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John Edwards “weighing the fate” of his new bloggers

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If you haven’t been following this story, now’s the time to check in, especially if you have any interest in John Edwards as a presidential candidate.  Basically, Edwards hired one of the Pandagon bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, to blog for his campaign; Michelle Malkin and other wingnuts got all huffy that Marcotte had occasionally used naughty words in her blog posts, and now she might be fired.

This, Mr. Edwards, is ridiculous.  If you are going to let Michelle Malkin decide whom you may and may not hire for your campaign, I am happy to write you off right now.

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  1. I don’t particularly like Marcotte’s stuff. Too hot for my tastes, too smugly sarcastic. I don’t read Pandagon much anymore.

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    That being said, isn’t the whole point of hiring bloggers to be provocative and piss off the Malkins of the world? Edwards wanted Marcotte presumably because of her “street cred” as a real blogger; well, that’s what he got.

    • And if he didn’t, what does THAT say about his abilities?  If he did, and knew how vicious (sorry, Charley, but I am provocative, she is vicious) she was, what does THAT say in turn?

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      His choice of subordinate is a whole lot more important and revealing than his percieved inability to stand up to Michele Malkin.

      • Because there are no vicious right-wing bloggers.

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        Malkin thinks that internment camps are awsome.  Why should anyone take her seriously about anything?

        • Do you see McCain or Guiliani signing up John Stephenson?  Or even Michelle Malkin (who probably doesn’t want the cut in pay!).

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          Viciousness exudes from BOTH extremes of the spectrum – which makes it a dubious choice to gravitate there.  But, hey!  Breck Girl can make all the bad choices he wants!  It leae Mitt the clear-cut good hair winner!

        • That doesn’t mean that Edward has to let his image be lowered to her level. This is not the sort of behavior that one wants as the face of your campaign. A level of diplomacy is required in national races, and I think that this was a misstep, whatever the hell Malkin thinks.

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          Really, though its disgraceful how the MSM is jumping all over this story as proof that all bloggers really are profane, trash-talking dittoheads. The Times, which never met a blooger this side of the aisle that it liked, tried to claim today that this sort of behavior was how blogs “usually are”. Nice job, Grey Lady. And not a word in praise of our election work post-November. Just give Rahm Emanual all the credit, as per usual

          • what used to be called “First Wife Syndrome.” She’s jilted, jealous and bitter, and can’t stop making catty comments about her replacement.

    • It fits.

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      You guys are trying to establish Blue Mass Group as the UnBlog. That has some advantages (I get to play with Democrats who actually claim fealty to the DLC.) It has some disadvantages. (I have to interact with moderators who think baiting by conservatives is a form of civil disagreement.)

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      Pandagon is not an UnBlog.

        • There was an interesting post on MyDD about links betweeen the Left and Right Blogospheres and links within the Left. Curiously, there is a collection of academic lefty blogs that link to one another and a collection of activist lefty blogs that link to one another. Atrios’ site was key in that it bridged both. Dr. Black is, after all, an academic and an activist.

          • …we have The WideAwakes, the Liberty Papers and the Life, Liberty and Property Community that run the Carnival of Liberty (which also attracts Libertarian bloggers).  Very little cross pollination, except among the Raging RINO’s, another group.

      • …anymore.  Does that mean I have a grander agenda?

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        I enjoyed reading Ezra Klein and Jesse Taylor (still read Ezra at his new home), but comparing the old Pandagon to the new one is like comparing the ’88 Celtics with this year’s edition.

  3. Edwards should stick with Marcotte and let the wingnuts froth. This is just an early  salvo in the game of smear the Democratic candidates. Ain’t gonna work this time fellas. Whatever happened to the Hillary-outed-Obama-madrassa story breathlessly flogged by Faux News and several BMG wingnuts? 

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    Remember a few years back, Dick (5 Deferments) Cheney told Senator Leahy to “Go f*ck yourself”, because Senator Leahy had the temerity to question the no-bid cost plus war contracts that Halliburton has been pocketing.  Please. Such language on the hallowed floor of the Senate no less.

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    The wingnuts better fasten their kiddie helmets and tighten up their pampers because they’re going to have Iraq shoved right down their throats between now and ’08.  Watch Senator Webb from Virginia to see how it’s done.

  4. I’ve said before that I’m unconvinced that Edwards is the best nominee for the Democrats. Reasons to be unsure about him include:

    1. His initial judgement on Iraq
    2. His current equivocating on Iran
    3. His uncertainty on gay rights
    4. His Southern-facing style when the Democrats should be grabbing less-evangelical and more libertarian New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada.

    That said we are many months before the campaign and Edwards has articulated something very powerful, we shouldn’t just wait for a leader to fix it for us. His campaign includes a number of actions that focus on doing positive good in an organized, useful way today. In early 2007, that sets his campaign apart from Hillary Clinton’s, Barack Obama’s, or Bill Richardson’s whose campaigns are just about their getting elected and that’s it. Let them all make a case, but Edwards’ initiatives today are worthy of support.

