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Archive for the 'Primary fights' Category

Four Blogs, Two Candidates and One Year Later

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

Balloon Juice, The Daily Dish, MyDD and Taylor Marsh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hillary’s Got Base

Published by Not Paul Begala on April 30, 2007 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Netroots, Polling, Primary fights and White House '08. 6 Comments

Chris Bowers of MyDD jump-started some of my thinking on whether or not Hillary vs. Obama poll numbers have any inherent biases built into them, but Mark Blumenthal ends that discussion here with some smart analysis that suggests there is no difference between national surveys of so-called Dem primary voters.

Bowers postulated that the screens were not tight enough and Hillary had a name ID advantage that was explaining her lead. I believed some version of that for a while as well, but those numbers suggest to me that something very different is happening in the Democratic primary race.

Look at the chart Blumenthal produces:

Hillary-Obama match-up from Mystery Pollster

That Mark Mellman poll piqued my interest.

One of the reason we hacks so trust our pollsters is they use better methods than the (cheap) traditional media outlets use. Mellman’s poll uses a registration-based screen with voter history as a leading indicator of primary participation. Translated into English: He bought a voter file and called people who vote in primaries. That’s significantly more expensive to do, but provides much more valuable information.

So, here’s your resident Dem hack’s analysis of those numbers.

Hillary Clinton has a big-time base of support. She has 38% of the electorate — an electorate that is closely watching this race so far and has not decided to leave her. Edwards and Obama both have 77% name ID in this poll to Clinton’s 96%. That’s low, but couldn’t possibly account for her entire lead, and let me quibble with one point of analysis from their own page:

…Obama and Edwards are more popular among Democratic primary voters who know them.

Yeah, no shit. Your supporters tend to know who you are. It’s a common misconception in polling analysis that the uniformed portion of a poll acts like the informed portion.

Either way, I would think the Obama and Edwards teams need to face a hard fact: primary Dems know Hillary and they’re sticking with her right now. They will need to start identifying ways to peel off those voters if they want to win.

38% of the vote in a six-way primary is a massive amount of support and I won’t even get into an analysis of HRC’s favorables in this poll (they’re good) because it would take me another three paragraphs I don’t feel like writing that much.

But… HRC hasn’t locked this up by any means. It’s significant that 62% of Dems choose someone else and when there are fewer candidates to choose from, they’ll undoubtedly consolidate.

But the media don’t report like that; they only crown winners. In a front-loaded primary, people who look like they’re going to win generally get votes. It won’t be hard for HRC to start rolling through if she can emerge from IA, NH, NV, SC with a couple wins.

That makes those states do or die for Edwards and Obama. They need to shake up Hillary’s base.

The Next Lieberman?

Published by William Beutler on March 28, 2007 in Chuck Hagel, Internecine Battles, Lamont v. Lieberman, Primary fights and Republicans. 3 Comments

Nobody would confuse Sen. Chuck Hagel with a loyal Republican. It’s not that he’s a “maverick” like John McCain. It’s worse — he’s a turncoat. What’s more, Hagel has broken with his own party on the same issue as his mirror image in the Senate, the Iraq war’s number one fan, Joe Lieberman.

His ruminations on impeaching President Bush this weekend and decision last night to cross party lines and vote with the Democrats to set a timeline for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq only underscores this perception, and could hasten a process that Swing State Project’s DaveSund envisioned earlier this week:

Like Lieberman, he’s a staple on the Sunday morning talk shows, advocating a war strategy that is diametrically opposed to his own party. But if you lined them up side-by-side, I doubt that you’d find many issues which they’d agree on. Their similarities begin and end with how they are reviled by the rank-and-file of their own party. … So, just kind of picture this: Nebraska Republicans, increasingly upset at Hagel’s continued criticisms of Bush, line up behind Bruning. Not elected Republicans, of course. The Nebraska Republican establishment will be firmly behind Hagel. [Attorney General Jon] Bruning, surprised by the enthusiasm of his supporters, preempts Hagel’s late summer announcement by announcing that he will, indeed, run for Senate regardless of Hagel’s intentions. Hagel decides to run, setting up a showdown in May of 2008.

