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Archive for the 'Howard Dean' Category

Joe Trippi and Twitter’s Second Life

Published by William Beutler on November 11, 2007 in Howard Dean, Joe Trippi, John Edwards, Tech Blogosphere, Technology, Twitter, Web 2.0, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

It’s too soon to tell whether Twitter will break on through to the mainstream side; it has long since reached critical mass in the tech community, but the politico adoption rate remains low, and the entertainment ’sphere barely knows it exists. Blogging took this path to becoming a household word, so it seems reasonable to assume it might happen that way again with microblogging.

This is not to say it necessarily will, but we can mark one point in favor: after three and a half months away, Joe Trippi is Twittering again.

When he first signed up in July, his tweets (as messages sent through Twitter are called) merely answered the ubiquitous question hovering above the input space:

What are you doing?

This is what he was doing:

Hanging out with Ted! 07:54 PM July 14, 2007 from web
Participating in Live Earth today — Help spread the word. 08:45 AM July 07, 2007 from web
watching movies with my son Ted! 07:48 PM July 04, 2007 from web

He dutifully answered a few times, and then like most political types who have tried, merely set it aside, gave up entirely or just didn’t get it.

Here are two basic points about using Twitter: One, your best tweets will not come while sitting at a desk — in order to be interesting to others, you have to be doing something, which means getting out of doors, and this tends to mean sending text messages from your cell phone to Twitter. Two, sometimes you should just ignore the inquest about your current activities and just use Twitter to say something.

As for Trippi, his November Twittering has been done almost exclusively via SMS. And he most certainly is much busier now than he was in July, Noam Scheiber detailed last week. Trippi joined the Edwards campaign as a mere add-on adviser in April, but in recent months he has apparently taken a lead strategic role. (For what it’s worth, John Edwards himself has been on Twitter since January — Matt Gross’ handiwork, I pesume.)

This recent burst of Trippi tweets are both a glimpse inside the manic campaign schedule and a glimpse inside the frazzled psyche of its owner. They’re on the edge. In the moment. They don’t appear calculated, are not especially guarded, and sometimes they make no sense at all. This is, after all, the man who nearly went blind due to low blood sugar on the trail in 2003, and whose tearful exit from Burlington was broadcast live on national cable news.

A few tweets offer a keyhole view of the campaign:

up late working on a youtube video for John Edwards that will be released later today. Released our first Iowa ad earlier today. 01:32 AM November 02, 2007 from txt
Just finished another day in iowa. This time I really do know I won’t be doing this again. But Edwards was good all day 02:06 AM November 05

Others detail the life of Trippi:

Exhausted but still going. Actually went out and played pinball til 1am with a NY Times reporter last night in Iowa City. Had a lot of f … … 03:13 PM November 05, 2007 from txt
Off to Cedar Rapids for Edwards. Its my 10th wedding anniversary. I am so screwed 10:55 AM November 08, 2007 from txt

And still others… who knows?

price today 03:13 PM November 05, 2007 from txt
Stars 08:55 PM November 05, 2007 from txt

It almost dares you to ponder what he was thinking at the time. For the record, my guesses: Staring out a train window at night, standing in the grocery checkout line watching the total rise. Some people would call this bad Twittering, certainly for its incomprehensibility, but I disagree — this is more interesting than using it as a distribution list or RSS feed receptacle (perfectly legitimate uses, by the way).

Of course, there’s no reason he couldn’t drop it again just as quickly. An application like Twitter, which asks so little, is also easily forgotten. Twitter participation can be streaky, more so than blogs. Unless and until it develops into a full-blown next-generation instant messenger (my prediction) the site will remain erratic and insular. On the other hand, that’s why some of us pay attention in the first place.

P.S. Trippi isn’t the only person famous-within-his-respective-field to start tweeting again this month. Only Thursday, widely-heard tech podcaster Leo Laporte finally ran up the white flag:

I surrender Twitter. You win.

Laporte abandoned Twitter under entirely different circumstances. He ditched it for competing microblogging service Jaiku in April, citing fears of brand confusion. The flagship of Laporte’s podcast fleet is christened This Week in Tech, or TWiT for short. I assume he’ll explain in the next installment. Maybe there is hope yet that he will relent on the term podcasts, which he gave up for “netcasts,” which isn’t catching, and which I felt compelled to throw scare quotes around.

