covered first-week reaction to the twinned Newsweek columns by Markos Moulitsas and Karl Rove. The early returns showed that Newsweek.com readers were much more interested Rove than Kos. I ventured a few guesses why — among them Markos’ uninspired prose and unintriguing arguments — but as Roy Edroso pointed out in the comments, another reason is that Rove as a former White House adviser would simply be a more interesting read. Indeed, he led with a compelling anecdote, even as the rest of the piece was fairly unsurprising.

But even before Moulitsas’ column debuted, I think another blogger nailed the risks inherent in Markos’ accepting the assignment in the first place. That blogger was Kenton Kelly, mild-mannered Ohio accountant turned wild-mannered critic of Pajamas Media, better known as Dennis the Peasant. From his post on November 19:

I have difficulty believing Markos can pull off the very difficult task of reconciling the requirements of expressing himself as a movement partisan to two very different audiences: Netroots members and undecided voters. Each is going to have differing expectations as to what they will get out of those columns. Netroots are, I’ll wager, looking for what they’ve come to expect out of Markos; fire-breathing, uncompromising, take-no-prisoners advocacy of progressive policy positions. Understand that what I am not suggesting here is that his Netroots audience expects him to drop f-bombs and excoriate progressivism’s enemies by name as he does at DailyKOS. What they will be expecting, however, is that Markos not give an inch on issues because of any sort of tactical considerations. Expressing open contempt for triangulation and compromise on the issues is, after all, a large part of Markos’ modus operandi.

Walking that fine line between staying uncompromisingly true to Netroots’ core ideals and supporting whomever the Democrats nominate is going to be a difficult task. Unless the Republican candidate flames out immediately after receiving his party’s nomination, it is a certainty that at some point in the race the Democratic candidate is going to have to tack from left to center to gather enough votes to win. This is the precise point in time when things are going to get dangerous for a movement partisan. That’s because Markos has been quite explicit in his distain of the centrist strategies of the Democratic “establishment”. The much reviled Bob Shrum would be just the sort to swallow such a centrist shift as a matter of practical political necessity. How can Markos approve of such a shift when it comes (and it will) without drawing the ire of his supporters?

If Markos chooses to explicitly reject a centrist shift by the Democratic candidate in his Newsweek columns, how does he do so without alienating undecided (i.e., centrist) voters? At some point the decision is going to have to be made by members of the Netroots movement, and by Markos, as to whether there will ever be a time where ideological purity can coexist with the practical needs of daily politics. By this I simply mean that at some point - and I would argue that point is very close at hand - the Netroots movement will have recruited all they can recruit, and converted all they can convert, using the message and tactics they now employ. When the moment arrives where a decision between continued purity and continued growth, what will be Netroots’ response?

Now, I don’t really think Markos matters that much to undecided or moderate voters. Of the factors that will determine their ‘08 vote, Moulitsas’ pronouncements will be very far down the list, even as he’ll be in the relatively high-profile pages of Newsweek. But it will certainly be fascinating to see how individual lefty bloggers and their adherents, including the Kossacks, will react when the nominee inevitably stakes out positions problematic (even anathema) to the activist base. Brooking no compromise is a key identifying feature of the capital-N netroots; some will go along and others will protest. And Moulitsas, with his new perch, will bear the brunt of this scrutiny.

We’ve already seen a bit of this as Matt Stoller, Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher have put pressure on the so-called “Bush Dog Democrats” (i.e. Blue Dogs) — especially on Iraq — while other prominent bloggers have largely avoided the specific accusation. A year from now, this cleavage will be much more apparent.