A lot has to break just right for this scenario to play out. First, Hagel has to decline a presidential bid — it’s hard to see how he could run as a Republican, more plausible but no less quixotic to assume the (still theoretical) mantle of Unity08. Lieberman is Hagel is LiebermanThen he would have to decide to run for re-election, which is not guaranteed. Then Bruning would have to renege on his promise not to challenge Hagel for the GOP nod. And finally, the Nebraska GOP establishment would have to stand by their incumbent. But it sounds like it could happen, even if only because it’s happened before.

Now, I don’t think Hagel is disliked by conservatives as much as Lieberman is disliked by Democrats. For one, conservatives have had their way on the war — except for everything after the invasion, of course — and Hagel has been an irrelevant nag. Until now, of course. Conservatives may be unhappy with the direction of the war, but it’s very unlikely a significant number of them will move in Hagel’s direction, and less likely still they would reward Hagel for being right, even if he is.

Right or wrong, Hagel is a prime target for Republican ire not just in his own state but nationwide: he sold out the party and sold out on the war. If he gets primaried, Bruning could be the next Ned Lamont. Well, almost:

There is one key difference, of course: if Hagel loses the Republican nomination, he can’t run in the “Nebraska for Hagel” party. Nebraska law expressly forbids running for the same office after losing the primary.

If anything, this makes a primary challenge only more likely. If the intraparty fight could extend from May to November, Bruning and other Republicans may decline to prolong the split as the party aims to unify and focus on the presidential election. Assured that no matter what, it would be over well before the national conventions, what’s the downside?

What the Media Can’t Do for Mitt Romney

Published by William Beutler on February 25, 2007 in Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Internecine Battles, MSM, Mitt Romney, Oppo Research, Primary fights, Republicans, Rhetoric, Roe v. Wade, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 4 Comments

The Romney campaign has to be pretty happy with liberal historian Rick Perlstein this week, or about as happy as they could be with anyone accusing them of winking at anti-Semitism. On Wednesday TNR Online published an article in which he argued that media reports highlighting complaints about Mitt Romney’s Henry Ford Museum announcement speech will help him connect with skeptical conservatives.

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.

The Power and the People

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 29, 2007 in Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucuses, Netroots, Primary fights and White House '08. 0 Comments

Reading this story at The Politico the other day made me chuckle. It’s vintage Iowa:

Pat named her cat Hillary and when she heard that Hillary, the presidential candidate, was coming to town, she got a friend to help her and they managed to get Hillary (the cat) to make a paw print on a picture of Hillary (the cat) to give Hillary (the candidate.) … She also said, “I have never heard a national candidate with such a fine-tuned knowledge of children. Thank you for your service to children.”

Hillary voter, right?

“I am not satisfied with her explanation about the Iraq war,” Pat said. But come on. After the cat, the blue eyes, the paw print, the red blazer, the knowledge of children, the 12 TV cameras and international press corps taking down every word, after all this, you are really not going to commit to Hillary? “Well, she is one of my top three,” Pat said.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, how much money you have or how much star power you bring to the table. They don’t care if you are not right on their issues.

These are votes you have to earn.

And there’s a very simple reason about why they are able to put you through the ringer to earn that vote: the caucus rules.

The rules are very complicated and the longer someone is a participant, the better they know them. Rural areas can yield you as many delegates as urban ones because of the previous year’s attendance and because many committed activists over a large area are grouped together into a caucus location. You have to attend a 3 or 4 hour meeting to cast your vote and then the viability rule might nullify your first choice.

Then the real fun kicks in. Every staffer who’s ever set foot in Iowa will tell you a story about the one “activist” you had to get because that guy or gal was the person who could reel in the delegates who pick candidates that don’t meet the viability rule.

Markos and other bloggers don’t like this system.

Sometimes I wonder why. After all, there’s something special about a group of people who both have power and are unimpressed by it.

Hillary in Blogistan: On Blogads, The Netroots and Peter Daou

Published by William Beutler on January 25, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, Asymmetrical Media, Barack Obama, Blog Fights, Blogging Officials, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Netroots, Primary fights, Tough Crowd, Web video and White House '08. 32 Comments

Hillary Clinton did not wait long after her weekend presidential campaign announcement to step foot in the blogosphere: By Monday her technically fledgling but long-assumed campaign had taken major steps toward engaging web users, starting with her three-night series of half-hour webcasts, which concluded just last evening. Moreover, her camp had sought specifically to engage the dedicated online activists who call themselves the netroots, by promoting the webcasts through the industry standard Blogads service.

