It is certainly disturbing that Obama is attacking a leading progressive voice in a media system where progressive opinion journalists are few are far between. What is even more disturbing is that this is not the first time the Obama campaign has considered doing this. Back during the Donnie McClurkin fiasco, it has been confirmed to me from multiple sources that the Obama campaign was preparing opposition research papers of this sort against some one of the progressive bloggers who were speaking ill of him at the time …

This is a campaign that appears willing to go negative against a wide range of progressive media figures should those figures step out of line and criticize Obama campaign decisions. Given that, I became personally worried that an Obama nomination would, at some point in the future, result in a public smear campaign, possibly directed by the a new White House communications department, against me and / or many of my friends and colleagues.

Bowers no doubt reserves the right to criticize President Obama, but apparently believes he and his ideological allies are above reproach. Look, the instinct to react negatively to criticism is not unsurprising or even wrong. But Obama is merely asserting himself against a critic who had praised him before. That’s not unsurprising or wrong, either. But rather than address the specifics, Bowers’ response amounts to “Do you know who I am?” Or more accurately: “Do you know who he is?”

Ezra Klein at least acknowledges there is substance to the debate:

It’s not only the actual attacks that are weak (most of them rely on misinterpreting one comment, then misinterpreting the next, then pretending there’s a contradiction)…

yet he can’t escape progressive identity politics, either:

…but, seriously, it’s Paul Krugman.

And in any case, that isn’t Bowers’ problem. Trust me, conservative bloggers are ignored by Republicans more than progressives think they are by Democrats. Bowers just perceives any slight from those more powerful as unfair marginalization — when in fact it is actually the opposite.

It’s difficult to imagine conservative bloggers being terribly upset about a Republican campaign rebutting — not even collecting or distributing oppo on — say, David Brooks. Perhaps Paul Krugman simply has a reputation among the left unrivaled by any major commentator on the right, among the right. Or maybe Brooks isn’t the right analogy. Nobody speaks of him as the “most conservative voice in the mainstream media,” only the most conservative voice on the NYT op-ed page. Are the left’s celebrated public figures more important to them than any celebrity on the right? If so, is this because contemporary progressives have fewer established wins than the right, and hence a more grievance-based, underdog mentality? If so, this would explain why an attack on one might be considered an attack on all. So maybe there is no analogy. Among conservative bloggers, no one’s ego is dependent upon Republican campaigns genuflecting to George Will, Charles Krauthammer or Jonah Goldberg.

Is there anyone who would qualify? Probably Glenn Reynolds and Ed Morrissey, maybe Michelle Malkin and perhaps even Hugh Hewitt (although his influence has been sliding badly as of late). But here’s the key thing: This doesn’t hold if the campaign has a point.

If a Republican office-seeker responded unfairly to a salient criticism from a conservative blogger (or even columnist) on an issue that conservatives thought important, then sure. If Malkin criticizes a Republican candidate, only for the candidate to point out that Malkin had praised the same candidate on the same issue before — as is the case with Krugman — then she would take her lumps like anyone else. She’d have some knee-jerk defenders, but no one would write, “seriously, it’s Michelle Malkin.”

After all, Bowers’ other complaints about the Obama campaign are more reasonable. Among them he notes “the poor blogosphere outreach, the willingness to triangulate against left-wing strawmen, and incessant, beltway-pundit friendly talk about the need to ‘fix’ Social Security” are things that would annoy conservative bloggers — not about reforming Social Security, of course, but perhaps advocating amnesty-first, enforcement-maybe immigration reform.

Yet his main grievance is that Obama might push back against critics from the left, including that special class, bloggers. As to that point, a few hours later, TPM’s Greg Sargent checked in with the Obama campaign, which denied collecting oppo research on multiple bloggers:

The Obama campaign put together oppo docs against progressive bloggers hitting the campaign over the mess surrounding antigay folk singer McClurkin? That’s a strong charge — but the Obama camp is denying it. I checked in with a campaign spokesman, who told me: “This is absolutely not true.”