The whole Dennis — er, Kelly — post is worth reading, and I won’t quote the whole thing here (à la the late Steve Gilliard) and so deprive him of what meager traffic Blog P.I. directs (we’re nothing if not not Glenn Reynolds), but I must address his penultimate paragraph. As he wrote,

the events of the last two years have brought into question widely held assumptions about how much political influence Netroots and Markos Moulitsas actually wield. His attempt to unseat Joe Lieberman ended in spectacular failure, with Lieberman waxing Ned Lamont by 10 percentage points in a three man race. And for all the proclamations of victory after the congressional elections of 2006, what has become very clear is that many of the newest congressional Democrats have absolutely no interest in backing a Netroots agenda. It is not hard to come to the conclusion, after watching Speakers Pelosi and Reid suffering repeated defeats trying to push an explicitly progressive agenda, that perhaps assumptions of Netroots’ influence have been, shall we say, unduly optimistic. This impression was reinforced when most of the Democratic presidential candidates chose to skip 2007’s YearlyKOS convention. [Note: He’s wrong about this, especially as the candidates avoided the DLC meeting entirely, but it doesn’t negate his overall point.] You could certainly draw the additional conclusion, after listening to the exasperation voiced by congressional Democrats from David Obey to Steny Hoyer, that many Democrats view Netroots as much an impediment as an ally in advancing Democratic policies. How a column in Newsweek helps Markos in convincing the political class of the Democratic Party that he can deliver the goods (and is worth the trouble he causes) is beyond me.

Although Markos is no longer slagged by conservatives as going electorally “oh-fer” (despite Lamont’s loss to Lieberman, Kos et al. did back a slate of winners in ‘06) it’s very much an open question as to whether netroots issues are succeeding among Democrats. It’s not so much an open question as to whether elected Democrats are implementing their policy vision (such as it is), hence the anti-”Bush Dog” activism.

Another outstanding question is how Moulitsas and his fellow “progressives” will keep the coalition together past — and even into — the 2008 race, regardless of the policies adopted by the eventual nominee (i.e. Clinton, who never had them, or Obama, who has not always impressed them but has seen a surge (so to speak) among Kossacks recently).

As someone who reads Daily Kos much more often than non-leftroots bloggers, I can attest that a not-insignificant number comprise those who are not necessarily traditional liberals, let alone leftists, but have joined the community based on their opposition to Bush and the Iraq war. The effort in/occupation of Iraq will obviously continue beyond Bush’s presidency, but even the war has receded as an issue — at least in the general population if not on Moulitsas’ website. No wonder, as Dennis/Kelly pointed out afterward, Moulitsas insisted in his first Newsweek column that the imperative for Democrats in 2008 is to make Bush the issue.

Without Bush to kick around anymore, Markos will have a much harder time keeping his constituency together.

Toward a RedState/Human Events YouTube Debate

Published by William Beutler on December 2, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, C-SPAN, CNN, Cable News, Daily Kos, Debates, Elections, Fred Thompson, Google, Hillary Clinton, MSM vs. Blogs, National Politics, New Media Strategies, Online Campaigns, RedState, Republicans, Technology, White House '08 and YouTube. 2 Comments

RedState and Human Events would do a better job than CNN and YouTube

On Thursday I gave a somewhat-impulsive thumbs-up to RedState’s call for CNN to sack their political director. National Review’s indispensible Jim Geraghty has outlined eight editorial oversights (four quite serious, four merely problematic) in CNN’s vetting of the televised questioners. One or two would be enough to generate a blogswarm, but eight looks like malicious negligence, and it subseqently became a full-fledged blogstorm. Worse, CNN’s statement didn’t even attempt to be a “non-apology apology” — they’re digging in their heels and claiming:

The issues raised during last night’s debate were legitimate and relevant no matter who was asking the questions. The vested interests who are challenging the credibility of the questioners are trying to distract voters from the substantive issues they care most about.

Did somebody say “fake but accurate”? As QandO’s McQ notes, the hubris implicit in that statement is galling:

Says who? Says CNN, that’s who. It is the network that chose the questions that would be aired. Consequently what aired had nothing to do with what voters found to be the substantive issues of the day, but instead had everything to do with — say it with me — what CNN decided were the substantive issues of the day.