Her detractors among those online activists did not wait long, either. At MyDD, one of the leading anti-Hillary sites on the left, Matt Stoller criticized her team for purchasing ads on some conservative blogs:

Why do people like HRC, no matter how often it becomes clear that wingnuts hate us, seek approval from wingnuts?

Before long, another animadversion came from former Nevada [and current online] talk show host (and recent Stoller employee) Taylor Marsh, who was upset to find she had been left out:

It’s not like her team doesn’t know I exist. I find it a little annoying that Clinton’s team thinks that people like me don’t merit advertisement, simply because our numbers don’t reach the one-hundred thousand mark.

We’ll address the specifics of these charges, but in order to do so, first let’s try to describe the buy itself:

Hillary Clinton's first BlogadThe Clinton team can’t or won’t say what they spent on the buy, but on Monday, Blog P.I. went digging through the extensive a la carte ordering page at Blogads to find out where they had made their buys and make a reasonably educated guess about how much they had spent.

While I am quite sure I did not locate every ad on every blog, the initial buy was worth at least $17,026 across at least 45 blogs. The buy comprised political blogs almost exclusively, liberal blogs overwhelmingly, and primarily those with a national reach. Nearly every liberal blog above 50,000 impressions per week picked up a blogad, though a few did not (as we’ll see below) and at least a few regional and small-traffic blogs also were included. The campaign bought some Premium ads (which are guaranteed to be the top ads visible) on liberal sites but generally stuck with the Standard ads, and went with the bargain buys on each of the conservative blogs included. And how many conservative blogs was that? I counted just four: Hugh Hewitt, Power Line, Captain’s Quarters and Wizbang Politics (i.e. not the front page), each worth between 550,000 and 150,000 impressions per week for a total $1,150.

Yesterday Blog P.I. contacted Clinton’s principal blog adviser, Peter Daou, for elaboration. As he explained, the first round was for the webcasts, the second round (which began last night) was for inviting supporters and potential supporters to submit guest blog posts. According to Daou, future buys will focus on particular issues Sen. Clinton wants to highlight, and in states and regions where she will be traveling. The strategy is not fixed, and more to the point, neither are the number of sites. “A blog being excluded has absolutely no implication, except we’ll get there next time,” Daou said. “We’ll try to get as many bloggers as possible.” For anyone who remembers Daou’s last gig, the blog roundup published by Salon which still bears his name, Daou often went out of his way to reach down and pull obscure blogs up into the mix. To be sure, he’s not spending his own money, and cheap as Blogads can be, even Hillary Clinton does not have unlimited funds. But to the extent he can, it’s reasonable to expect that Daou will keep doing so.

·      ·      ·

And on Wednesday night, hours after the final webcast, the ad strategy did indeed shift: At the same time the buy expanded on liberal blogs, it disappeared from the conservative sites. To the Clinton team, it made sense to get attention from the right when the focus was on the webcast, but now that the ads are inviting people to submit guest posts to her site, inviting the “winguts” would indeed be a waste of time. Had they not made this distinction here, Stoller’s gripe surely would have been right.

But here’s the interesting thing: Blogads buys are one-week minimum commitments, though advertisers can change the specific ad as many times as they want — or remove it entirely. This is just what they’ve done: In order to stick to the plan, they have no choice but to pay Power Line and the rest not to run the ad, at least for a few more days (surely someone will compare this to farm subsidies, but no one has; one might say they’re just not into her).

For example, here is a screen shot taken last night, confirming two ads running on Power Line:

Power Line Blogad profile

But here is the Power Line sidebar as of last night:

Power Line blogad now disappeared

Not that the ads necessarily earned anyone’s approval: Dean Barnett, Hugh Hewitt’s co-blogger, took exception and* deemed it a misstep on Hillary’s part:

If Hillary is advertising to reach out to our core audience, she should save her money. I get your emails – I know none of you will be supporting Hillary in the Democratic primaries. … Presidential campaigns are often poorly and profligately run. Howard Dean, for instance, burned through a gazillion dollars getting absolutely no bang for his bucks and couldn’t tell you at the end of the day where all the money went.