If it turns out that Bowers was correct in that they were researching just one blogger and their denial refers to more than one bloggers, then his complaint would be better justified. Until then, Bowers’ insinuation that liberal bloggers are above the political fray is silly and further evidence that, like all practitioners of identity politics, consider themselves a protected class. They are not. If you attempt to influence political campaigns, you’re in the fray and subject to scrutiny like any other political actor from dark horse challenger to 527 chieftain. Last year, bloggers in Virginia faced up to this fact, when rumors swirled that then Senator-elect Jim Webb had collected information on conservative and liberal bloggers alike. Those charges were denied and never substantiated, but it was plausible and it should have been a wake-up call.

Then again, in an update a few hours later, Bowers revealed that he was, in fact, just overreacting:

This isn’t about kissing blogosphere ass, Joe Anthony, the tone that Obama takes on the campaign, the specifics of the Krugman fight, the use of left-wing strawmen, how to change Republican behavior in Congress, or that Obama doesn’t have a right to disagree with progressives. Or at least, isn’t about the specifics of any of those cases, but instead about the broad and contradictory pattern to which they point. This is about trying to make sense of a strange and contradictory relationship that contains so many good things and so many bad things all at the same time.

It’s not you, it’s me? Well, at least that clears things up! Meanwhile, a clearer-headed, more insightful, more sensible take from Digby:

Perhaps [responding to Krugman is] the smart move. It has long been known by just about everyone who matters that the rank and file activists of the Democratic party are a huge liability. And anyway, where are we going to go? Mike Huckabee? Ron Paul? We have no choice. So, no harm no foul. Running to the right of even Hillary Clinton on health care and social security and using GOP talking points and symbolism is probably all upside. … Obama is a tremendously exciting and talented politician and I would vote for him against any Republican out there without blinking an eye. But as a certified DFH, I really wish he weren’t running this way. Paul Krugman most certainly is not the enemy and neither am I.

Unfortunately, she updated later to agree with Bowers. But at least Digby understands that they’ve been Sister Souljahed. It’ll happen to conservative bloggers, too. And while it might not be easy, they should consider it a sign they’ve arrived.

This time they sought to draw attention to John Edwards’ high-rolling, high-spending ways (which every political reporter already knows about) with a mailer trying to sully John Edwards’ name by tying him to… Johnny Cash?

Seriously:

Unsurprisingly, Cash’s estate contacted the RNC (and presumably U.S. News) to ask that the Highwayman’s name be removed from future editions. So apparently now they’re calling him “Johnny Bills,” which doesn’t make any sense.

But it makes more sense than trying to drag down Johnny Cash’s name. At least an unidentified RNC official conceded the mistake to Washington Whispers:

We’re in a ring of fire. … They called us and said they had some issues with the trademarks and all. But they were cool about it. I mean, we have the same constituency.

Or maybe they thought associating Edwards with Cash would somehow… hurt Edwards? The connection between the two Johns is non-existent, except maybe that both their middle initials is “R.”

As a Johnny Cash fan, you can certainly count me as displeased with the RNC’s attempt to make “Johnny Cash” sound like a bad thing. And let’s not forget, this is the same guy who once sang, in the song whence this post derives its name:

Now this should be a lesson if you plan to start a folk group
Don’t go mixin’ politics with the folk songs of our land
Just work on harmony and diction
Play your banjo well
And if you have political convictions keep them to yourself

By all means, RNC, keep hitting John Edwards on his rhetoric and economic proposals. And his being out of touch with the electorate is fair game, too. But please, leave the Man in Black out of it.

Videotape everything they do

All it takes is one “Macaca” incident to transform a race or create one where one didn’t exist. … And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It’s about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events. … The more material we amass today, the better we’ll able to use that video to support our efforts next year.

Little Green Footballs, among the few blogs from either side to warrant its own adversarial watchdog site, considered it perhaps better advice than he knew:

Excellent advice. To which I would add, don’t forget to take screenshots of everything the Kos Kidz do.

Dean Barnett — Hugh Hewitt’s right-hand man — was more complimentary and, in a trend that would be repeated, took it seriously enough to build on the idea:

First of all, to give credit where it’s due, this is an excellent idea. Because I’m not really the call-to-action type, I’ll leave it to some other enterprising right wing pundit to market a similar effort for conservative activists. We really should get busy on this because Democrats are at least as tongue-tied and prone to blunders as Republicans. Need I remind you, John Kerry is up for re-election in ’08. His race alone should keep a half-dozen Republican digital camcorders busy.

