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Archive for the 'Internecine Battles' Category

Remedial Math: Democrats, Bloggers and Political Reporters

Published by Not Paul Begala on October 26, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM, Democrats, Elections, Guest Bloggers, Internecine Battles, Midterms '06, National Politics and Netroots. 2 Comments

I imagine this occurs naturally in any subject area, but the great aggravation we so-called insiders have with the blogosphere is how often stupid things are published. For so-called outsiders to relate, how often have you heard someone make an ignorantly flippant remark about something in your area of expertise? You might leave it alone because the fight isn’t worth it — but now imagine this person writes a blog in your field.

It’s really annoying.

Take this example.

Matt’s third point bugs me:

Elect Tester, Get a Seat on Approps, and Start Building Some Seniority: Start building seniority with a new Senator now, so that when Max leaves, we’re not left with no seniority and no seats on powerful committees, but rather have a man who is by all accounts an able and honest legislator well into his second-term on Approps.

He’s referring to this story:

Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate say they will give Jon Tester a seat on the influential Senate Appropriations Committee as soon as they can if he beats Republican incumbent Conrad Burns in the November election. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement Thursday he will “work very hard” to secure a seat for Tester - even as a freshman senator - “as soon as possible.”

This is classic case of a DC outsider who thinks he knows something about the process (or actually does know something and is being disingenuous; another post topic).

Jon Tester is not getting an appropriations seat. Key phrases in that article being “as soon as they can” and “as soon as possible.”

First, there is the seniority issue in the Dem caucus in general — you think a freshman gets to jump over 2-term senators whose own states lack an appropriations seat? Second, there are “red states” up next cycle where a Dem would need a prime committee to defend his/her seat, e.g. Mark Pryor (AR). Third there is the potential retirement of Robert Byrd which would result in his fellow WVer John Rockefeller (also up in ‘08) making a play for the seat. Fourth, Chuck Schumer of NY will likely need persuasion to stay on as DSCC chair or take approps as a prize for winning back the Senate. And lastly, Tester’s own incoming class would knife-fight him for that seat — Claire McCaskill of MO and Bob Casey Jr. of PA are both Dems without senior senators in their own states while Bob Menendez already has seniority in the ‘06 class.

Bottom line, he ain’t getting that seat.

And people might say, “NPB, get off your lazy ass and join the conversation.” To which I reply, “There are just too many conversations to join, too much remedial math to teach.” If I wanted to teach, I would start a blog called “Politics for Third Graders.” But I do want the occasional polling number leaked to Left In The West about the Montana Senate race. When it comes to the blogosphere, I want the news which they provide, but I’m forced to put up with the crap that comes with it.

But maybe I’m being too hard on them.

Let’s see: Occasional tips, exaggerations about process, bullshit opinions, morons who think too highly of their opinions who wouldn’t last 15 minutes on the inside… sounds like some political reporters and columnists I’ve worked with. Maybe bloggers and the MSM have more in common than I thought!

·      ·      ·

On A Completely Unrelated Note: News story leaving out the important details, facts not quite up to par, not satisfield with the news as reported? Assignment: blogosphere!

In this week’s installment, can you finish where the NY Times left off and tell us who is the girl in the Harold Ford Jr. Playboy ad and how I can get her number? And the gun guy — was that Charlie Sheen? Did Adam Sandler play the porn producer? Holy trimmed-down Wilford Brimley-sighting batman, Canada will get those terrorists!

Now all of us political guys know that the occasional actor is needed for a commercial, but I want the story behind that. Popular commercials lead to bigger and better things — have ya’ll noticed that the Capitol One buffoon (”Noooooooo!”) is on “Studio 60″? Is that girl getting new offers? (That “call me” was so sassy at the end.) Will she show up on “Entourage”? And really, I’m not kidding, is that Charlie Sheen making a cameo in camo?

Hop to it, blogs! Get your Variety sources on Skype and get moving!

The Agony and the Apostasy

Published by William Beutler on October 19, 2006 in Blog Fights, Defections, Elections, George W. Bush, Internecine Battles, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Primary fights, Terrorism and White House '08. 4 Comments

Back in 2004, one of the founding members of the political blogosphere managed to blog his way out of the good graces of many he had inspired to take up Blogger accounts in the first place. That was Andrew Sullivan, and while he undoubtedly remains an A-lister, he’s probably already proved a kind of blogosphere peak traffic theory.

Another popular veteran blogger has been steering wider and wider away from his peers in the rightosphere, and unlike Sullivan, it’s one who has called himself a Republican. This is John Cole, the West Virginian Army vet and Pajamas Media signatory who writes Balloon Juice. His site is a rarity in the sense that the chief blogger identifies as right of center, but the readership (as demonstrated by its loyal commenters) leans decidedly to the left. For some time now, Cole has featured a co-blogger, Tim F., who is even more critical of the contemporary right than himself.