I stand by my initial judgement — in fact, I am all the more sure of it — but I realize it isn’t going to happen. (FWIW, CNN’s political director is Sam Feist; one wonders if indie rock/iPod Nano darling Feist could do any worse). And the truth is it wouldn’t make up for the debacle, so I concede that a change is not imperative. What would be better is a pro-active solution — that is, another debate. And so I am very intrigued by a new proposal, this time issued jointly by RedState and Human Events (both subsidiaries of Eagle Pubishing), for a “do-over debate”:

We have a base of readers who represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party. You — and the Republican Party — deserve to face the questions posed by undecided Republicans, not Democratic activists. We will solicit and obtain YouTube videos from those people and vet each questioner to establish that they are — really — undecided Republicans. We hope to include soldiers in the field in Iraq, Young Republicans, and others who still have not decided among you.

Today, allow us to make you this offer: We will organize a debate at a time and date amenable to you all. We will work with a national broadcaster to broadcast the debate as well as offer it online. We, not the liberal drive by media, will ensure the questioners are who they say they are. And we will choose them based on criteria that will be fully disclosed to you all which ensure the questioners aren’t activists for any Democratic candidate.

I think this is a terrific idea. The MSM no longer has a monopoly on campaign coverage, so why should they have a monopoly over organizing candidate debates? The only good answer is because they control the airwaves. Could Fox News be persuaded to air it? Possibly. C-SPAN would certainly set up a camera, it could be simulcast on the web, and it would obviously be made available on YouTube. Heck, put it on the History Channel. I bet more people would watch it.

And if so desired, Google/YouTube (GooTube, if you will) need not formally be involved. Eagle’s online outlets could independently create a YouTube account, put RedState’s Erick Erickson and Human Events’ Jed Babbin in a short video soliciting questions, and anyone could post their videos as responses. Eagle could narrow them down, submit them to a hand-picked group of conservative bloggers to identify the best, and blog readers would be invited to vet the questions themselves. The ultimate decisions should still be made by the organizing consortium, but the crowdsourcing would be a substantial (if not bulletproof) way to head off complaints from conservatives. Necessarily, this would aso give the campaigns time to study the questions and prepare well-thought out answers — this too would be different from the “gotcha” element that annoyed so many in the CNN/YouTube debate.

Of course, the last point hints at the major reason why it wouldn’t happen. Here I’ll note: I cannot formally join the call for such a debate; as I point out whenever relevant, New Media Strategies consults for the Fred Thompson campaign, and I won’t put the campaign or my employer on the spot. Same goes for the other campaigns, though — the Iowa caucuses are now a month away and no campaign should be pressured to join a debate in a time frame this limited. The CNN/YouTube debate required months, not to mention a “Save the Debate” movement by Republican bloggers, to happen at all. So don’t hold your breath, and save your Facebook campaigns. But it’s a terrific idea.

To address another issue: A few commenters on the above-mentioned post here, including some friends of Blog P.I., apparently read my criticism of the debate as a complaint about tough questions. If I understand them correctly, they feared a not-yet-proposed alternative would result in “softball” questions. I replied that they were mistaken, and pointed to a prediction by Patterico following the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate in July:

The Democrat debate was dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?” And the Republican debate will be dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?”

That pretty much nailed it. The problem is not that the issues CNN is so pleased with itself for raising were illegitimate or unfair. They were not. It’s that those Dem-leaning questions asked by Dem-leaning YouTubers were general election questions, and the general election audience generally (as it were) was not watching. Certainly Republicans should keep an eye toward next November, but a debate for a Republican primary should focus on issues that matter to Republicans. Say what you will, but “don’t ask, don’t tell” just isn’t one of them, and it doesn’t help Republican voters make up their minds. It does no good when Google flies a publicly-identifiable Hillary Clinton supporter in to berate the candidates about their position on the issue. (One which, I would like to point out, is unlikely to be a major factor in the general, either.) In fact, it rises to the level of farce when Anderson Cooper asks said Hillary supporter to rule on whether or not the candidates answered his question and the guy says “no,” yet anyone who was paying attention knows they did answer his question honestly, but he just didn’t like their answers.