Matt Margolis from GOP Bloggers (and the late Blogs for Bush) found the strategy wanting, a distraction from the ideas that win campaigns:

I’m sorry. I just don’t agree. We should be above the sick game of gotcha politics. If there’s anything we should have learned from 1994 is that Americans respond to an agenda, and Republicans shouldn’t need to sink down to Kos’s level. I’d much rather see Republicans win on ideas than see Democrats lose because of some video showing an unflattering moment they’d sooner forget.

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

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

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

Calling for an accumulation of “gotcha” moments is a strategy about nothing, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld. It’s not about persuading or inspiring voters. It merely reminds them that we are governed by two-faced narcissistic jerks. That’s why negative campaigning’s most notable effect is to suppress voter turnout. It doesn’t make voters say, ”Aha! Now I prefer X over Y.” It makes them say, “I was going to vote for Y, but now, ew.”

Kos is right. If you turn off more Republicans than Democrats, you’ve improved your chances of winning. But no matter how much video you capture, you can’t depend on coming out ahead in the gotcha race. It only works if the other side lets its guard down and lets you off the hook when you make your own blunders. In the YouTube era, that’s basically an assumption that your opponents will commit professional suicide. Good luck with that.

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

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

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

So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments.

It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.

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

The thrust of Perlstein’s argument is that identity, or “tribal” issues, matter in partisan politics, and the more critical stories about Romney that appear in the elite media, the better he is likely to do with the Republican base. As he summarizes: “Get branded such a villain by our liberal elites, and you also might win a Republican primary.” The logic is sound enough, but Perlstein ascribes too much power to this phenomenon. Just because the “liberal media” is antagonistic toward a Republican candidate is not enough to change the fundamentals, and Romney’s fundamentals are bad.

Let’s start with this passage from his article, where Perlstein turns to the Internet to substantiate his point:

Consider the sarcastic reflection of this denizen of the right-wing website Free Republic:

Allright, an AP hit piece! The MSM has more acute RINOdar than we. Real RINO’s don’t get rinky-dink MSM hit pieces such as this. This proves that the MSM believes Romney is a conservative, and therefore must be roughed up.

Translation: I used to suspect that Romney was only a “Republican in Name Only.” But now I realize: He bugs the liberal media. By the tribal logic of right-wing identity politics, that is enough–Mitt Romney now can be called a conservative.

This interpretation is overly reductive — even Newtonian. As Perlstein would have it, for every action on the part of the media, there is an equal and opposite reaction from the conservative base. Leaving aside the fact that the Henry Ford story is less a flap than a blip — only the National Jewish Democratic Council made an issue of it, and Media Matters has pronounced the story “ignored” — it assumes that conservatives are captives of their distrust of the mainstream media.

Perlstein’s suggestion that dubious media attacks on Romney could bolster his support on the right almost certainly gets it backward: politicians who enjoy notable support in this regard have already bonded with their base. Presidents are frequent recipients; as the headlines got worse for Clinton and Bush through their two terms, the base rallied around them (although Bush seems to have exhausted that reserve of goodwill). Galvanizing candidates, such as Howard Dean, also can receive this kind of support. Unfortunately for Romney, he is neither.

Perlstein buttresses his case by comparing Romney’s announcement to a controversial 1980 campaign speech by onetime liberal Ronald Reagan. According to Perlstein, Reagan benefited from “all that outrage” over the location: Philadelphia, MS, site of the infamous 1964 Klan murders of civil rights workers. But there are several problems here. As noted above, the outrage about Romney’s speech was very limited and even treated like a joke. As even Perlstein admits of Ford’s Nazi sympathies, “Those memories no longer exist–except to the hair-trigger sensitivities of the likes of the NJDC.” Additionally, those Klan murders are the only reason anyone outside of Mississippi has heard of that particular Philadelphia, whereas the Ford musesum is pure Americana — technological innovation and nostalgia for what technology has made obsolete. And by 1980 Reagan was already a conservative hero, which of course Romney is not.

Perlstein also misses a few things about conservative “tribal” identity. Early in the article he asks:

Some observers wondered if perhaps [spotlighting noted anti-Semite Henry Ford] wasn’t intentional: If you want to prove to conservatives you’re no liberal, what better way than to announce on the former estate of a man who, as the NJDC also pointed out, was “bestowed with the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle by Adolf Hitler”?