Andrew Sullivan, John Cole, conservative blogger discontentBoth Cole and Sullivan have voiced greater concerns about the direction of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, and about the Republican Party’s priorities regarding social issues than most mainstream conservative bloggers (and more than avowed non-conservative Glenn Reynolds, at least until the “pre-mortem” post). Unlike many of their peers, they’ve lost all respect for the Bush presidency and reclaimed/redefined conservatism enough to justify staying on the same side of the fence.

The very fact of their disagreement isn’t so much the issue — they could have drifted apart and largely ignored each other. Instead, the animosity really has to do with Sullivan and Cole coming around to openly fight with their erstwhile allies. These arguments look like personality conflicts, and they certainly are, but are also so contentious because an ideological fight underlies them.

The fights they pick are not without merit, though it’s sometimes hard to decide which side is thinking about it more clearly, if anyone — and so I’ll punt and just say “follow the links”: a non-definitive summary would note that Sullivan has clashed with Glenn Reynolds and with James Taranto and become an inside joke among numerous other bloggers. Cole is currently in the middle of a blog fight with Dan Riehl, just concluded one with Red State, and before long will probably go another round with Michelle Malkin.

As far as I can tell, it seems Cole usually aims to stand up for decency, Sullivan for his principles. This also seems to mean Sullivan-engaged arguments often revolve around himself — and hey, that’s just what Time is probably hoping for. To use a phrase more commonly associated with the leftosphere, they’re like concern trolls* in the wider conservative blogosphere.

Such blog fights can be either great fun or excruciatingly dull, depending on how much you have invested in the squabbling parties. And considering the war’s prominence in these splits, there will probably be more. Assuming Iraq gets worse before it gets better — that being one thing supporters and opponents of U.S. Iraq policy might agree on — we’ll see more bloggers reach a breaking point, lambasting their spherical allies for failing to understand what they do now, while the stalwarts kick them to the curb and renounce them as apostates.

It’s hard to say what this means for the 2008 White House scrum, currently still in training camp (pre-season begins with the first post-election early primary state straw poll). Both the left and right blogospheres will fracture, sometimes with acrimony and sometimes amicably, as they all back different candidates for president.

Since its post-2002 midterm formation, the leftosphere has been an anti-Bush monolith, and his eventual departure from Washington (and our eventual withdrawal from Iraq) will create new tensions for Democrats and the bloggers who favor them, along with the expected opportunities. If Democrats win the White House in ‘08, we could see the blogospheric equivalent of a geomagnetic reversal — on both sides, existing bloggers would realign, some veterans might lose readership, and newcomers could pick up big traffic.

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. But I have to wonder, when Cole has been putting his “Republican Stupidity” category tag to much greater use lately compared with his “Democratic Stupidity” one, even though the latter category was once created 10 places before the former.

Of course, if a Republican takes the oath of office in January 2009, things certainly won’t remain static. 9/11 created the right-blogosphere and the Iraq war defined it, but as domestic (social and economic) policy has been inevitably regaining significance compared to foreign policy (which again, they don’t always agree on) things have gotten — and will continue to get — more interesting.

So, let’s settle for a hypothesis: The longer an individual participates in the blogosphere, the likelihood of a political shift dividing said blogger from his or her allies along new lines approaches one.

Note: Additional text and argumentation provided by OXR.

House of Flying Daggers

Published by William Beutler on October 3, 2006 in Blog Fights, Internecine Battles, Midterms '06, National Politics and Republicans. 1 Comment

Edwin Edwards, former Louisiana governor and connoisseur of corruption (now spending his golden years in the slammer), was once quoted saying the only way he could lose re-election was if “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.” Which is pretty much what’s happening to the House Republicans right now.

The rightosphere has always been less partisan than the leftosphere, or at any rate, more anti-Dem than pro-GOP. The liberal netroots count maybe a few Republicans that they like, while the conservative blogs include right-trending Democrats such as Ann Althouse, Roger L. Simon and more libertarians than you can point a :CueCat at. You don’t even have to call yourself a conservative to be in the club.

Because this coalition is built largely around foreign policy issues, they’re not very quick to defend the GOP on domestic issues or when the party is in trouble. And this very moment, you can see the right half of the blogosphere splitting into two camps over the question of Denny Hastert’s future as House Speaker (the matter of course being brought into sharp relief by today’s Washington Times editorial page).

