What I can offer are details about the Convention Hub microsites. There will be two, one for each convention, with video and blog coverage around the clock:

• C-SPAN will provide exclusive video from the conventions, and for the first time, this C-SPAN video is searchable, clippable and embeddable. As someone who has tried (unsuccessfully) to jerry-rig an embeddable C-SPAN video in the past, this is a huge leap forward.
• NMS will feed the latest convention reporting and blogging to the Convention Hub pretty much non-stop. Or as our official language puts it, “extensive real-time blogosphere coverage using NMS’s proprietary combination of software and trained human analysts.”
• More about that software another time; all I can say is that it answers the questions I’ve asked about such analysis tools.
• The Hub will also include Twitter feeds of users using the hashtags #RNC08 and #DNC08 (and surely other tags, as their usage rises).
• The site goes live at c-span.org/politics later this month. The Democratic Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/DNC08 and the Republican Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/RNC08.
• NMS will have a presence at each convention to help to facilitate coverage and promote the Convention Hub. It certainly doesn’t hurt that we have bloggers credentialed to both (see you in St. Paul).
• There is more, but I’m not exactly sure what I didn’t see in the press release that’s public, so I’d better hold off for now. At the moment, this is the only public hint on c-span.org:

Meanwhile, the C-SPAN Convention Hub is already drawing praise from one of C-SPAN’s (few) notable critics. The Sunlight Foundation has differed with C-SPAN before over distribution of copyrighted C-SPAN video, so they are enthusiastic about the open nature of the Convention Hubs:

The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.

As a longtime C-SPAN junkie, I couldn’t be more proud to play a small part in this project. How dependent am I on the C-SPAN network?

• I wake up to Washington Journal every weekday morning (my Twitter account will bear this out).
• Before I found podcasts, I’d listen to streaming Realplayer segments from the program (I still listen to the podcast of Brian Lamb’s Sunday night Q&A).
• Back in college I would sometimes wake up early (4 a.m.) to catch particular episodes live, such as the first of the Hitchens-Sullivan conversations with Lamb, shortly after 9/11.
• If it’s the weekend and my television is not on baseball or football, it’s on BookTV.
• The tagline of my personal blog, The Washington Canard, is: “Where C-SPAN is the local TV news.”

The good news is that it’s a supportable addiction.

And by way of conclusion, a confession: I want this searchable video for my own reasons. On Election night 2004, The Hotline worked all through the night covering the coverage, as the election tipped from Kerry winning the exit polls to Bush winning the popular vote. If you’ve seen my Facebook photo, this is where that crazy image comes from.

As usual, C-SPAN cameras were in the office for Chuck Todd and Vaughn Ververs to offer recaps, also deep into the morning hours. Sometime around 3 o’clock in the morning, I informed friends watching the coverage from back on the West Coast to look carefully: As the cameras rolled, I picked up a plastic trash bin and… well, I danced through the background.

The waltz, I think.

I entered left with vulcanized dance partner, twirling across one shoulder, behind the talking head, past the other shoulder, exiting right. To this date, it’s still my best television appearance. And I look forward to the day, much sooner now, that I can embed this on Blog P.I.

Whoops! But wait, have you checked the front page of the RNC’s website, GOP.com, today?

To be fair, a website is not a high profile media event. On the other hand, it is the party’s official site, and the rightosphere certainly notices the DNC’s page, Democrats.org, when they make mistakes.

The Clinton team’s error strikes me as a full-fledged spelling error — “tomorrow” is frequently included in lists of commonly misspelled words. The RNC’s error appears to be a case of typing too fast — look at your keyboard: the letters G, H and T are pretty much all in the same place.

I don’t know what it all means, but I do know I checked this post for typos before publishing.