“Nazi” is an epithet hurled at Republicans by liberals; it’s not a badge of honor and not a term that is available to be “reclaimed” like “bitch” or “queer.” Considering evangelical Christians’ close alliance with conservative Jews, their support of Israel above the Palestinians, and the growing perception that the “new anti-Semitism” is a liberal disease, there’s no percentage (in the polls or otherwise) in such a strategy. Bank shots are risky; bank shots that contradict your own beliefs are doubly so. Bank shots opening oneself up to charges of bigotry are dangerously stupid.

Not to mention, I’m not even sure that the Free Republic quote really says what Perlstein thinks it does. The comment at once suggests that the AP can accurately identify fake conservatives, and then implies that the media thinks Romney is a true conservative. Perhaps this commenter agrees with the media, but most Freepers do not. At best, Romney’s conservative credentials are a matter of debate. For example, check out the Free Republic thread responding to this exact same Perlstein article, where one finds a few Romney apologists, but others saying things like:

Strange that he was really pro life after professing to be pro-choice since 1970. And that he thought since Roe V wade was already decided, we should “sustain and support it”.

Plus he’s a gun grabber who is now trying to kiss the NRA’s butt.

At least with rudy you know you’re getting a liberal. With romney you’re getting a used car salesman who will say whatever it takes to get elected. In 2004 we called that ‘flip flopping’ when a certain democrat did it.

Flip-flopping is a charge Democrats would love to be able to throw back at Republicans in 2008, and Romney is the most susceptible. Romney has made the mistake of trying to persuade social conservatives that he is one of them, despite well-publicized past statements to the contrary. Like John Kerry, he may have flopped in the “correct” direction — but also like John Kerry, he can’t find the words to adequately explain why.

Contrast this with Giuliani’s approach: he too was elected by a left-leaning electorate, is openly pro-choice, and has similar hurdles to overcome. But so far at least, he isn’t trying to sell himself as a Bush-style social conservative. By downplaying his personal beliefs while promising to appoint strict constructionist judges, he’s selling himself as an ally of Bush-style social conservatives.

Even if we do accept Perlstein’s Newtowian politics, there’s so much more dirt out there about Giuliani that all those negative stories would surely generate more reactive reactionary reinforcement for him than Romney. And unlike Romney, Giuliani has never publicly disavowed Ronald Reagan. Among tribal issues, that will matter much more than anything the MSM can say.

And the pictures? The screen caps depict a major lapse in network security — one exposing certain member and donor information. In layman’s terms, they left the back door open all weekend. Earlier this afternoon I communicated with ActBlue executive director Ben Rahn, verifying the incident and gathering more information. Here is what went down, based on my limited reporting:

On Friday afternoon, a software developer’s error inadvertantly changed the network security settings, granting administrative-level access to occasional users (i.e., not every account). For example, if you are a normal user and you log in at normal times, this is what the top right-hand corner of the page will look like:

But if you are an administrator — or a normal user this weekend — the top right-hand corner of your page would have looked like:

Anyone who knew enough to be dangerous could get in and change settings or make the site do unpleasant things. But perhaps more worrisome, anyone could now access the Treasury database and start downloading sensitive donor information, in the form of CSV files, showing who had given to whom and how much.

I have a few of these screen shots, just enough to give an idea of what’s there without actually compromising ActBlue further. So, to start, if you click on that Admin link, you would find yourself at the Admin page:

From there it’s one more click to the Treasury Dashboard showing the actual bank accounts (account numbers blurred, incomplete though they are) ActBlue uses to manage the funds it receives:

And the candidates? Both John Edwards and Bill Richardson use ActBlue to collect their online donations. So here’s the Richardson page:

Note the “CSV data” in the furthest-right column. Aside from a prankster turning the site’s color scheme red, that’s where the real trouble lies.

There are a few reasons why this breach is not what it could have been. For one, as Rahn emphasized to me, “To be clear, credit card data is never available from the web site, and thus was never at risk of compromise.” Additionally, CSV (that’s comma-separated values) files can be a bit of a pain, especially if you don’t really know what you’re doing. And of course there is one thing that may have occurred to you already: All of this information will eventually be released to the FEC.