For lack of better phraseology, let’s call these camps the parsers and the partisans. The former camp is concerned most with being on the right side of this particular issue, the latter is quicker to forgive leadership for errors and even not recognize errors as such (and yes, I realize that this description telegraphs my own view of the matter). Here’s the breakdown…

First, there is the side saying Hastert Must Go:

  • Ed Morrissey is one of several to scoff at Times editorialist Tony Blankley’s suggestion of Rep. Hyde to temporarily fill Hastert’s shoes, but he agrees it should be someone:
    Incredibly, no one apparently ever asked any of Foley’s former or current pages if they had noticed any inappropriate behavior from the Congressman. What kind of an investigation doesn’t address the reality of patterns in allegedly predatory behavior? Foley’s uncommon interest in young teenage boys had become parlor talk among the pages, but either Hastert didn’t want to find that out or deliberately avoided it. Hastert apparently made the decision not to follow procedures and refer the matter to the Page Board, the bipartisan committee that oversees pages, and that looks very clearly like a cover-up.
  • Rick Moran doesn’t quite call for Hastert’s dismissal, but is clearly sympathetic:
    What is needed is a reckoning — a settling of accounts by the voters for all the broken promises, the wasteful spending, the arrogant mismanagement, and the irresponsible lawmaking which have combined to bring the Republican party to its sorriest state I’ve seen in my 30 years of membership.
  • Gregory Djerejian, never much of a party guy to begin with, finds some validation in this turn of events:
    Gross negligence and deliberately looking the other way? Say it ain’t so! Why, this might well sum up a large amount of our contemporary history these past five years.
  • For Dr. Steven Taylor, Hastert’s ouster would be long overdue:
    In general, there ought to be built-in changes in leadership probably every six years or so–and not just musical chairs at the top (i.e., Majority Leader to Speaker, Whip to Majority Leader, etc.). Anyone who has ever worked in the same organization for any length of time knows that new blood is vital, and that frequently those who become entrenched in positions tend to become overly comfortable and problematic over time.
  • La Shawn Barber hears excuses, and would prefer not to:
    Whether or not the leadership saw “lurid” IMs is not quite the point. Members knew about Foley’s “overly friendly” e-mails to 16-year-old boys. From that they could have deduced he was up to no good, in my opinion. They should have investigated Foley’s conduct more thoroughly. That they didn’t know the extent of Foley’s “issues” is BS. I’m sorry, but this CYA stuff is not going to cut it.
  • That’s about how The Sundries Shack sees it:
    Hastert knew about at least some of the communications between Mark Foley and an underaged boy. Even if he didn’t know about the sexually explicit communications, it seems obvious that Hastert did little to rectify the situation.
  • James Joyner draws an appropriate — and blog-related! — parallel:
    When the Trent Lott-Strom Thurmond scandal broke a few years back, my instinct was that Lott was merely buttering up an old man upon his retirement rather than saying that segregation was a good thing. Regardless, I thought he should resign simply because he displayed such poor judgment as to be demonstrably unfit to hold such an important office. Ditto Mr. Hastert.

Second, there are those who say Don’t Scapegoat Hastert:

  • GOPBloggers contributor Mark Noonan is not yet ready to judge Hastert:
    My wife saw a friend leaving work the other day with a man who wasn’t her husband. Is this a red flag? What should we do with such information? … I’m never going to agree to punish people for things they didn’t do. Neither Speaker Hastert nor any other member of Congress is responsible for Foley’s reprehensible behaviour unless they were 100% informed of all that Foley had done and then they did nothing about it.
  • Considering Hugh Hewitt’s support for onetime SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers, it should come as no surprise that he doesn’t want Hastert to resign, either:
    To do so would be to capitulate to Democratic-activist-induced and MSM-abetted hysteria. Not only should Hastert not resign, he should use every opportunity to swing back hard at a MSM deeply compromised by its ideological extremism and a Democratic Party committed to retreat and defeat in Iraq and fecklessness in the war generally.
  • Like Hewitt, Flopping Aces would like to turn this back on the Democrats:
    Stop the hysteria. Because ONE Republican turned out to be gay and had a thing for teenage men does not mean you can throw a blanket over the whole party. If that was the case then the blanket could have been thrown over the Democrats many times over since Studds and all the way up to Jefferson.
  • One Republican is getting some inadvertant bad publicity out of all this. At TownHall, Mary Katharine Ham writes:
    You know what this feels like to me? This is a classic McCain Move on the part of the Times. Get a jump on the moral high ground, condemn someone in the severest terms before the evidence necessarily justifies it. Result? You end up looking like an unassailable saint and you get a whole lotta press out of the deal. Sweet.
  • John Hawkins sounds the same note about McCain, adding:
    Although I’m not a big fan of Hastert either, falsely accusing him of covering up for a sexual predator so he can be kicked under the bus and replaced is a little too vulgar, even for the brass knuckled world of Washington Politics.
  • Perhaps most combative is Macsmind, hitting back at weak-kneed Republicans. And this is before he saw the Times editorial:
    Quite frankly for some of the conservatives crapping in their pants this isn’t about Foley, it’s about Harriet Miers, Dubai, and Fences. Get the hell over it already! The Bible says that he who makes a judgement without knowing all the facts is a fool, and we are seeing a lot of fools come out, especially on the Right. Thank God not all have the backbone of a rubberband. … Remember, vitue can be a vice in war, and ladies and gents we are at war.
  • A few are drawing not-unfounded equivalencies between the House GOP and the news outlets that had the e-mails. The Strata-Sphere is one:
    The excuses proffered by these media organizations about why they did not pursue the matter are identical to those offered up by Hastert. So if these news organizations (who had only the marginal emails - we have some suspicions about Ross and ABC who do not make that claim) then it is good enough for Hastert and company
  • Don Surber is another, cleverly if tenuously:
    The Times just lost its human resources manager because he tried to seduce a 13-year-old girl online. Using the logic of the Times, there is only one thing to do: Wesley Pruden, editor in chief, must resign.
  • Almost but not quite splitting the difference, Erick Erickson at Red State calls on Republicans to walk first and then chew gum:
    Let’s be clear — now is not the time to have a leadership struggle. We’re five weeks from an election that isn’t looking very good. But, should the GOP somehow be able to keep the House in Republican hands (and Lord I hope they can!), the Speaker must go when the House returns.