In just the past month, a few very large states have started talking about moving their presidential primaries to the first week in February. Those states include Illinois, Florida, New Jersey and the fifth-largest economy in the world, California. This shouldn’t be a surprise: the parties want a bigger say in presidential nominations, and the rest of each state wants a bigger slice of that billion-dollar pie. What’s more, Illinois would like to give favorite son Barack Obama a major boost — and they can’t do it if their primary still comes after Super Tuesday. According to The Green Papers, at least nine other states have taken steps to move their primaries up.

Primary front-loading is a perennial good-government gripe about the nomination process. Coincidentally or not, it continues unabated. And it’s not just the primaries — the presidential debates are starting even earlier this year. The rules are different on the Republican side, but over time, Republicans have generally adopted changes first proposed by the (more process-oriented) Democrats.

This time around the Democratic National Committee, under superlative-magnet chairman Howard Dean, deliberately enabled some noteworthy front-loading: Nevada’s caucus and South Carolina’s primary were both moved up to late January so union members and African-Americans would have a say in the process, whereas they would not in right-to-work Iowa and 97% white New Hampshire. Everybody else can go starting Feb. 5.

Remember that when Howard Dean ascended to party chair in early 2005, the Washington establishment balked. Dean’s support among liberal bloggers might have been a foregone conclusion, but one idea they shared with Dean — a plan to rebuild the party’s national reach by contesting races and spending money all around the country, even in districts previously abandoned to the GOP — helped him win over the state-based committee members who put him over the top.

Needless to say, this has been controversial inside the Beltway, especially after Dean’s slow fundraising start. The party has enjoyed fundraising success under Dean since then, but he’s given so much of it to state parties that the old complaints gave way to new ones.

Of course, the state parties love the arrangement. State party executive directors — they control state party budgets, not the unpaid, figurehead party chairs — queued up to accept their party-building money. For Dean, it was probably a smart move — it may have pre-empted James Carville’s would-be coup before it got very far.

But Dean’s indulgence of the state parties cuts both ways: Yes, he has their support when negotiating with the Beltway establishment. But the nomination process isn’t about that — it’s every state for themselves. And the state executive directors also know Dean won’t be in charge of the party forever: once a nominee is chosen, he or she becomes the de facto leader of the party, and who knows what happens after that. Are the states pressing their advantage now because they know Dean won’t say no to them?

I bet this wouldn’t be happening under Terry McAuliffe. To be sure, McAuliffe was complicit in front-loading the process himself — his big idea was to front-load things just enough to produce a nominee early to take on Bush. In practice, the John Kerry electability meme took hold around the same time and was decisive. (What meme will be temporarily entrenched a year from yesterday?) But his base of power was firmly inside the Beltway — the Clintons and their donors — and not in the states.

The DNC chair can invalidate a state’s primary, or withhold funds, or threaten to do these things. Certainly in public, Dean has said nothing of the sort, even though New Hampshire secretary of state William Gardner is ready to hopscotch Nevada and Florida is openly talking about moving its primary to Jan. 29 — a week ahead of the agreed-upon window.

When it comes to the nomination schedule, how far can the state parties go? What, if anything, can Dean do about it?

Let’s imagine that the big four states move their primaries up to the first Tuesday in February. (If not 2008, then 2012.) Along with the states already camped out here, that day will be worth more than 1,000 delegates (1,098 using 2004 figures). That’s almost exactly what Super Tuesday (March 2) was worth in 2004. If this happened, there wouldn’t be much of a Super Tuesday left, and the whole thing could be settled two weeks after the Iowa caucuses — where’s the fun in that?

So what do we call this… Mega Tuesday? There’s already been one of those. Uber Tuesday? Perhaps a little too Teutonic. Colossal Tuesday? You can never really count on naming these things, but for now I’m calling it Ginormous Tuesday.

The Daily Kos diary “Begala: Dean ‘an a**hole from Vermont’,” which appeared yesterday, is a great example of one thing I’ve reflected on several times while reading the litany of blogosphere postmortems (especially the ones about races I was involved in): the deep divide between bloggers and mainstream professionals — let’s call them, us, the MSP.