That said, there’s no telling what a rival campaign or unaffiliated opportunist savvy enough to collect and and synthesize this data could do. In the fundraising business, gathering data is difficult. Names, addresses and e-mails would be worth a lot of money to other candidates, political associations or other interested parties. Those names could be cross-referenced against existing lists of donors, and e-mail addresses of known political donors would be a hot property (even if “hot”). Any Senate data would be a huge bonus, because Senate candidates aren’t required to file electronic records with the FEC (and nobody wants to search thousands of PDFs).

So you never know. Maybe it’s something. Maybe it’s nothing. As Rahn told me today:

As it happens, we identified and resolved the problem Sunday morning; it was caused by a developer’s error on Friday afternoon. Your source’s findings essentially describe the “worst case scenario” [that could be caused by this error] … After resolving the prolem we combed through the logs of reports accessed during the window, and the most likely case is that reports were only accessed by those who should have seen them and perhaps a few curious users (such as your source) who might have explored a link they hadn’t seen before and done nothing with the data. However, there is no way for us to completely rule out the contrary cases.

And he assures me that they are “taking steps to ensure that this does not recur,” as one might imagine.

We’ve come a long way since Sandra Bullock pressed Esc and wound up getting chased around “The Net” by a clichéd British villain, and by now most of us are comfortable buying things and donating money online — despite the risks. Security errors are a fact of life. They will be a fact of political life, too.

Thanks to the Internet, and with the explosion of blogging especially, all of a sudden we political types have an easier time spreading around our dirt. In the past, we used to have to play by the rules of the old media: space limitations, kissing reporter’s butts and packaging the story just right.

Now, and especially for big campaigns, all you have to do is leak it to a blogger, or in this case, The Smoking Gun.

The fascinating thing to me is the reasoning behind the leaks. Before, you wanted to get something into a newspaper or TV so you could cite it in your advertisement as a legitimate news source. Now, they get it into the bloodstream early so reporters define candidates in their coverage.

Giving it to TSG wasn’t exactly the best way to write a narrative, but the blogs will take it from there. My guess is that now, for a cycle or two at least, the “Rudy is damaged goods” story goes up a notch.

WWB Update, Feb. 17: Guess not. The Edwards blogger fiasco was the online story this week. Meanwhile, not too much on Giuliani’s second cousin wedding/annullment (FDR and Eleanor were distant cousins, right?). And one could argue Romney has it the worst.

But we may just now be learning how savvy his campaign really was: Last evening, conservative Virginia blogger Shaun Kenney posted this unsourced but possibly legitimate report:

If you are a Virginia blogger, chances are that the Webb campaign has an opposition research book on you. Bloggers that made the cut include Chad Dotson, Jim Hoeft, Ben Tribbett, Waldo Jaquith, Josh Chernila, Lowell Feld, Jim Riley, J.C. Wilmore, Jon Henke, and a host of others. These are not your typical background checks either… a significant amount of money was spent crafting the kind of opposition research one would typically find on a candidate running for public office. It seems as if the Webb campaign made a strategic decision to unleash this opposition research if something damaging came out against their candidate, simply to personally slander the blogger making the claim.

Slander might not be the right word here; assuming the dirt was true, “smear” would probably cover it just fine. Many of Kenney’s commenters wanted proof. None has surfaced as yet, but they did get the next best thing in an apparent confirmation from liberal Virginia blogger Ben Tribbett, who is Not Larry Sabato:

What I have been told by some reliable sources is that Shaun’s report is very close to reality. However, I am hearing that the list of bloggers researched is “smaller” than Shaun’s list, while the amount of information compiled on those bloggers chosen is “very large” … The staff involved can not keep their story straight. One person pointed out they had a report done on them, and we should feel complimented, and another denied any such thing existed. I’m hearing “yes” on J.C. Wilmore, Jon Henke, myself and Lowell Feld, and working on confirmation on others. If this list stays slanted to the Democrats, we can assume these reports were generated for potential retribution instead of proactive research.

That bloggers in opposing political camps are giving credence to the story is what makes it credible, and the Webb campaign targeting bloggers in opposing political camps is what makes it interesting. (There is another reason why this story is notable, and we’ll get to it shortly.) Of course, let me add that right now this story remains purely a rumor. Repeat: There is no actual evidence to support these claims, only the integrity of the bloggers involved. End disclaimer.