True, CNN did air questions about illegal immigration, gun rights and religion. But RedState/Human Events would query those subjects, too. They might even include a question about the Bible that doesn’t conform to slack-jawed yokel stereotypes (sorry, Joseph Dearing, whomever you are, but when you assert that your question tells us “everything we need to know” about the GOP hopefuls, that’s how you come across). Although various writers at RedState and Human Events have evinced support for various candidates (Erickson most notably in favor of Fred Thompson, I can’t help but note), I would argue they have a greater interest than CNN in a strong, fair debate that includes difficult questions for all the candidates, because (as Erickson and Babbin point out) it’s their audience who will be deciding which Republican goes on to the general election.

In short, RedState and Human Events would be better curators of a Republican debate than CNN.

Because I am confident that this do-over debate will not come to pass, I encourage both to organize similar debates for Senate and House candidates, whose primaries mostly will not be decided until further into next year. This would give them time to work out the kinks, gain experience appealing to local television channels for airtime, and give them credibility in proposing such a debate in 2012 (er, 2011, but you know what I mean). I call on Pajamas Media, NRO, Heritage or any other independent, webbish, GOP-leaning organization to do the same. Now that I think about it, I call on Josh Marshall’s TPM empire to do the same for Democrats.

You know what would be awesome next fall, sometime after the conventions and before the general election, Commission on Presidential Debates-permitting? A RedState/Daily Kos YouTube debate.

The Kos Bubble and Rove 2.0

Published by William Beutler on November 20, 2007 in Apple, Asymmetrical Media, Blogger Panels, Blogging Officials, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos, Digg, George Allen, Karl Rove, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Netroots, Newsweek, Tech Blogosphere, Technology, Television, Tom DeLay, Web 2.0, William Beutler and Yahoo!. 7 Comments

Whether or not Kossack heads actually exploded throughout the leftosphere this weekend, I cannot say. Reports will trickle in… or not. But Newsweek’s experiment of pairing the Great and Powerful Kos with the Great and Powerful Rove is off and running, and it’s not too soon to draw some preliminary conclusions. First, in terms of drawing blog hype, Newsweek could hardly done a better job of securing two more polarizing and potentially intriguing figures — for the left and right each, I’m having a hard time coming up with any two people in politics who inspire as much passion in their detractors outside of current and former presidents.

I’ll leave the reviews to others, but 24 hours after both stories hit the web, how are they doing in terms of measurable attention? Newsweek provides two metrics that we must assume are the most accurate, simply because they are based on internal numbers, even though Newsweek does not provide actual numbers. I understand why they don’t release them, but if the Digg-ification of the Internet continues apace, they will eventually. So which of the two was e-mailed more than the other?

Newsweek's Most E-mailed Stories

As we see, this was a clear win for Rove. As of about 10 p.m. on Monday night, Rove’s piece has been e-mailed more often — but we still don’t know by how much. Second, Newsweek’s list of the top 10 most viewed stories:

Newsweek's Most Viewed Stories

Even without precise figures, this one paints a clearer picture: Rove is at number one, and Kos is nowhere to be found. Short of a Chris Bowers Google bomb, Rove is the greatest and most powerful.

How can this be? Kos is arguably at the zenith of his fame, with appearances on The Colbert Report and Meet the Press earlier in the year, still reigning as one of the RNC’s favorite bogeymen. Rove on the other hand is out of the White House and for all anyone knows, out of national politics. It may say something about Time readers just not knowing who Kos is, but I’m operating under the assumption that the online version of Newsweek reaches what IPDI has termed the “Poli-fluentials.” To be sure, time will tell. One possibility is that Kos, with his eminently Internet-based platform, stands to do better over the long run. But I also ran the Newsweek column’s permalinks through Technorati to find out how many times each had been linked by another blog. It wasn’t close. At all:

Ouch. Then again, if you look at the top blogs linking to both articles (results above are sorted by authority) a clear majority hail from the left. Maybe the left still remains more interested in Rove than the right is in Kos.