P.P.S. Aren’t you glad this post wasn’t actually about Second Life?

Red States and Blue States: Why the Vice Versa Could Never Be

Published by William Beutler on September 23, 2007 in Charts and Graphs, Democrats, George W. Bush, Howard Dean, Language, MSM, Mike Huckabee, National Politics, RedState, Republicans, Rhetoric and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Here’s a thought that’s been kicking around the back of my head for awhile: the assignment of “red” and “blue” to describe right-leaning and left-leaning political factions in the United States has stuck in part because it contradicts these two colors’ previous connotations, and to the benefit of the left and right alike.

Red States and Blue States reversed... just looks wrong, doesn't it?Ahead of me already?

For most of the 20th century, the color red was associated with Communism, and for reasons that scarcely need explaining, it carried a decidedly negative association in the West: Better dead than red, after all. The American left certainly had its share of Stalinists, and anti-Communists on the right didn’t hesitate in extending the term. When I lived in Eugene, Oregon, the town daily Register-Guard was sometimes referred to as the Red Guard.

Likewise, the color blue is sometimes associated with nobility in Europe and the upper class in America, particularly in the Northeast — I refer to the term blue blood. The stereotype of rich, right-wing industrialists who cannot identify with regular Americans has probably been used against every Republican candidate since Lincoln. The recognition that this can be a political liability is what led Mike Huckabee to recently descrbe himself as “a blue-collar Republican, not a blueblood Republican.”

Meanwhile, witness the rapid adoption of the terminology. One of the rightosphere’s best-known websites is RedState; an online political firm founded by former Howard Dean staffers is called Blue State Digital.

It’s worth remembering that in elections prior to 2000, the colors were not standardized across the television networks, and they also switched colors between the parties. In 2000, chance might have had red assigned to Democrats and blue to Republicans. The prolonged attention to the electoral map might have given rise to opposite definitions for the terms, but would they have stuck?

I don’t think so. The vice versa could never have become political shorthand in this country because neither side would allow it. Reversed, the colors would draw attention to negative aspects of each party’s intellectual and sociological histories.

Therefore, the switch is serendipitous — by adopting the other side’s derogatory colors, each cancels out the other, and in the 21st century can accrue all-new (and perhaps more positive) political connotations.

Inside the Ron Paul Machine II: On the Assembly Line

Published by William Beutler on May 25, 2007 in Facebook, Howard Dean, Mitt Romney, Online Polling, Ron Paul and Social Networking. 41 Comments

In yesterday’s installment, I demonstrated how it took Ron Paul’s supporters a few hours to start making an impact on the May GOP Bloggers straw poll — fair evidence, I think, that his supporters are not quite as legion, or representative, as they’d have everyone (not least themselves) believe.

So where are they meeting to plan their onslaught? A few days back, one frustrated Digg user identified ten such sites, noting that Paul’s Diggers were organizing in such a way that violates Digg’s Terms of Service (thereby qualifying Paul’s support as “manufactured,” not that I expect it to forestall complaints in the comment section).

One site he didn’t count was the Congressman Ron Paul for President 2008 group at Facebook, but it too qualifies as the planning site for yet another [potenti] TOS violation. Specifically, the Wall — a constantly updated comment stream — for this group is a veritable assembly line of votes for online polls testing the Republican field.

And of course their latest obsession is the aforementioned GOP Bloggers poll. I would say don’t miss this comment, but alas, it’s since been deleted:

Ron Paul Facebook user requests script to game GOP Bloggers poll

To be fair, two subsequent Facebookers recoiled in horror, (correctly) concerned that someone such as yours truly would find it, and the commenter agreed to remove it (note: this is from the archive, hence the wideness):

Ron Paul Facebook users fear bad press

Telling that this Paul supporter’s first instinct was to suspect that the poll was rigged, isn’t it?

In any case, I’m sure this won’t result in too much bad press. Not this instance, at any rate. But this is just one Ron Paul forum, and one that merely requires Facebook membership to view. And even here, Paul’s supporters are well aware that poll hosts will view their organized effort as illegitimate:

Ron Paul Facebook user warns against being identified by referring IP

What’s sad about this is a) Paul’s supporters are not going out and trying to convert more supporters through reason and debate, and b) they have no sense of humor. First they try to overwhelm others’ communities, and retaliate with subsequent e-mail swarms when their man gets knocked.