Barnett surmised that Clinton’s “purchaser didn’t do his homework and decided that it would be a swell expenditure to run ads here and on Powerline” — but Barnett has been around the blogosphere (and was the Weekly Standard’s go-to guy on the leftosphere) long enough to know who Daou is, and to recognize that Daou would know exactly what to find at Power Line.

To this I will add just one more thing. On Tuesday, veteran Democratic operative and now Clinton spokesman Phil Singer told Hotline’s Blogometer:

We’re on some conservative sites because we’re not ceding any territory. We take nothing for granted.

To me this sounds a lot like the fighting spirit bloggers hold dearly — taking the fight to the other side’s camp. But that isn’t Sen. Clinton’s reputation with the netroots.

·      ·      ·

Now to Marsh’s complaint. Her site is currently worth 42,806 views per week, just below the point where buys were near-automatic. She and Daou disagree on whether or not the campaign attempted to buy on her site, but as I do not have sufficient evidence to make a judgment, I’ll stay out of that question. Rather, let’s look at the circumstances:

hillary blogad secondAs I dug through Blogads earlier this week, I found that liberal blogs with considerably more readers than Marsh were also not included in the initial ad buy: Juan Cole, Sadly, No!, BartCop, This Modern World, After Downing Street and Burnt Orange Report among them. They did not complain, but when the ad focus shifted on Thursday night, some of them were brought into the fold. Now they’re even on the low-traffic personal blog of Matthew Gross, who happens to be John Edwards’ blog adviser. And, yes, Taylor Marsh.

Other blogs that arguably reach the same demographic but were excluded include TV Newser, not to mention some of Clinton’s constituents, Curbed and Gothamist. The latter snub is somewhat notable considering she did buy on Gothamist’s DC affiliate, DCist. Heck, why not buy on Cute Overload? That site reaches a lot of people, and certainly fits with her warm and fuzzy approach. Same goes for Treehugger. It’s these lifestyle blogs that seem to lie beyond the campaign’s purview, while the campaign is “rotating,” as Daou put it, ads throughout Advertise Liberally Blogad network. [Update: Charles Kuffner has a point.]

Additionally, Some of Marsh’s complaints are confusing to me. She wrote, for example:

Single proprietor bloggers may not get the traffic of the gigantic community blogs, but we do a lion share of the work out here as well. … Taking me out of the equation for a moment, shouldn’t Clinton at least help out a few of the small female only blogs, reaching out to females everywhere? You’d think that would be important to her.

Yet Feministing and Pam’s House Blend are just the kind of female-only blogs Marsh describes, and they were included. In fact, Pam’s House Blend along with female-led Firedoglake were among the few sites to pick up Premium ad buys. Similar complaints likewise were off-target. At MyDD, Texas Nate hit Clinton’s camp for not buying on a few specific regional blogs. One was Bleeding Iowa which, so far as I can tell, does not support Blogads.

And to editorialize for a moment, there is something unseemly about complaining that an advertiser did not buy ads on one’s site. Daou and the Clinton team are under no obligation to buy ads on anybody’s site. Yes, Marsh is a member of the netroots in good standing — she has worked for the SEIU and MyDD to cover a labor dispute in Las Vegas — but the same is true of dozens of other bloggers whom Clinton missed on the first round. As Daou said to me, it’s impossible to buy on every site. And at least as of this morning, Marsh has made no acknowledgment of her inclusion in the next phase of the Clinton ad buy.

If it’s not exactly extortion, it does betray the kind of myopic egocentrism that establishment Democrats use — sometimes as an excuse, sometimes not — to keep the netroots at bay.

·      ·      ·

It was probably inevitable that there would be pushback when Hillary Clinton sought to engage the blogosphere. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the netroots’ legitimate policy disagreements with her have led to reflexive negative reactions to virtually anything she does.