Another possibilty is more subjective, but I’ll offer it anyway: Maybe Kos just isn’t that interesting a writer. Like more than a few in my line of work, I’ve been perusing Matt Bai’s “The Argument” lately, and Bai does little to conceal his skepticism of Moulitsas’ political knowledge. Now, I have read both articles, and I did find Rove’s much more interesting. But don’t take my word for it — the blogosphere seems to agree. I have also seen both speak in a public setting, and perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but the seasoned campaign veteran was certainly more compelling than his younger upstart opponent. And there was the time when Kos got a tryout with ideo-journalistic Washington, but didn’t quite make the cut.

An aside: Last week I went with my colleagues and associates Jon Henke, Leslie Bradshaw and Jesse Thomas to see Rove co-keynote Yahoo’s Citizen 2.0 midday bash with Max Cleland (!) at the Willard Intercontinental. They’ve already written about it in detail, but I can’t help noting that their study merely put a slightly different gloss on the IPDI report linked above, i.e. “Citizen 2.0″ has replaced “Poli-fluential.”

Just about Rove, however, I must say: His arguments and observations were as well-honed as any “Internet expert” I’ve seen address a political crowd. And Rove knew what he was talking about: He recalled early computer hard drives he owned, admitted to his membership in the Apple cult, delivered a paean to Moore’s Law, and mused about the long-term effects of TiVo and time-shifting. He spoke of the Allen/Webb race (though he didn’t use the word “Macaca”) and cited studies of the blogosphere like any contributor to TechPresident. That’s why I was a little surprised and disappointed to see Michael Bassik dismiss him as “Not Citzen 2.0″ when in fact the definition given by Yahoo! makes Rove almost the perfect example. I was less surprised to see Think Progress willfully misinterpret the goings-on, but Henke has that one covered. Say what you will about Karl Rove, but don’t say he’s not a geek.

On the other hand, he did mispronounce “Kos.”

P.S. This is as good a time as any to share this photo, taken with my iPhone, of Karl Rove taking a picture of me with his iPhone:

Karl Rove and his iPhone, taken with my iPhone

The man on the right is former Senator Cleland. Believe it or not, they got along like old chums. My guess, and it’s just a hunch, is that Cleland is better at hiding his thoughts and feelings than his boisterous persona suggests. The man on the left appears to be from an Aphex Twin video.

P.P.S. What if Rove turned to blogging? Tom DeLay’s occasionally updated blog is in relaunch limbo at the moment, which provides not the best precedent (despite my own pleasantly surprised initial reaction) but then DeLay was never known as a thinker, either, and left official Washington under considerably less triumphant circumstances. So I think Rove could do well, and I bet he would even write it. If he consented to participate in rightosphere activities like appearing on Heading Right Radio (warning: automatic audio), he could quickly become one of the most influential voices on the Internet. But even then, I’m not sure he’d be the most influential voice on the right.

P.P.P.S. Then again, we haven’t even begun to address the matter of which fledgling columnist Google thinks is the greater and more powerful.

Exactly Why I Don’t Give My Name

Published by Not Paul Begala on June 13, 2007 in Barack Obama, Blog Fights, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos and Online Campaigns. 1 Comment

Adam Bonin from Daily Kos has a nice little post up on what happens when your real name is associated with your own thoughts on the internet and you work for a presidential candidate:

There are lines one could plausibly draw between those who serve on a campaign’s staff exclusively and those outsiders who consult with that campaign and others simultaneously, or between speech and actions which are germane to one’s campaign responsibilities and those which are not. But if these lines do exist, they don’t seem to be obeyed these days — everything that anyone connected with a campaign (in any way) does, says or writes is being attributed back to the campaign, and campaigns will continue to be be called upon to disavow, and there may be calls for more people’s heads, etc.

This, my dear bloggers, is why you don’t see more of us pros blogging. We eventually get our bosses into trouble.