Hastert is in deep trouble now, and despite what he says today, is probably beyond rescue. I suspect the Hastert defenders will slowly start changing their minds. Sometimes the manager gets sacked, even if it’s not exactly his fault.

It really doesn’t matter whether he lied about knowing of the Foley e-mails late last week. If he did, that’s worse, but even if he didn’t, the House GOP should have still interviewed former pages, not to mention informed the Democrat on the page system committee, not to mention other Republicans on that committee.

Those were errors of moral judgment, and as often happens, they’re being followed by errors of political judgment. Starting with NRCC chair Tom Reynolds’ refusal to be “thrown under a bus,” as he put it, message discipline in the caucus has broken down, and it’s only a matter of time before the coup comes. The only real question is whether it’s before the Republicans lose the election or after.

Maps, Money and Morons: Chris Bowers Oversimplifies Things Again

Published by William Beutler on October 2, 2006 in 50 State Strategy, Blog Consultants, Campaigns, Democrats, Guest Bloggers, Internecine Battles, Midterms '06 and Netroots. 7 Comments

[Note: I present to you our latest guest post, this one coming anonymously from a regular Blog P.I. correspondent and Democratic strategist who describes himself as "exasperated by the stupidity of armchair analysts" -- with the the above-mentioned armchair analyst, particularly. With a nod to Not Larry Sabato, we'll just call him Not Paul Begala. The rest of this post is his.]

I would be willing to bet that bloggers are more “satisfied” folks than most people. They get to expunge the vitriol that inevitably builds up from day after day of reading the simplistic rantings of unqualified morons. We the frequent readers miss out on this catharsis and sit here, perpetually pent-up and ready to throw our computers, phones and cats at the wall in frustration at people who don’t know what they are writing about. Guess I need to blog more often — so thanks to Blog P.I. for allowing me this chance to vent.

My subject is the “influential blogger” (as Matt Bai points out) Chris Bowers and the utter stupidity he posted today on MyDD. Bowers is upset that the DCCC is spending too much money in red districts because if we were to win there, the majority might not last as long as if we focused on more blue districts. Set aside the fact that most Democratic bloggers have called for a 50-state strategy (see Bowers’ 2004 post, “Fifty State Strategy”) (and by extension, 435-district strategy) and consider this, from today:

“Over the past three months, by a count of 3-1 the DCCC has spent its resources in Republican-held red districts. We need to be spending much more money in blue districts that will be easier to defend, and produce Democrats more likely to stay with the majority of the caucus on difficult votes.”

What pisses me off to no end about this is the macro look this moron just took at winning the House — as if you can tell by the Partisan Voter Index (supplied by Cook Political Report) how easy it is to win a district. Or how he just forgets conveniently that Red districts have leanings where it’s much easier to define a Democrat as a liberal, pussy, God-hating yuppie. It takes money in mail, TV, research and polling to fend some of this stuff off.

So, allow me to comment on every race he lists and why the DCCC spends what it does:

    RED DISTRICTS


  • AZ-08: $445,210.71. PVI: Republican +1.4 Hey idiot, they dropped $350K in the primary trashing the Republican they would have a harder time beating and hit the jackpot — getting the conservative crackpot — so this is a safe pickup. Money well spent.