To suggest the 50-state strategy is a big reason that the field expanded, as dKos contributor ScottforAmerica does in this post, is utter delusion. However, to suggest it had nothing to do with wins across the country, as he says Paul Begala did, is also dead wrong.

But as an MSP myself I am always going to be more sympathetic to the man whose name I have borrowed than, say, ScottforAmerica. Why?

Because Paul had to make his living doing this, as do I. For all I know, Scott is seeing his 3rd election cycle — maybe. Scott likely has never worked as a professional consultant, likely never had the benefit of seeing 10-20 races a cycle and learning the lessons that come with them. He’s probably never worked on a presidential campaign and maybe never even walked door-to-door as a regular volunteer or a ground level employee.

Maybe he has. I don’t know him. And not to single out Scott per se — this lack of serious political experience is true of most bloggers.

That said, Scott is bringing some nerve/backbone, new blood and determination to these contests. That fresh outsider-looking-in perspective is something I have absolutely loved in the past 4 years, something people like my quasi-namesake cautioned against.

I understand why Dems said “me too” with Bush and the GOP in 2002 and I think it was solid advice based on the strategies and polls we had at the time. But being wrong because the game changed on you doesn’t preclude you from being wrong. We got whooped in 2002. Scott also has his ideas about what works (e.g. 50-state strategy) that I don’t think are correct, but I don’t have data yet to absolutely dissuade him.

So, what does this mean? From my MSP perspective, I get pissed at the smug, know-it-all, cavalier attitude of bloggers like Scott because I feel like this post attacks me just as much as Paul Begala. The ending is really what gets me:

A new Democratic Party took a giant step forward today, a Democratic Party proud of it’s values and it’s principles, and one that won’t be afraid to stand up for our beliefs…anywhere. Unfortunately for Begala and Carville, they aren’t part of it.

You think Paul Begala and James Carville are not proud of the Democratic Party’s values and principles? That they are afraid to stand up for themselves? You think they argue against “50 state” because they just hate Dean and that they are scared of devolving power outside of the professional structures? Do you really think they never wanted to win, have completely sold out to corporations and are just fine with leaving a party in charge that is sending kids to die in the sand?

And right here is where I get offended. You, Scott the Blogger, perceive this struggle as a battle between the elite and the masses. This obviously puts me on the elite side, so I consider your swipe directed at me too. I’m pretty sure you hate me for no other reason than my being one of these elites. You blame me for losing to Bush in 2000 and 2004 and you will find every excuse to not look at historic things, like say, 9/11, to explain how R’s won in ‘02 and ‘04. You don’t think Iraq played as much of a role in ‘06 as the 50 state strategy. Heck, I’ll bet that if you ran for congress and I gave you my resume, you’d throw it away because it doesn’t have a list of the diaries I’d written or “netroots”-backed candidates I’ve worked for in the past.

And that is what bugs me: you hate me for being a professional, for making money doing this and, most of all, for not sharing your “damn them all to hell” and “if DC said it, it must be wrong” attitude. You claim to speak for the masses when you say these things but I’m pretty sure that you don’t know who the masses really are (here’s a hint: they don’t blog regularly).

So, in the upcoming power struggle for the leadership of this party (and it’s coming) we will have to see who’s really better at this game, Bloggers or the MSP. It’s the pros vs. the amateurs, the top-down vs. the bottom-up, the big guy vs. the little guys.

It’ll be interesting to watch and even more fun to play. Better bring your A-game, Scott. I’m pretty good at this.

As the election approaches next week, I thought it would be interesting enough to share their electronic exchanges here. They’ve promised to let me do so as long as I protect their anonymity, and that strikes me as a fair deal. (Just for the record, neither is Not Paul Begala.)