Mentioned in the article is Obama General Counsel Bob Bauer’s thoughts on pardoning Libby. I have to say, I was mad when I saw the title, but I like Bob’s logic. I’m all for laying this at Bush’s feet. You game?

Gotcha! The Strategy!

Published by William Beutler on June 1, 2007 in Cable News, Campaigns, Daily Kos, Earned Media, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Netroots, Online Campaigns, Oppo Research, Web video, White House '08 and YouTube. 1 Comment

Much as the rightosphere disdains Markos Moulitsas, conservative bloggers do pay attention to what he says. But if they leap on him when he’s in the wrong, they can also give him credit when he gets something right. If you know the scene, you’ve probably already seen this from dKos last week:

Videotape everything they do All it takes is one “Macaca” incident to transform a race or create one where one didn’t exist. … And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It’s about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events. … The more material we amass today, the better we’ll able to use that video to support our efforts next year.
Gotcha! The Sport! And LJN/Nintendo game cover!Little Green Footballs, among the few blogs from either side to warrant its own adversarial watchdog site, considered it perhaps better advice than he knew:
Excellent advice. To which I would add, don’t forget to take screenshots of everything the Kos Kidz do.
Dean Barnett — Hugh Hewitt’s right-hand man — was more complimentary and, in a trend that would be repeated, took it seriously enough to build on the idea:
First of all, to give credit where it’s due, this is an excellent idea. Because I’m not really the call-to-action type, I’ll leave it to some other enterprising right wing pundit to market a similar effort for conservative activists. We really should get busy on this because Democrats are at least as tongue-tied and prone to blunders as Republicans. Need I remind you, John Kerry is up for re-election in ’08. His race alone should keep a half-dozen Republican digital camcorders busy.
Matt Margolis from GOP Bloggers (and the late Blogs for Bush) found the strategy wanting, a distraction from the ideas that win campaigns:
I’m sorry. I just don’t agree. We should be above the sick game of gotcha politics. If there’s anything we should have learned from 1994 is that Americans respond to an agenda, and Republicans shouldn’t need to sink down to Kos’s level. I’d much rather see Republicans win on ideas than see Democrats lose because of some video showing an unflattering moment they’d sooner forget.

Perhaps noble, but in a follow-up post, Barnett took the realist position:

Politics ain’t beanbag; I would prefer our candidates and operatives knew as much.

And the good work of building on the idea continued. From the non-aligned John Stoddard:

Calling for an accumulation of “gotcha” moments is a strategy about nothing, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld. It’s not about persuading or inspiring voters. It merely reminds them that we are governed by two-faced narcissistic jerks. That’s why negative campaigning’s most notable effect is to suppress voter turnout. It doesn’t make voters say, ”Aha! Now I prefer X over Y.” It makes them say, “I was going to vote for Y, but now, ew.” Kos is right. If you turn off more Republicans than Democrats, you’ve improved your chances of winning. But no matter how much video you capture, you can’t depend on coming out ahead in the gotcha race. It only works if the other side lets its guard down and lets you off the hook when you make your own blunders. In the YouTube era, that’s basically an assumption that your opponents will commit professional suicide. Good luck with that.

More good advice from the Larry Sabato of GOP online consultants, David All:

The bottom line is that any serious campaign effort - from City Council to POTUS - should have a two camera strategy — one on the opponent and one on their own guy to help add context to a “macaca” moment and “flood the zone” to deflate organic YouTube search results.

And some unavoidable longer term questions from Bivings Group’s leading voice, Todd Zeigler:

So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments. It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.

Kos may not much impress ideo-journalistic Washington, but when he talks campaign strategy politico-journalistic Washington listens.

Turkey in the Straw Poll

Published by Not Paul Begala on April 17, 2007 in Daily Kos, Netroots, Online Campaigns, Online Polling and Straw Polls. 0 Comments

I really like it when the top bloggers do straw polls. It’s good water cooler conversation, they happen often so you can measure changes, and the MyDD polls have some cool rankings that allow voters to choose first and second preferences.