  • IL-06: $82,946.87. PVI: Republican +2.9 It’s about a half million a week to run TV here, and it shows. They’ve spent a $100K compared to the NRCC’s $500K? You call that overspending in Red districts?

  • IN-02: $319,879.08. PVI: Republican +4.3
  • IN-08: $833,899.63. PVI: Republican +8.5
  • IN-09: $83,428.98. PVI: Republican +7.1 All Indiana districts are a good investment — local dislike of Mitch “The Blade” Daniels plus prevailing national winds makes it the best time ever to get these seats. And the reason there’s $800K in 08? Hostettler has $70K on hand, and he doesn’t raise money because he knows the NRCC will save his butt. They hate him, we love him. And we’re lucky Sodrel hasn’t decided to millionaire the shit out of us in 09, cause he can do that you know. That $80K is cheap so far.

  • KY-04: $13,833.64. PVI: Republican +11.7 Spending is actually low here for a Cincy media market, but it will come.

  • NY-24: $390,447.98. PVI: Republican +0.6 It’s an open seat for fuck’s sake, if you don’t spend the money, the NRCC defines you. Do you want that?

  • NC-11: $118,496.90. PVI: Republican +7.1 They’ve actually laid off here, again, I think, waiting to buy broadcast.

  • OH-15: $52,832.64. PVI: Republican +1.1 See NC-11.

  • PA-10: $259,195.99. PVI: Republican +8.0 Every dollar spent here draws two dollars from the NRCC because they’re defending a guy who choked his girlfriend.

  • VA-02: $129,493.94. PVI: Republican +5.9 This is probably some polling and mail. They’re not sure they can do anything here until they think the Senate race is in play.

  • WI-08: $275,778.90. PVI: Republican +3.7 Again, they have to respond to the NRCC if they want to keep this race in play. The open-seat challenger had zero money to respond to TV.

    • Total: $3,005,445.26

_____

    BLUE DISTRICTS


  • CO-07: $118,907.65 PVI: Democratic +2.3 Why spend money when the Dem is going to win and has money?

  • FL-22: $135,800.60. PVI: Democratic +3.6 They’re waiting to buy broadcast TV in Miami. That shit ain’t cheap.

  • IA-01: $357,042.22– PVI: Democratic +4.8 This is a pickup, through and through. The Dem who won the primary was broke, so they had to fill in for him.

  • NM-01: $230,526.42 PVI: Democratic +2.4 That’s a pretty good investment, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. This is New Mexico, not New York.

  • PA-06: $102,239.29 PVI: Democratic +2.2 See FL-22. TV is expensive, especially Philly TV.

  • WA-08: $28,204.03. PVI: Democratic +2.3 You have to believe you can win before you spend money and they’re just not there yet. Plus, the NRCC hasn’t gone in and played, that signals how the D-Trip reacts to this race.

    • Total: $972,720.21

Another annoying thing is Bowers’ unexplained selectivity: He failed to include the other two PA contests, the three CT races, plus IA-03, GA-12 and IL-08. But what will all those show you? Not much else but that each race has multiple factors that determine spending. You know those challengers that started out a whole year in advance had plenty of time to raise resources for some of these fights. That determines spending, too. The point is, local shit matters. The story of each race matters. Macro analysis is not enough.

Now, my work done here, I can get back to the tedious job of trying to send Dems to Congress and building back up to the point of having to refute these fools again.

Monday Medley: Joe Lieberman, JonBenet, Raw Story, Katherine Harris and The Apocalypse

Published by William Beutler on August 21, 2006 in Comment Sections, Internecine Battles, Lamont v. Lieberman, Midterms '06, Republicans and Seriously. 2 Comments

Nothing really stands out today, so here’s a brief, likely unrepresentative trip around the political mediasphere:

  • If it hasn’t been said before, allow me to be the first: Raw Story’s comment boards are basically the mirror image of LGF’s.

  • In the bizarre case of semi-prominent libertarian blogger Jackie Mackie Paisley Passey, who drew much attention and much, much derision for an exceedingly arrogant post declaring just how desirable everyone must agree she is, one of the more eye-rolling aspects was her boast that one of her public photos had rated an 8.6 on Hot or Not. Yes, you read that correctly. Without an ounce of irony, she uploaded a photograph of herself to Hot or Not — and evaluated her self-worth based on the results.

    So… here I may be overstepping the bounds of good sense, if not propriety, but I took another public photo from her page and uploaded it to that very same shallow website. If you’re curious to know how she’s doing, well, have a look and rate it yourself.