One is a veteran Democratic operative. The other worked for Howard Dean in Vermont. For the purposes of this post, we’ll call them Democratic Beltway Insider and Former Dean Staffer. Will only one survive? Will one trick the other into eating their own liver? Or tie the other’s tongue to a launching spaceship? Read on:

DBI: I know this sounds dumb, but what exactly is the bloggers’ problem with Rahm. He is one of the ONLY democrats who knows how to WIN. Is it because he knocked candidates who had no shot out in the primaries? Puleeze. I think we should have a 3rd party for all these people. The 50 state strategy is a Dean PR sham anyway. In [state redacted], [name redacted] used her 50 state $$ to hire a driver.

FDS: Yes the 50 state strategy is a sham. That’s why suddenly the Dems are competitive in states that 2 years ago all the insiders were saying the Dems should just forget about forever. Admit it, you’re a beltway insider.

DBI: Those races are not in play because Dean gave each state party some allowance money. Those races are in play because organizations like the DLCC, Emilys List and even Move On have been working with state and local candidates for cycles and recruiting. A lot of these races were set up to be competitive totally independent of anything the DNC has done. I may be an insider, but I’ve been around longer than the new DNC people and I remember stuff. Not to mention that Dems haven’t done shit to be competitive other than let the GOP hang themselves – the biggest and best reason that we have races in play that weren’t in 04. Case in point NC08.

FDS: Ok well if those races are competitive because Democratic groups like DLCC and Emily’s List get involved with them, that basically proves the 50-state strategy correct, that by competing everywhere you expand the playing field and give yourself more chances to win. Thank you for proving my point.

DBI: Not really. The DLCC and Emilys List have regional programs they’ve been running for a number of cycles. The DNC is spinning that handing chump change over to state parties is going to revive them – guess again. The reason EL’s plan works is because its not affiliated with the DNC or state parties at all. Talk about insiders and hacks. State operatives are often just small-time crooks.

FDS: Well clearly there is no way I convince you as long as you are have are massively in love with Emily’s list. I simply point to the results:

Pre-Dean: Democrats are a bunch of pansies who refuse to challenge Bush on anything, especially the war in Iraq

Post-Dean: Democrats revitalize their party by trashing Bush, particularly on the war in Iraq, and make the country realize how awful he is, giving Democrats a chance to win in places like Wyoming and Idaho where no one thought they should ever even compete again.

Last I checked Emily’s List has been around for quite a while, I’m not really sure what they did differently in the last three years that totally reversed the political tide in this country. Thank you Howard Dean.

DBI: You are so easy manipulated and that is the point. Dean is taking credit for turning the tide, for fixing these state parties. But what has HE done that you can honestly attribute to HIM and the DNC. I’ll tell you: spin.

You also just changed the point you were trying to make. Are we talking about the 50 state strategy per Dean or about whether Dean is more responsible than Emilys List for the electoral situation Dems find themselves in now?

One point about Emilys List: they made Rahm work for his seat. They poured money and bodies into Nancy Kazack’s primary to beat him, but he still pulled it out. He busted ass and it was impressive. You of all people should respect Emilys List because they began as an outsider group – opposed to the workings of the party. The DCCC was primarying women with men, so Emilys List was started as an alternative to the DCCC so women could run and not be undercut.

Here’s the point, groups other than Dean’s DNC have done Real work for a Long time to find good candidates and build infrastructure in the states. A one-time contribution from Dean that keeps the lights on has very little to do with this “sweep” we’re looking at.

A party chair should be able to Raise Money, or Get Votes, preferably both. I rarely see Dean do either. The value of a chair is to be able to and RAISE MONEY from REALLY RICH PEOPLE.

Wyoming and Idaho…. Yes, ID-01 was also potentially competitive in 2002 and I maxed out to the Dem candidate there, Betty Richardson. She ran a strong campaign and peeled off some Rs. If she had been running in this climate she would have won.

Democrats can really suck a lot. You’re right. But Howard Dean is not the reason they are sucking less. A lot of them don’t listen to a word he has to say. And I would venture…he won’t be around much longer.