Hillary Clinton's third and final first-week campaign webcastHere is an example, taken from MyDD this week: In a post titled “Playing the Electability Card,” Chris Bowers interprets a memo by Clinton pollster Mark Penn (as summarized by Newsday) — comparing his candidate favorably to her rivals — as playing the “electability card,” thereby denigrating the Democratic party as a whole and reinforcing Republican stereotypes. Problem is, there’s no Penn quote that clearly says this; the more plausible interpretation is that Hillary has more experience standing up to the kind of GOP attacks Bowers fears could be effective. Most perplexingly, the only Democrat whose “electability” is questioned in the Newsday article is Hillary — and in the second paragraph, no less. Although Penn’s claim that other campaigns are “stalled or falling” is dubious, there’s nothing scandalous about him putting Hillary Clinton in the best possible light. That is his job, after all.

Hillary Clinton’s longstanding position on the Iraq war puts her squarely at odds with the netroots, whose creation and cohesion owes more to the Iraq invasion and subsequent deterioration than any other issue. Short of a full apology, there’s nothing she can do. Even then, Edwards did that a long time ago, and Obama never supported it in the first place (though he never had to actually cast a vote on it).

Clinton’s online campaign must be one largely of damage control — managing expectations and placating bloggers who long ago made up their mind against her. Yet while Marsh and others (such as radio talker Ed Schultz) complain that she is not reaching out to progressives, through the webcast, blogads and forthcoming guest blogs, that’s exactly what she’s trying to do. Whether Clinton can soften the netroots opposition to her is an open question, but considering the uphill battle, it was probably wise to get started on it first thing.

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.

We’re Putting The Disband Back Together!

Published by William Beutler on September 14, 2006 in Campaigns, Online Fundraising, Primary fights and Republicans. 0 Comments
There may have been a time when the NRSC served a valuable function: accepting money from donors who believe generally in Republican principles, but don’t have the time or attention to determine which candidates are most worthy and/or needful of their support. This year’s debacle in Rhode Island, coupled with the ascendancy of the blogosphere, has convinced me that while the NRCC and RNC may yet have important roles to play, the time for the NRSC has come and gone.

The quote belongs to Leon H. Wolf of Red State, but the argument comes straight from the Matt Stoller school of “I don’t like it so it shouldn’t exist.” And with all due respect, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on the front page of the (handsomely redesigned) site. It’s one thing to criticize the NRSC’s decision to go negative on Laffey, as Dan McLaughlin does in the comments, but it’s another thing entirely to focus on one thing the NRSC does and argue that it’s all their good for. What’s more, it’s the sort of thing conservative bloggers would label “crazy” if they found it on MyDD.

The headline alone — “Disband the NRSC” — sounds like hyperbole, but reading further, it’s clearly not. What’s less clear is what Wolf thinks should replace it, and in the end he concludes, “the question still remains of whether the whole structure is even necessary.” Maybe I’m going too far here, but I think even Stoller — who has loudly and repeatedly criticized DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel — recognizes the need for a party committee to coordinate campaign efforts. Someone needs to coordinate the strategery — right? Wolf says no:

With the rise of organizations like ABC Pac, which have handy websites with a slate of candidates that you can evaluate on your own and make an individual contribution to, the justification for a “donate and let someone else decide where it goes” organization like the NRSC - especially given its activity over the last two years - is rather slim.

Heck, why even bother having a Republican party in the first place?

That is to say, I think Wolf is being more than a little too optimistic. The Army of Davids are great at short bursts of brilliance, but you still need a brain trust and someone to work the phones. For one thing, online efforts like Rightroots and ActBlue pull in a fraction of the dollars raised at traditional rubber chicken dinners and through the mail, and probably will for at least a generation. For another, does Wolf believe, say, Red State is prepared to recruit candidates to run for office? To pick up the slack on independent expenditures? To maintain voter rolls and carry out a GOTV effort Democrats would call “exquisite”?

Moreover, just because people can sit down and figure things out for themselves doesn’t mean they will. Nor necessarily should they. Parties require interests and factions to make common cause and fashion a governing majority. They also lower the cost of civic involvement, saving people the hassle of figuring it all out for themselves (or trying to). The wider choice enabled by new technologies and communities, from ABC PAC to Red State, is a positive development. But the aforementioned groups supplement, rather than replace the organizations preceding them.