    It may well be cruel to pile on at this point, and I don’t wish her ill, but it is still relevant, and my best defense is that I’m just holding her to her own standards.


  • The New York Times’ Kurt Eichenwald, who must have drawn the short straw to end up on the pedo beat, had another icky story ready to go today, just as John Mark Karr was en route to Los Angeles in a business class seat on Thai Airlines. This bit jumped out at me:

    In recent months, new concerns have emerged about whether the ubiquitous nature of broadband technology, instant message communications and digital imagery is presenting new and poorly understood risks to children.

    Um, do the last 120 months count as “recent”? Meanwhile at Hullabaloo, Digby asks:

    Considering this new awareness of the use of overly sexualized visual images of children by pedophiles, why has nobody taken the networks to task for repeatedly showing those Jon Benet beauty pageant videos ten years after the fact?

    Good question. I asked a similar question following Jane Hamsher’s deployment of that inflammatory Lieberman-in-blackface picture. If it was wrong for her to post it, what about everyone else who used it afterward? Is context really everything?


  • Josh Marshall is taking flak from readers and more than one fellow blogger for not being anti-Lieberman enough. As are others of his readers.

    The WSJ’s James Taranto has an amusing take:

    They said they would be greeted as liberators for toppling the old regime. Instead, they find themselves caught in a quagmire — a vicious, unwinnable civil war with incalculable costs in both resources and prestige. We refer, of course, to the Democrats in Connecticut.

    His proposed solution keeps the analogy going, but doesn’t make any sense:

    It looks as though Lieberman is in the race to stay — but there is an answer to the Democrats’ quandary. For the good of the party, Lamont could throw his support to Lieberman. This would leave the incumbent running essentially unopposed … allowing the Democrats to concentrate on beating Republicans. Lamont could declare that he made his point by winning the primary, but his own ambitions are less important than the party. He could then redeploy, going on the road with Lieberman, campaigning for Democratic House challengers in Connecticut and for Democratic Senate candidates elsewhere. Rather than stay in a race he is likely to lose, Lamont could prove he understands his own dictum: ”Stay the course’ is not a winning strategy.’

    Taranto frequently turns to jokes when he doesn’t actually have anything to add, and though he is undoubtely behind Lieberman in this race, this is probably one of those all-too-frequent circumstances. With the primary decided, the only candidate who has any business thinking about abandoning the race is Joe Lieberman. That said, it probably would work.


  • More or less along the same lines: I’m not one to praise recent Firedoglake addition Pachacutec — he’s Jane Hamsher without the Hollywood background — but his call for Stephen Colbert to have Conn. Senate Republican nominee Alan Schlesinger on the show is inspired.

  • The connoisseur of schadenfreude in me really hopes Katherine Harris runs for office again soon. What else is left of me declines to comment.

  • If Blog P.I. isn’t updated tomorrow, here’s maybe one reason why.

Elective RINO-plasty

Published by William Beutler on August 1, 2006 in Internecine Battles, Midterms '06, Netroots, Online Fundraising, Primary fights and Republicans. 3 Comments

Red State is one of the few conservative blogs to specialize in Republican activism, and now, guided by newly-minted CEO (but longtime contributor) Erick Erickson, the site has moved into territory only the liberal activist blogs have traversed: Supporting a primary challenge. In their first outing, Erickson & co. are teaming up with the veteran primary fight encouragers at Club for Growth to support former state Rep. Tim Walberg against liberal freshman Rep. Joe Schwarz in Michigan’s 7th district.

Red State, like almost all conservative blogs, has questioned the wisdom of Ned Lamont’s challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman (not to mention the liberal blogs for supporting it). But they share a few things in common: First of all, both seats are assumedly safe for the squabbling side. Second, both incumbents are talking up their experience, their ability to bring jobs to the state, and their endorsements from traditional interest groups close to the party. This might work with the wider electorate in each race, but it isn’t working with the online activists. For Lieberman, his Democratic opponents just don’t care: His support for the Iraq war and his palling around with Bush dwarf all other issues. For Schwarz, his Republican critics are in no mood to hear it, either. His RINO tendencies are numerous, though there isn’t an issue as galvanizing as the Iraq war [Udpdate: In the comments, I'm told the major fault here line is abortion. I can believe it, but it's still not the issue that Iraq is]. The closest thing might be the conservative bloggers’ conscious crusade against pork barrel politics. But Schwarz has generally voted the right way on taxes, and is in fact trying to attack Walberg as a tax-raiser. They aren’t buying that either, but also, Tim Walberg’s internet profile is in no way comparable Lamont’s.