FDS: I won’t claim that simply giving extra money and attention to state parties has had a massive impact in just two years, it takes longer than that to have an effect. But this election season is proving the premise behind Dean’s 50-state strategy to be totally right. Some of these states are going to be competitive for Democrats in 2008. Everyone seems to forget that in 2004 when Dean was saying we should compete in every state everyone was calling him an idiot and that all Dems money and resources should always be focused on the 15 swing states.

We’re going to see many more “swing states” in 2008, and more states will be truly competitive again, not because Dean gave $400,000 extra to the Virginia state party, but because the premise behind the 50-state strategy is 100% good long-term political strategy.

It’s just you beltway insiders stuck in the swing state mentality that don’t get it. (Yes I technically live inside the beltway, but I hate everything and everyone, so it’s not an issue for me)

BDI: It can be a great political tactic to jump on a tide, say you thought of it, and take credit for it. I mean, THAT, is like the one smart thing Dean has done.

FDS: Who’s jumping on a tide and SAYING he thought of it? He did think of it and he did start the tide. Oh no wait sorry, I forgot, John Kerry started the tide. He was so convincing with his shrewd and unafraid criticisms of Bush.

BDI: What are you missing about farm team work that I thought I explained. Top of the ticket doesn’t a tide make. Generic ballot – people are saying they prefer Dems right? But they frequently don’t associate their local representatives with the top of the ticket. This is calling ticket splitting and it happens a lot.

Shitting on Kerry is lame. Everyone thinks he sucked. Remember other Dems who won in spite of Kerry? He wasn’t going to fix the party. He was just trying to get the White House – different.

FDS: Dean blazed the trail and made it ok to attack Bush when everyone else was afraid to do it on a grand scale. The reason Dems have a resurgence is because they have been able to show the country how awful Bush is. Name me one Democrat that is more responsible for the party going after Bush than Dean was. Go ahead, name ‘em.

BDI: McCain [Editor's note: Just to be clear, BDI knows well that McCain is a Republican.]

FDS: A) McCain is not a Democrat, B) McCain has gotten closer and closer to Bush each year.

BDI: It’s not ok to trash Bush as a Dem when it wont help you. The political environment has changed only because GOPers have fucked up so bad. Liberal is still a dirty word in middle America. No thanks to Dean. Like I said, talking points aren’t about instinct. They’re about strategy and polling.

FDS: A) It is ok to trash Bush as a Dem when it won’t help you, because that shows you have strength and principles, and if you’re criticisms are right, you can convince people of that in the end.

B) No one would know that the GOP fucked up so bad if someone in the Democratic party hadn’t said they were fucking up. I have still yet to hear you name a Dem who was more responsible for the Dems stopping from shitting their pants and getting the guts to go after Bush.

BDI: A: Maybe in Vermont

B: Rahm Emanuel

FDS: A) Oh lord. Well I stand by my claim that making the strong and principled argument will win people over to your side in the mid-range to long-term. You keep saying that winning a one seat in Arizona-7 is more important than the direction of the party for years ahead

B) Yes that’s right I distinctly remember Rahm Emanuel being all over the news launching heavy criticisms of Bush back in 2003….oh wait, no I don’t.

BDI: A – try that crap in Virginia and see what you get.

FDS: A) We did try it in Virginia and look what it’s got us: Jim Webb about to win a Senate seat, and several Dems poised to win heavy Republican districts

B) I’m still Googling to find those stinging criticism Emanuel was making of Bush before it became safe to. Having some trouble finding them though.

BDI: Not really. Bush and Allen got Webb there. Its not how Warner won. And his effect on the state has been bigger than anything Dean has done.

The whole premise of your argument is unproven and I disagree. You want to take a chance and push a scientifically unpopular msg because you think you’re right and that people will eventually come around to your way of seeing things.

FDS: The premise of my argument is not unproven, it’s been proven already. Bush began dropping from high to crappy approval ratings when Democrats go the balls to go after him.

BDI: And did they go after him because Dean thought it was a cool idea? Or because Bush pushed the public too far, they started to turn on him, it was evident in polling and focus groups, on the ground, etc and Dems concretely knew it was a strong message?