I hesitate to accuse Wolf of “triumphalism” — but it’s down to that or “naivete.” And at this point even I’m feeling kind of ridiculous for carrying on, in part because one other thing is certain: If the NRSC was “disbanded,” an RNSC or RSCC would quickly replace it.

“I Don’t Know Anything About the Blogs”

Published by William Beutler on August 11, 2006 in Blogging Officials, Democrats, Lamont v. Lieberman, Midterms '06, Netroots and Primary fights. 2 Comments

In a characteristically counterintuitive piece for TNR.com, Ryan Lizza argues that the “second half” of Lamont/Lieberman will fade as a national issue because, as an unnamed DSCC insider tells him, the national party isn’t going to busy itself much with Connecticut this fall:

Why would we spend money defending a seat that will be blue either way?

Later, a different (I think) Senate aide tells him the primary won’t induce Democrats to campaign on immediate withdrawal from Iraq, either:

Our Iraq policy has been driven by [Harry] Reid and [Carl] Levin. To be honest, they could give a rat’s ass about the blogs. In other words, these are policy-based decisions, and aren’t driven by the politics of Connecticut or anywhere else.

Not even a rat’s ass? Really? That might come as a surprise to the readers and commenters at Reid’s Give Em Hell, Harry blog, among the most popular blogs written by an elected Democratic official — almost up there with Conyers Blog, written (or “written”) by a more traditional netroots ally.

It also calls to mind Lamont’s absurd defenestration of Jane Hamsher late last week, for which he apparently paid no price in terms of blogger support (even from Hamsher). And let’s not forget Dem consultant Steve Elmendorf, who paid the ultimate price — excommunication from the left by Markos Moulitsas — for daring to admit:

The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections. The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left.

And what happens if Lizza is right, the Democrats give nothing more than lip service to Lamont, and the Conn. Senate race fades from the national scene? How vocal will the netroots be about their dissatisfaction? How damaging would that be to blogger-politician relations? Might Chuck Schumer, chairman of the DSCC, be the next pariah Democrat — or at least the next Rahm Emanuel?

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

Joe Versus the Volcano

Published by William Beutler on August 8, 2006 in Campaigns, Election Night, Lamont v. Lieberman, Midterms '06, National Politics and Primary fights. 2 Comments

Hear that? That’s the sound of the “anti-incumbent mood” becoming CW talking point #1 through November. The three primaries lost by incumbents tonight, in Connecticut, Michigan and Georgia had almost nothing at all to do with one another, but maybe that only reinforces the argument.

Also, here lies the end of the political media’s perception that the netroots haven’t won anything, although conservative bloggers will probably hold them to a win in November. That seems likely enough, if not in Connecticut, then also very possibly in Montana. Not getting a dozen unknown congressional candidates into the group of 435 over the last couple of years will fade from the public consciousness, and probably from the blogospheric one, as well. Of course, no blog can “win” an election — their contribution to GOTV efforts is not as notable as their contribution to the framing of political debates. And that much they’ve done.

I always get in trouble with predictions, but I don’t think Joe Lieberman is a lock for the fall — as the primarhy winner, Ned Lamont will be legitimized to non-primary voters, while Lieberman may indeed start to look like a Sore Loserman. Yes, some Republicans might cross over to support him in the fall — but wouldn’t this anticipation send more Democrats into the Lamont camp? If I was a lefty blogger, I’d say so. [Update: Already one has gone the other way, but I get the impression he wasn’t old enough to be registered in Conn. when he lived there.]

The lights went out for another incumbent, Cynthia McKinney in Georgia, which wasn’t very surprising. The leftosphere didn’t want to claim her, while the rightosphere openly encouraged her opponent, Hank Johnson. That’s about what happened when Denise Majette bested McKinney in the primary four years ago, when conservative bloggers cheered on the anti-McKinney. Both Majette and Johnson campaigned as moderates, though Majette all but gave McKinney the seat back during her Katherine Harris-esque run for the Senate two years later.

And lastly, moderate Republican Joe Schwarz got bounced in Michigan. It’s a win for the reconfigured Club for Growth, and I suppose you could say the reconfigured Red State is already 1-0. Sorry, GOPProgress.

P.S. And about that picture… is that more this The Kiss or this The Kiss?

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