It might come as a minor revelation that political campaigns would look into the backgrounds of bloggers who oppose them, but as long as the oppo research stays on safe legal ground, there’s nothing particularly controversial here. But what of the supposed research into Webb’s allies — and employees? Feld heads up Virginia’s biggest liberal blog, Raising Kaine, and was employed by Webb as netroots coordinator. Why on Earth would he want to risk alienating his chief ally in the blogosphere?

Easy: To protect himself. Everybody who follows politics at least casually knows about oppo research, but the flip-side of that seamy-but-crucial campaign activity is what’s called self-research.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that the Webb campaign would do this, if they did this. Recent history gives us good reason to assume that politicians are wary of bloggers, certainly more so than traditional volunteers (who do not make a point of expressing their opinions in public).

Recall not just the blackface controversy in this year’s CT SEN race — after which Ned Lamont unconvincingly blurted to reporters: “I don’t know anything about the blogs” — but also the infamous “screw them” moment in 2004, where then-rising blog star Markos Moulitsas callously dismissed the deaths of American contractors in Iraq.

Some Virginia bloggers assume this research might have been used for character assassination, but what’s more likely is the Dem-side research was done to decide whether to hire Feld in the first place, and whether to associate with other bloggers. Do we really expect that a Senate campaign wouldn’t do this kind of due diligence?

There is certainly some political risk in doing so; bloggers often don’t like being part of “poltics as usual,” and that’s certainly what this is. If Webb really was cagey enough to research not just his opponent’s allied bloggers but his own as well, many think that would put him over the line from “shrewd” to “paranoid.” Indeed, it would be highly cynical of Webb to imagine that Feld might turn around and start attacking him before the race concluded. But it’s less cynical to think that someone not on his payroll — Tribbett, Jaquith, Wilmore — might do so. In politics, cynicism pays. And where it comes to the blogosphere, right now every campaign is making it up as they go along.

Wilmore, who writes The Richmond Democrat, does not think that this is necessarily Webb’s doing:

I don’t think this story is about Jim Webb. I think it’s about Jessica Vanden Berg, and it seems to me that this is really two stories.

The first story is that the Webb campaign did oppo research on Republican opposition bloggers. To me this only makes sense. Members of Allen’s “A-Team” and “B-Team” had certainly injected themselves into the political process and were fair game. For my part, I know for a fact that I was oppo’d by the Allen campaign. I have no complaints on that score …

The second story is where the controversial part of this incident lies. Did Jessica Vanden Berg authorize opposition research on prominent Democratic bloggers who were allied to (and in some cases employed by) the Webb campaign? Were research dossiers or “books” compiled on some of Webb’s key supporters? It’s an important question. It implies that we were considered threats to the Webb campaign, which is odd, because most of us were involved, to some degree or another, in getting the Webb campaign off the ground. …

No, it seems unlikely to me that we were perceived as a threat to Jim Webb. But were we a threat to Jessica Vanden Berg? Were we were oppo’d for that reason? Did Vanden Berg — feeling threatened by the dialogue occurring on our blogs — authorize oppo research on us to shore up her own position within the campaign?

He followed up, e-mailing Vanden Berg for confirmation or denial. And a denial he got:

We don’t have an opposition research on you. We don’t have any opposition research books on any people who blog.

And that’s what also makes this story interesting. This denial rules out more than just oppo on Jaquith, Wilmore, Feld, Tribbett and other Webb supporters, but Allen’s A-Team members including Dotson, Riley and others. The Webb camp didn’t do any research on anyone who blogged the campaign? Not even on Henke — a paid adviser to the Allen campaign?

This answer is either untenable or too revealing. Maybe they weren’t so savvy after all — perhaps we’re only finding out that they were lucky.

In any case, this one started in the blogosphere, but if these questions are to be resolved, the MSM just might have to step in.

P.S. Henke has published his own oppo file, to the best that he can recall:

When I was about 5 years old, I stole a quarter from a girl named Jennifer Weidler. It was a Bicentennial quarter, which I thought it was very cool-looking. I’ve always regretted that.

P.P.S. It’s also worth noting that Tribbett is no fan of Vanden Berg’s, though it may be immaterial to the facts in this case.

P.P.P.S. Also worth noting, a contributor to Raising Kaine, not Feld, added today:

My sources at the campaign are saying this simply isn’t true.

He probably means transition team, as the campaign has concluded. That said, it would be nice to know how many sources each blogger is citing, and which of them actually worked with Vanden Berg.