This has been entertaining but I have to sign off and do some work.

FDS: Ah yes, the Dems besides Dean started to turn on him after polling and focus groups showed it would work. Polling and focus groups, polling and focus groups. That’s how you get the country on your side, just don’t do anything at all until the public eventually gets sick of what they have.

Well I think I’ve managed to pretty much refute every single point made here, my job is done. I’m going to spend the rest of my afternoon pouring through Google to see if I can find these stinging criticisms you claim Emanuel was making about Bush while Bush was still popular. It might take a while….or forever.

BDI: Well, I suggest you run a campaign and try to get elected without listening to the electorate. Interesting concept. For a dictator or a Bush.

FDS: No point in trying to convince the electorate that our position is right, let’s just wait until the polling shows they have settled on it by default.

BDI: Sure. Tin ear. Always effective. No accountability to those who may disagree with you. The way to win people over is not to tell them something they aren’t interested in hearing.

Now really. I have to stop. You can send one more email so you can make sure you have the last word ok?

So there you have it. I guess only one question is left: Which one is Itchy, and which one is Scratchy?

If you ask me, it only really looks like him for a split second — but if I’m wrong, congrats on winning the five grand. I hereby nominate this for the Friday “Separated at Birth” section of Last Call.

P.S. Speaking of Chuck, his assertion that the netroots could support a Rahm Emanuel challenge for House Speaker is roiling the lefty blogosphere today. Markos Moulitsas says the opposite:

I’m pretty confident in predicting that bloggers 1) wouldn’t launch a grassroots effort to promote a Rahm Speakership, and 2) would actively and energetically oppose it.

Jonathan Singer has taken a poll which confirms the sentiment:

And I concur: At best Rahm will have their grudging respect, should Democrats win by a comfortable margin. Many don’t trust his courting of Wall Street money managers, and they don’t like his criticism of Howard Dean’s “50 state strategy” — even though as DCCC chair he is institutionally obliged to focus only on key races.

In today’s Blogometer, Chuck has issued a statement:

Regarding the blowback my ‘Speaker Rahm’ speculation is receiving with the liberal blogs, I just didn’t realize how bad his rep was with some. Frankly, I should have been more aware of how the Rahm-Dean strategy feud damaged things. So, here’s a question for the left; if not Pelosi and if not Rahm, then who could you support as Speaker?

It’s a good question, though it should be added to the end of his column. Otherwise, he’s liable to get more responses like this one from DuckmanGR at MyDD (please excuse his language):

Chuck Todd is … a Beltway 500 tool. Let me further add, fuck Chuck Todd, may he soon rot on assignment covering the rapidly shrinking Greenland Ice Cap that reporters like him helped enable, and tell us how the shilling that he has been doing for the GOP and the DLC earned him this important post. … progressives need to stop listening to or relying on self serving low life scum like Todd and Halpern [sic] and Charlie Cook (oh I know, he’s so fucking smart, right?) and the rest of their revolting ilk. 18 seat gain is an abject failure by Rahm, that control will be entirely in spite of him, not thanks to him. What a crock, Crock Todd, Fucktard.

Well, now. If that isn’t a compelling argument, I don’t know what is.

In all seriousness, Chuck knows more about politics than almost anyone, even if he is, like everyone, wrong from time to time. I do think this one was an obvious mistake, but even for avid readers, the political blogosphere is a harder nut to crack than even political meatspace.

Who “runs” the netroots? Kos? The Townhouse group? Both are influential, but neither have the message control of the Democratic party, which obviously isn’t saying much. And who leads the Republicans? Is it non-Republican Glenn Reynolds? Comparatively low-traffic RedState?

Believe me, it’s not just the Beltway establishment that doesn’t know what to make of the bloggers; the bloggers don’t know what to make of themselves, either.

Also not looking too bad: My question at the time, about what the Lamont primary victory — then hailed by some as the first breakthrough win for a netroots candidate — about what this would mean:

Could it be that what seemed less than 100 hours ago like the first major gate-crashing will actually end up building more barriers between Beltway Democrats and the party’s online activists?