So far at least, it’s a hollow movement. The Paul Machine certainly compares unfavorably with, say, the Deaniacs of 2003. They got organized to blog and MeetUp and demonstrate, rather than merely agitate. Ron Paul does have honest supporters at Reason’s Hit and Run and a few other libertarian blogs, but his movement fares badly in comparison with Mitt Romney’s online volunteers as well. Sure, the so-called Romneybots can be annoying at times, but at least they’re reaching out to other conservative constituencies and trying to engage the uncommitted. Not to mention, I’m sure their ranks are filled out by, you know, actual Republicans.

Meanwhile, the assembly line rolls on, only slightly less amusing than Lucy and Ethel’s:

Ron Paul Facebook users keep up the swarm

A lot has changed, indeed. For instance, he has now sailed past Romney and is within 900 votes of Fred Thompson. Truly, it will be a stunning victory. But history will probably mark this as the biggest contest Ron Paul won in the 2008 race.

P.S. This poll, however, will likely go down as Paul’s most unanimous victory.

Did Ann Coulter Just Undo the Damage Done by Amanda Marcotte?

Published by William Beutler on March 3, 2007 in C-SPAN, Democrats, Elizabeth Edwards, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, National Politics, Netroots, Rhetoric, Web video, White House '08 and YouTube. 6 Comments

David Bonior dispatched for e-mail response to Ann Coulter's slur on John Edwards

The last few weeks have not been good ones for the Edwards campaign, with professional blowhard Bill Donohue shouting the unfortunate comments of short-lived Edwardsville blogress Amanda Marcotte into the New York Times and Washington Post — and Marcotte herself prolonging the story in Salon and the Austin Chronicle. Nor were they helped when Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise filed her own Salon column confirming Elizabeth Edwards’ involvement in blog strategy and claiming she had warned Edwards staffers of how a netroots hire could go wrong.

One reason the incident has been so bad for the Edwards campaign is that it turned an asset — his widespread support among liberal bloggers — into a liability. While few among the netroots actually abandoned him, it exposed the possibility that a wedge could be driven between them — and his campaign hasn’t regained its footing since.

Until now, that is, and John Edwards has none other than Ann Coulter parody Ann Coulter to thank as the leftosphere is working overtime this weekend to turn this year’s CPAC — where Coulter referred to Edwards as a “faggot” — into the political equivalent of this year’s NBA All-Star weekend in Las Vegas (Pacman Jones or no). Call it a reverse Perlstein: the leftosphere always liked Edwards. Now they finally have a reason to rally around him again.

The incident won’t necessarily help him with Beltway handicappers who fault the campaign’s decision-making, although they should be reassured that Edwards quickly released an e-mail letter from campaign chairman David Bonior, pictured below, and worked it into a fundraising pitch, asking for “Coulter Cash”:

John Edwards fundraising pitch for Coulter Cash

Note that they are making the video available on their own site — this is to their credit, as traditional campaign wisdom holds that you don’t want to keep a negative story going. But this attack was so meanspirited and witless and obviously saying far more about Coulter than Edwards that there is virtually no downside.

The rightosphere can denounce her all they like — calling her a “verbal suicide bomber” and likening her to David Duke and Michael Moore — but they can’t make up for the YouTube-ready audience laughter and applause that greeted Coulter’s remarks.

For the same reason, Howard Dean’s call for the GOP frontrunners to denounce Coulter’s remarks was pretty smart, too. He got his presidential denunciations on short order, but some conservatives refocused their ire on him and effectively defended Coulter. Liberal bloggers may have painted a picture of the conservative blogosphere as a mere appendage of the right-wing establishment, but there’s no way Glenn Greenwald will let Ed Morrissey speak for the movement on this one.

Only CPAC can do that now. Will the conference organizers announce that Ann Coulter will not be invited next year? Her post-9/11 “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” column got her axed from NRO, so they would even have the cover of precedent. Or are they too fearful losing Coulter’s College Republican fan base?