Since Erickson first threw down against Schwarz on July 27, he’s been working his way through 10 reasons why Red Staters should get behind Walberg: Schwarz’s opposition to drilling in ANWR, support for Medicare-subsidized Viagra, association with an anti-Republican gay rights organization, and pro-Kelo position on eminent domain, as well as his reliance on Democrats for support.

But there’s little excitement about Walberg evident on the site. Erickson’s first post collected just 27 comments and only two pledges to donate modest sums (and the Club doesn’t make fundraising figures immediately available). The subsequent posts have averaged about four comments each, well below what most front-page posts accumulate. Of course, starting 11 days out from the primary is just too late to have any kind of real impact. The lefty blogs were about a month out when they got involved in Ciro Rodriguez’s challenge earlier this year, and that wasn’t enough.

Republican blogger activists have a long way to go in catching up to their Democratic counterparts, and today they took a big step (more on this later) [Update: It's here]. But after hitting the liberal netroots over and over with their poor electoral track record, are the Republican netroots prepared to respond if they start going 0-fer themselves?

People Who Live In Glass Polling Stations

Published by Olly Ruff on July 24, 2006 in Internecine Battles and Netroots. 0 Comments

At the WaPo’s politics blog, Chris Cillizza profiles Matt Bennett of center-left think tank Third Way. (The interview also clears up the mystery of what happened to the jumpsuit Michael Dukakis was wearing in that tank in 1988. Access to this kind of souvenir is an underrated perk of a campaign aide’s job.)

Bennett’s assertions aside, Third Way may find itself at the heart of that debate [over a Dem presidential nominee] in 2008. Many within the party are painting the 2008 nomination as struggle between those who want the party to tack further to the ideological left (best represented by the liberal blogosphere) and those, like Third Way and the DLC, who believe only by appealing to the center can Democrats regain the White House.

MyDD’s Matt Stoller reacts to this, understandably enough, by going on the offensive. After disagreeing at length with the tactics of Americans for Gun Safety, a group Bennett helped found, he says this:

Bennett doesn’t care that he’s screwed up everything he’s ever touched. Read the interview; Bennett sees himself as being in the center of the 2008 Presidential debate on the Democratic side even though he’s pursuing the same strategies he’s always pursued, and has done nothing but lose.

Stoller’s post also points out, via Cillizza, that Bennett was part of Bill Clinton’s advance team in 1992. Such failures we should all have. It’s true that Bennett worked for Wesley Clark’s 2004 campaign, and Clark didn’t win. On the other hand, neither did Howard Dean. In fact, it’s really not in the interest of the left-netroots to introduce support for winning candidates as a measure of competence. In the meantime, the question of whether the Democrats’ recent electoral fortunes are due to triangulating corporate sell-outs or unhinged lefty extremists looks set to remain unresolved for a while.

L’Affaire GoldFrisch: Part II

Published by Olly Ruff on July 14, 2006 in Comment Sections and Internecine Battles. 4 Comments

So: Deb Frisch, crazy, said bad things about Jeff Goldstein’s child, pilloried, also used as rhetorical weapon by parts of the rightosphere against the leftosphere. I was thinking it would take a week for allegations of hypocrisy to start flying back the other way, but everything happens more quickly in this fast-paced modern world of ours.

Glenn Greenwald is a relatively recent addition to the leftosphere’s A-list, and he got where he is today by writing posts like this reaction to the Deb Frisch/Jeff Goldstein controversy. By way of comparison, he makes an example of this post by the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler’s Misha. It’s not a hard post to make an example of.

Greenwald makes some valid points: the post he cites is appalling, and its author is not a nobody. The author is no more likely to murder five Supreme Court justices than Deb Frisch was to fly to Colorado and abduct Jeff Goldstein’s son, but it’s still some ugly stuff. Meanwhile, the nut of Misha’s response to Greenwald is:

1) Are you familiar with the term hyperbole? If not, look it up.

It seems relatively unlikely that Misha would accept this justification from, say, Deb Frisch. And once the obviously ridiculous death-threat aspect is dismissed, it’s hard to tell what the “hyperbole” defense is supposed to signify. (Perhaps that if the author were not exaggerating for effect, he would have scaled the phrase “koranimal swine” back to the more moderate “koranimals.”)

Greenwald’s main purpose, though, is to accuse his adversaries of enforcing double standards: if Misha — a “prominent blogger,” as he repeatedly points out — is calling for five justices of the SCOTUS to be hanged, where’s the condemnation? Isn’t this a bigger deal than some deranged adjunct saying something tasteless about someone’s family?