Keep that in mind as you read excerpts from yesterday’s Matt Stoller classic, “Senate Democrats and Bill Clinton Stab Us In The Front”:

Why did Lamont let Joe get away? Well there are a number of reasons, but among the most prominent is the total abandonment of Lamont by the party establishment. And let’s be very clear – this is not Lamont that they are abandoning, it’s the party primary voters that they are abandoning. …

Make no mistake, these DC Democrats are only our temporary allies. They have total contempt for the rules of the party, and they cheered Joe after he faced us in the primary. It is no longer reasonable for them to call for party unity, because they no longer have any legitimate claim to call themselves leaders of the party. They may be leaders for the next few decades simply due to inertia, but it’s very clear that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are liars who think nothing of insulting Democratic primary voters who play by the rules. …

The American people know this. They know that Democratic Senators aremoral lepers, weaklings, and that is the only reason we aren’t furtherahead when the Republicans screw everything up. The Democratic Senateleaders will sell us out at every opportunity, be it torture, Iraq, Alito, Lieberman, the Bankruptcy Bill, or stopping war with Iran. They aren’t poll-driven, they aren’t fear-driven, and they aren’t driven by strategic differences. They are simply driven to beat us down, their voters, by any means necessary. …

We can win this fight, as the polls are tightening. But it would be a whole lot easier without that knife in our back.

Leaving aside the obvious question of which side the Stollerites are supposed to be bleeding from, there’s enough hyperbole here to last until the first big straw poll.

As I’ve demonstrated previously, Stoller’s over-reliance on self-righteous anger and quick imputations of bad faith to his political opponents (even those ostensibly on his side of the fence) makes him seem less a sharp-tongued political street brawler and more like a circus clown exaggerating his act.

And as usual, the response in the MyDD comments is mixed. A contingent protests that Stoller is being unreasonable, but his sentiments are shared by a larger set. Meanwhile, Stoller’s hyperventilation obscures what is actually a pretty interesting question to pick apart: How did Lamont lose his momentum, and what explains Senate Democrats’ reluctance to join the netroots in the War on Lieberman? I recommend this thread, which includes MyDDer Chris G gamely trying to explain to the wounded ‘roots that it’s not all about them:

Dem leaders are not trashing Lamont, and they’ve expressed their support. but by “cutting loose” Liberman [sic], and trashing Liberman, as you suggest, they run the risk of the following: Liberman winning nonetheless, and organizing with the GOP.

Quite. Senate Democrats are too worried about being stabbed by Joementum in a 50-49 split to carry out any personal vendetta against the netroots. It’s not personal. It’s politics.

Still, as for MyDD, it’s a marked improvement from last week’s poll-frustrated Conn. voter-bashing thread:

A bunch of idiots do live in CT. What a fucking embarassment.

Now that’s what I call people power.

Another interesting thing about the philosophical and political differences between the Beltway establishment and Democratic-aligned bloggers is the split opinions about Barack Obama. If you don’t know that Obama ‘08 is in its ascendancy at the moment, then you must be in a persistent vegetative state. With Republican newspaper columnists Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks offering genuine praise of the freshman Democrat, it becomes all the more clear that his surge is a media-driven sensation. Though hyped excessively by celebrity-obsessed reporters, Barack Obama has demonstrated, potentially, a very broad appeal. Yet there is one group seemingly impervious to his charms: the netroots, of course.

First, note Stoller’s derogation of Obama above. It’s not the first time; Stoller has a long history of badmouthing Obama going back to the 2004 convention in Boston, where he was disinvited by Terry McAuliffe’s DNC from continuing on as a coordinator after writing that Obama hadn’t said “anything really interesting or useful.”