Straw polls can also be a good measure of organization and activist support — look at how Romney and McCain are constantly trying to outdo each other.

But what I don’t like is that the online straw polls on the progressive/netroots sites always come as a surprise.

I wonder if Kos announced that he was going to do a straw poll in a week, would any of the presidential candidates whip for it? Send out a blast to their lists? Might that also increase the number of participants?

Will Elizabeth Edwards Resign, Too?

Published by William Beutler on February 17, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blog Consultants, Blog Fights, Blogging Officials, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos, Democrats, Elizabeth Edwards, Hotline, Internecine Battles, John Edwards, Online Campaigns and White House '08. 41 Comments

Earlier this week, Blog P.I. posed a question: Who was responsible for hiring bloggers in Edwardsville? The logical answer was Matt Gross, Edwards’ chief Internet strategist, and considering the resignations of said controversial bloggers, we idly wondered if Gross would be tendering his resignation as well.

But as the headline above has already given away, we may have blogged too soon — after all, there is someone else at the campaign who is a longtime member of the blogosphere, and it is someone who wields much more power than Gross.

It’s Elizabeth Edwards.

We certainly don’t know for a fact that EE (as we’ll refer to her from here on) recommended Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan for the jobs of blogmaster and blog wrangler (respectively) but we can demonstrate that she would have been in a position to know about them and to make such recommendations. And if it ever did come out that EE was responsible for this mess, it would renew questions about how much control she has over John Edwards’ campaign — and whether it hurts more than it helps.

So let’s get demonstrating:

Going back to at least the 2004 campaign, EE has not just been a mere reader of the blogs but also a commenter at some of the biggest sites on the left.

In April 2005 she took to task several members of the Democratic Underground community for making fun of right-wing radio talker Laura Ingraham’s breast cancer — EE is a breast cancer survivor herself — earning thumbs up from Michelle Malkin and others in the rightosphere.

She may have only commented at Daily Kos eight times from 2004 to 2005, but she was nevertheless one of the earliest to sign up: going by the sequential user ID numbers, EE was the 3,454th person to register; the site now has well over 100,000 registered accounts (not the same as active users).

Now, how much involvement does she actually have with blogs? Last year she told Campus Progress:

I spend a lot of time on the internet. I get a lot of information from blogs, I have a whole list including Talking Points [Memo], Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and more. Sometimes I check out the right wing sites to see what they are talking about. I have a whole folder of sites and I open them all up every day and see what catches my eye. … Sometimes I would post on blogs not under my real name. … But I had to stop doing that after John started running. Now I sometimes participate under my own name. I participate in blogs and newsgroups – not just political ones but other issues too.

Make no mistake, EE knows a lot more about the blogosphere than the average consultant.

And we also know that while she holds no official position with the campaign, she has something of a reputation for usurping the paid consultants’ authority (or so goes the chatter). In December of last year, she appeared in the comments of Illinois-focused ArchPundit to defend herself against claims that she led the ouster of star consultant David Axelrod, who handled Edwards’ media in 2004 (but this time is advising Barack Obama). As ArchPundit’s Larry Handlin put it, during the previous campaign

her handling of consultants and staff was problematic because she tends to micromanage and many would say she cuts people out of the loop. That’s a management problem. It’s also what probably endears her to those who love her and so it’s a double edged sword.

If that’s the case here, then we owe an apology to Matt Gross. Obviously there is no smoking gun evidence that EE was the instigator of the blog hires, but she most certainly would have been in a position to advise (and even make decisions) on the matter. It’s also not unreasonable to think EE would be a more avid reader of pointedly feminist blogs than Gross (not to impugn his feminist credentials). At the very least, she didn’t step in and warn that Marcotte’s rhetoric might be a little too hot for her to serve in a communications role.