P.S. What do we make of the fact that PoliPundit blogger and Duncan Hunter campaign paid staffer Michael Illions is one of the few conservative bloggers publicly standing by her, while this same week the Hunter campaign cut loose two South Carolina operatives for making bigoted statements? Just asking.

P.P.S. Beyerstein got at least one thing wrong in her Salon column — Matt Stoller, whom she cited twice as a better potential hire than herself or Marcotte, missed the boat entirely as this was breaking last night:

I called a contact at the Edwards campaign for a response. Nothing yet. It would be stupid to respond to Coulter, but it’s a good idea to hang Coulter around Romney and Giuliani’s neck.

Right. Certainly nothing you’d want to use to solicit campaign contributions…

Ginormous Tuesday: Front-loading and the 50-State Strategy

Published by William Beutler on February 7, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, Campaigns, DNC, Democrats, Howard Dean, Iowa Caucuses, National Politics and White House '08. 0 Comments

One year from this week, we might already have our Republican and Democratic presidential nominees. Early? Definitely. Too early? Debatable. Impossible? Might be unavoidable. One reason might be Howard Dean and his 50-state strategy.

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.

Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe, the two most recent DNC chairmenThis 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.

What Brownback Can’t Do For You

Published by William Beutler on January 22, 2007 in Campaigns, Domains, Howard Dean, New Media Strategies, Republicans, Sam Brownback, Website Design and White House '08. 1 Comment

At The Bivings Report this weekend, Todd Zeigler rendered a pretty devastating assessment of newly-minted presdiential candidate Sam Brownback’s online fundraising pitch: The e-mail came from an e-marketing firm (whose website, incidentally, should be profiled by Web Pages That Suck) and Brownback.com itself is currently hosted on the domain of a web design company. The actual Brownback website looks professional enough, but that’s the nicest thing that can be said.

Zeigler’s unflinching verdict:

When you combine all these problems together, you end up with an email/web program that seems more like a Paypal scam than official campaign correspondence.

And I concur. I’ve been rebuked before for criticizing political sites that weren’t ready for primetime, but we’re talking the launch of a U.S. senator’s presidential campaign here.

Rosslyn Metro EscalatorRelatedly: Leaving work today, as I descended the Rosslyn Metro station’s Everest-esque escalator, coming up the opposite escalator was a small army of intermediate school students in blue ski caps, toting matching “Brownback for President” signs. It reminded me more than a little of Howard Dean’s not-so-perfect Perfect Stormers in Iowa circa January 2004.

I had to wonder: Where were they going? I sure hope it was Ruby Tuesday’s, because the Rosslyn neighborhood of Virginia is strictly a business district. If it was a rally for the benefit of WJLA-TV’s cameras, it sure isn’t reflected on their website.

And I almost feel like I’m piling on unfairly by mentioning that Brownback’s announcement was buried on Page A08 of Sunday’s Post. But not quite.

As Not Paul Begala noted this weekend, the first day of your campaign is supposed to be your best. Since Brownback’s campaign already faces steep odds, he’d better be hoping this aphorism is wrong, too.

Bloggers vs. the MSP

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 5, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, Campaigns, DCCC, DNC, Daily Kos, Democrats, Howard Dean and Internecine Battles. 3 Comments

Between binge drinking, sleeping, waiting for my Wii to get here (seriously, I was ready to fight my little cousins for playing time on Christmas Day — this thing is awesome) and catching up with our TiVo’d shows, we campaign people finally have some time on hand to think about what we just went through. Campaign life doesn’t give you a lot of time for a good diet, exercise, nor reading fiction, and certainly not reflection.

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.

Fight, Fight, Fight! Bite, Bite, Bite! The Democratic Beltway Insider & Former Dean Staffer Show!

Published by William Beutler on November 2, 2006 in 50 State Strategy, DCCC, DNC, Daily Kos, Democrats, Elections, Howard Dean, Internecine Battles, James Webb and Midterms '06. 2 Comments

How exactly Blog P.I. came to be a sounding board for Democratic consultants and party operatives when I am not myself a Democrat, I’m not entirely sure. But this afternoon I bore witness (e-mail witness, that is) to a scintillating debate between two acquaintances who fairly represent the current split between insiders and outsiders of that party.

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.

Itchy & Scratchy, Beltway Democratic Insider & Former Dean Staffer
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.

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