But also note the comments from others in the threads below the post. Here’s one, from a former Hillary Clinton supporter (somewhat rare among liberal bloggers in good standing) no less:

I do know one thing: I do not support Obama for any office. He has ZERO spine. He didn’t even want to filibuster Alito when even Hillary was among the first to advocate filibuster for BOTH Alito and the Alito-with-pretty-blue-eyes, Roberts.

And this one:

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Obama a liar, but he HAS been a major disappointment. He’s got one of the safest Senate seats around, having romped to a landslide victory in what was a dreadful year for Democrats nationwide, and he’s done next to nothing to advance Democratic values, choosing instead to scold Democrats for, among other things, not being religious enough.

Well, Barack, let’s talk religion, since it’s one of your favorite subjects. When the torture bill came out, where the hell were you? … Mr. Obama, I still have some hope for you, but your silence on the torture bill means that you have abdicated any credibility in lecturing ANYBODY on “moral values”. You’re not a whole lot better than Republicans in that regard.

Maybe Krauthammer and Brooks know something the MyDD crowd doesn’t? In any case, Obama is not without his defenders:

In fact, I would like to see in print where Obama promised to come to CT and campaign for Lamont. He has publicly supported Lamont, but just because he supports Lamont publicly does not mean he has to bad mouth Lieberman. … But please if you can provide written proof on where Obama has lied about CT, I would love to see. Until then, I have to chalk it up to your irrational dislike of the man.

In the meantime, you have to wonder: if Washington Democrats’ lukewarm support for Ned Lamont is tantamount to treason, what would the netroots say if Barack Obama actually got the nomination in 2008? Or Clinton/Obama?

P.S. It’s worth remembering that only a week ago, Stoller posted a comparatively thoughtful essay titled “Why Barack Obama Should Run for President.” Was he being disingenuous then or is he being exciteable now? It’s hard to tell, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the answer is both.

Only problem: The pictured soldier is actually Canadian, and Johnson’s readers quickly located more stills, providing conclusive evidence that a Democratic Photoshopper had doctored the image to remove a medal evidently believed to be a dead giveaway (but embarrassingly leaving another — the funny lapel pin).

This phenomenon is common enough now that such images have come to merit their own word: Fauxtoshop. In November 2005, MoveOn.org ran a TV spot conservative bloggers found politically outrageous, and which luckily happened to be an example of this burgeoning trend. Much like this latest imbroglio, the uniforms of foreign troops (this time, British) were modified to look more American:

In both cases, one wonders just how hard it would be to find a genuine photograph of members of the U.S. armed services looking vaguely aggrieved or lining up for a plateful of slop. The circumstances were slightly different in one of the earliest instances of blog-era political fauxtoshoppery, an image from the front page of the Bush-Cheney ‘04 official website, offending sections encircled by an unidentified Kossack:

Here, the idea was to make it look a lot cooler, as if this wall of troops just went on forever. Just as their counterparts on the right saw leftist perfidy in later fauxtoshop jobs, this manipulation was seized upon by the nascent netroots as another strike against A”W”OL.

But what should we make of all this? Be assured, neither side is above manipulating images of American troops for political expediency. These incidents say a lot less about comparative patriotism than than about the primacy of images in propaganda. Good visuals are hard to come by, and if a deceptive visual is more striking than a real image, unfortunately, that’s considered good enough.

P.S. There is also, of course, the recent case of photo manipulation by Lebanese Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj, also brought to light at Little Green Footballs:

While it falls beyond U.S. partisan considerations and does not involve soldiers per se, it is also probably the biggest Photoshop fraud uncovered by those pesky bloggers, and certainly deserves mention here.

P.P.S. Any journalism professor worth his whiskey makes sure freshman communications students hear about the distortive power of photographs. Already in the curriculum, I’m sure, is the recent case of an ambiguous photograph by Thomas Hoepker of young Brooklynites observing South Manhattan on Sept. 11, which has been the recent subject of debate at Slate:

Unlike the military-themed images above, this photo underwent no changes. When it’s hard enough to tell what undoctored images mean, one might hope that propagandists would use images in their proper contexts — but one might be hoping for an awful long time.