There are a few problems here. Firstly, if we’re actually going to take all this nonsense seriously, a death threat from an “obscure person” made in regard to a member of another blogger’s family is actually more likely to be serious than the idea of a furious “prominent blogger” hanging five ninths of the SCOTUS from a tree. Also, accusing righty bloggers of “dig[ging] under rocks” to find Frisch disregards the fact that she came over to Goldstein’s own comment section, unbidden, to have her latest psychotic break. And, with the notable exception of this widely-linked Confederate Yankee post, righty bloggers tended not to require in so many words that their lefty counterparts disassociate themselves from Frisch’s burblings: Greenwald is engaging in his own bit of sneaky guilt-by-association here.

Most important, though, is the argument Greenwald doesn’t make: namely, that the outrage over Frisch’s comments quickly became a cynical thing: another stick with which to whack the other side, and a convenient excuse for people to say whatever they wanted to to Frisch in a spirit of utter moral righteousness. The reason Greenwald can’t realistically advance this argument is that he’s in the same line of work himself:

One need only peruse the routine hate-mongering of the Right’s opinion leaders and their prominent bloggers — the Malkins and the Mishas and the David Horowitzs and the Ann Coulters — and one will find more hateful and deranged rhetoric than one can stomach. And it is almost never condemned, including by those who self-righteously parade themselves around as Defenders of Civility [ed: he's talking about Glenn Reynolds] and have the audacity to demand that others condemn such rhetoric when it comes from far less significant and influential corners.

Right. It’s not clear whether Greenwald genuinely believes his rhetoric, but he can certainly mau-mau with the best of them — and it is, after all, the nature of the game. (Plus, it’s hard not to root for him when he’s going after the “koranimal swine” guy.) Meanwhile, as a bonus for the rest of us, the grudges fomented over the last few days will make things all the more fun the next time a partisan does something stupid.

The Deb Frisch fallout is just the latest bout of a great wrestling match that plays out in comment sections all over the world: holds are tested, leverage is exploited, advantages are pursued, and both sides spend most of their time wearing ridiculous outfits and trying to get different sections of the crowd to go berserk. There’s never been a better time to be watching.

L’Affaire GoldFrisch: Part I

Published by Olly Ruff on July 13, 2006 in Comment Sections, Internecine Battles and Uncategorized. 5 Comments

Note: As previously mentioned, when I go international next week, my old friend and onetime colleague Olly Ruff will be taking over this space, live from Down Under. While he gets used to the prospect of posting for an audience on the other side of the world, and as I get ready to depart, he’ll be filing a few guest posts. Here’s one:

There’s still a sense that a blog-fight hasn’t really made the big time until it hits the paper-based media, and the saga of Deb Frisch, former Psychology adjunct at the University of Arizona, has now crossed that Rubicon. As is now a matter of record, Frisch enthusiastically trolled the oft-trolled comments of Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom, and eventually escalated matters to the point that she was making tasteless comments about Goldstein’s two-year-old son. Frisch abruptly announced her resignation, and the story kept going from there.

Although most lefty observers pointed out that they had never heard of Frisch, she didn’t materialize from thin air, she was not a right-wing stooge, and her antics chez Goldstein were not particularly unusual by her own bizarre standards. (Try this Crooked Timber thread, for instance.) Certainly, everyone who is not crazy can agree that Frisch’s comments were reprehensible. On the other hand, they could not be reasonably interpreted as a threat (to his credit, Goldstein pointed this out himself) and anyone who wastes their lives in comment sections has seen much worse. So how did things progress to the point where Deb Frisch is in the newspaper?

Continue reading ‘L’Affaire GoldFrisch: Part I’

Unrepresentative Representation

Published by William Beutler on July 12, 2006 in Democrats, Internecine Battles, Lobbying, Netroots and Roe v. Wade. 1 Comment

Many pixels have been spilled over Ned Lamont’s challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman. But the factional friction is not limited to the specific race, and seems to be re-opening an argument, last heard during the Alito fight, between the netroots and traditional interest groups.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is one of several Beltway lobbies endorsing Lieberman for the August 8 primary. Yet Carolyn Triess, Conn. chair of the group, cast her lot with Lamont as a delegate to the Conn. Dem convention in May. And Triess’ thinking is much more in line with the lefty blogosphere than her own parent organization.

A primary reason for this disconnect is Lieberman’s views on the morning-after pill. As Connecticut blogger “Connecticut” Bob Adams noted in May, Lieberman has voiced opposition to forcing hospitals to provide morning-after pills to rape victims. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has been perhaps his sharpest critic, in her rhetorically excessive way. Ned Lamont is clearly aware of this disconnect; his official site includes this unambigiuous affirmation: “I will fight to make the morning after pill available over the counter, to make emergency contraception available to all rape victims, and to support the nomination and appointment of pro-choice judges.”

But this isn’t the first time NARAL has found itself the wrong end of the blogosphere.

Continue reading ‘Unrepresentative Representation’