Without more information, we’ll file this one under “more than plausible.” But Blog P.I. is not the first to suggest that EE had more involvement here than has been reported. Take this bit from National Journal’s most recent Dem rankings — where Edwards is ranked number three, where he has been since Obama’s emergence:

The 24 hours that elapsed between the MSM’s Blogger-gate stories and Edwards’ nuanced response has become this cycle’s unexplained, awkward Jeanine Pirro gap. We’d blame this on consultants, except Edwards routinely brags he doesn’t listen to them. This one’s on him (or her?).

Commenters at Pandagon seem to think Elizabeth Edwards was behind the decision, too. And in a Feb. 8 diary at Daily Kos, New Hampshire-based MissLaura posted a recent (but pre-controversy) interview with EE on blogs, dKos and the campaign. As MissLaura suggested in that post:

Edwards returned several times to the question of how much control campaign staff would have over what she says publicly, focusing on her efforts to resist such control. However the behind-the-scenes debate over whether to fire or stand behind Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan played out days later, we have to assume that it was at least in part shaped by the presence of a powerful figure who understands blogs and who habitually works against excessive homogenizing.

Others, such as early Dean blogger Dan Conley, have predicted that her blog involvement could be a problem — although not quite like this:

There are two ways to view Mrs. Edwards’ posting on blogs. Some will wonder how wise it is for Edwards to enter this swamp. Every blogger has a sane/insane ratio for political posts … we come to accept it from our peers. But when an aspiring First Lady says something pointed, it’s not just typical Internet chatter, it’s potentially big news. Elizabeth Edwards is extremely smart and a terrific writer … but it’s an incredible high-wire act for someone so prominent to attempt.

Sure, it’s pretty neat that there’s a potential First Lady reading and writing on blogs (on her own, in her own words). It’s proof that whereas all the talk about the downfall of the MSM a couple years back proved false, the blogs certainly have delivered on some degree of democraticization of political media.

But let us observe, as if it even needs pointing out, this development has not always proved beneficial for politicians and political campaigns. No matter what, that’s been the case here. As my former colleague Marc Ambinder points out at Hotline On Call, the controversy

stepped on his health care rollout and has been the dominant theme of his campaign for a week.

Make that two weeks. The Edwards campaign did itself enough damage by waiting too long to decide what to do with their problematic bloggers, and the drawn-out hiring, firing, rehiring and resigning just made it worse. Not to mention, Marcotte’s blog-and-tell for Salon can only delay the Edwards camp from getting back on message. Alas, Edwards will not be on the Sunday shows this week.

Elizabeth Edwards may be the most powerful blog expert advising her husband’s campaign, but assuming this reasoning is on target, she also may not be expert enough.

Note: Additional links and analysis provided by Not Paul Begala.

Update: NPB adds a worthwhile clarification in the comments:

[Marcotte an McEwan] were not vetted and the communications staff was not prepared for the broadside against them. As a former communications guy myself, I can’t tell you how much incomplete information pisses us off. … It’s a legit question that Democrats should be asking of one of their own potential nominees: Why weren’t you ready for a hit job from the right?

Update, Wednesday: Thank you, everyone who commented. Thank you especially, everyone who commented on something other than “good people” and “hit job.” I have approved several comments that are redundant at best, and I will certainly approve others (even on this very post). However, please read through the comments before adding your own, and please only do so if it’s a unique thought. Bonus points if it’s actually about this post, and not the aforementioned comment.

Low Voter Turnout at Daily Kos?

Published by Not Paul Begala on February 7, 2007 in Daily Kos, Netroots and Online Polling. 5 Comments

MyDD on Daily Kos:

The ultimate community blog, with 120,000 registered users and nearly a dozen regular front-page writers. It produces over 500,000 new words of content every day, on virtually every topic in politics, and has attracted writing from virtually the entire Democratic leadership.

Yesterday’s dKos straw poll has me wondering: After 24 hours, why are there only about 25K votes overall? Wouldn’t you expect that number to be higher?

The percentage of registered voters who actually vote in national elections is somewhere around 60-70%. Granted, voting is only one of many activities occuring at dKos, but it still bears asking: why does a community of political activists with a half million visitors and 100K+ registered users not vote in higher numbers in these things? Anyone?

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