Comments on: Josh Marshall’s Readers Are… Not So Bright

By: William Beutler

William Beutler — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:22:08 +0000

Campaigning is a business. Some innovators drive it, certain shareholders always expect growth, and it can get ruthless. I'm a supporter of American capitalism, but the political market is always broken somehow.

The best thing for us all right now that Iowa doesn't predict the final nominees, and it continues to lose clout. Not that I'm sure we know how to pry it out (or New Hampshire) and replace it with something better.

Bloomberg won't play, but heck, if he did he could spread out his print advertising and prop up what's left of the newspaper industry. There's one guy who could pump $1.8 billion into Blogads.

By: Ralph Kramden

Ralph Kramden — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:46:01 +0000

Damn. Pretty soon you're talking real money. And it might be 5 times that this year, with the open presidential seat.

And that's before Bloomberg decides to play, if he ever does.

Now THAT will support the media through the writer's strike, don't ya think?

(And heaven help you if you can figure out how to post through WordPress's identity protection without navigating away from the page and returning! :-)

By: William Beutler

William Beutler — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:32:04 +0000

Well, $1.X billion is what the entire 2004 cycle cost -- presidential and congressional. So, one candidate in one state with no major media markets... I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

And don't worry, I generally find that stupidity is evenly distributed across the ideological spectrum.

By: Ralph Kramden

Ralph Kramden — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:38:59 +0000

William – If that’s the case, we’re into triple-mind-reading territory. You’re guessing at what Josh meant by commenting on readers’ thoughts when they missed the joke in the first place. Maybe “$1.8 billion” just doesn’t sound facetious enough. All corners of the media have been hammering the “Mitt is spending a whole pile of money” meme kinda hard, after all.

But hey, it allows you to call liberals stupid, which is always a perennial favorite!

By: William Beutler

William Beutler — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:44:19 +0000

@Ralph

That makes sense, I'm sure that was the case for some. Nevertheless, I remain amused that Josh makes it sound like some non-trivial portion of his readers found "1.8 billion" a credible figure.

By: Ralph Kramden

Ralph Kramden — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:32:44 +0000

I was one of those who read that on TPM and sent mail querying Josh. I just figured maybe he misplaced a decimal point or wrote “billion” when he meant “million”. Silly mistakes do happen sometimes – earlier today, TPM was running a headline saying Romney was criticizing Huckabee for appearing on Letterman tonight.

By: Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Chris Dodd rejects the fundamental strangeness of the Hawkeye Cauci

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:15:07 +0000

[...] only Dodd had spent $1.8 billion on campaigning in Iowa, he wouldn’t have to answer such insulting [...]