    • To me, Edwards is strongly reminiscent of Mr. Clinton:  his “regret” for sponsoring the Iraq War resolution (while saber-rattling on Iran).  His current blog issue smells like Clinton’s Lani Guinier issue.

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      Like Clinton, he talks about “the little guy” while acting for the interests of the wealthy.  All things for everyone.

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      All he needs is to learn how to bite his lip, and to have a supremely calculating wife.

  5. The danger in hiring bloggers is simple:

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    Bloggers are individuals. They say what they want to say. They call it like they see it. Their uniqueness and particularity is their raison d’etre.

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    Much of the time, politicians may not say what they want to say. One must use generalities to put together coalitions. Specificity and quirkiness are generally not rewarded.

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    I’m just not sure what good it does a campaign to have an official blogger with previously established cred. And aside from the paycheck, I’m not sure what good it does the blogger, either. A flack is a flack: Once you get hired by a campaign, your blogging necessarily becomes much less interesting.

    • Example – Rudy Guiliani recently hired Patrick Ruffini.

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      Site is here – http://www.patrickru…

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      Now, Patrick’s been around for a long time, and is primariy known in GOP circles for his awesome Straw Polls.  When he went to work on campigns in the 2006 election, he handed the software keys over to Hugh Hewitt, who runs polls using Ruffini software periodically.

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      He did everything you SHOULD do – he was Cos-like!  He sent out a mass email to all his subscribers, he put a box at the top saying – I’m with Rudy now, he mentions the fact he works for Rudy when he visits other sites.

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      Biggst plus – he is well known and liked in GOP circles, but his reputation was never as a bomb lobber – so he’ll make a good Rudy Blogger, on both his own and Rudy’s site.  Surely, SOMEWHERE in the Blogosphere, there is a thoughtful Progressive who does not rely on ad hominum attacks and cheap shots like ‘Christofascist’ when making an argument (besides Bob, Charley and David).  C’mon!  The internet is a big place!

      • OK, with the possible exception of Cos …

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        Still, I don’t tend to read candidate blogs, for the reason that they’re message-disciplined. Sec of State deals with a lot of technical stuff that you may not find out about otherwise — gerrymandering, etc. And bless his heart, but unfortunately Bonifaz was a fringe candidate. (I’m not saying he deserved to be such, but that’s how it was.) So a blogger could afford to be more provocative.

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        What can Amanda Marcotte say about John Edwards that John Edwards can’t say himself? And do we want to know?

        • The Blog that started it all, the first major campaign blog, was Howard Dean’s.  It was one of the more interesting blogs around, and well worth reading, throughout the campaign, even when Dean was frontrunner for the Democratic nomination – almost as far from “fringe” as one can get.  And it lives on as one of the top lefty political blogs of today.

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          Don’t be so quick to dismiss candidate blogs.  Some are very good.  Try reading some, and judge each one on its own merits, rather than writing them off as a class.

  7. The articlette linked to above stated An Edwards spokeswoman said “that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.

    An Edwards spokeswoman said “that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.”

    That is all I need to hear.  This to me means he either didn’t know who he was hiring, or knew who he was hiring but wasn’t smart enough to lay out guidelines for them contractually.  If he isn’t defending his employees and they haven’t broken any contractual agreements on decorum, then he’s no better than Kerry at defelecing Swift Boat-type challenges. Not a good sign.

    • “Weighing the fate?” Holy delusions of running a top-down campaign with a bottom-up facade, Batman. It’s the spokesperson who should be fired, never mind the bloggers.

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      While you “weigh the fate” of your bloggers, Sen. Edwards, the blogosphere is weighing yours.

  8. When right wing nuts like Bill Donahue complain about something out of the blue, what it usually means is that they are already doing it.  So Glenn Greenwald Googled around:

    But when the Times claims that the Edwards campaign is “in hot water,” what they mean is that there are complaints from right-wing bloggers and people like the right-wing Catholic League’s Bill Donahue, who is an excellent arbiter of bigotry and impropriety as the author of such enlightened views as: “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, okay? And I’m not afraid to say it.”

    So Donahue and people like Michelle Malkin have dug through the archives of the two Edwards bloggers […] and found bad words and posts that they claim are offensive. […] if that is going to be the standard, we ought to apply it universally to all bloggers who are affiliated with political campaigns.  Let’s begin with Patrick Hynes, the paid consultant for John McCain‘s presidential campaign. …

    Read on for a sampling of the “naughty” stuff Hynes has posted, including a blog contest to find Childish insult names for Representative Henry Waxman (Hynes’ entry in his own contest: “Pig Man”).  Wonder why McCain isn’t also in “hot water”?

    • it makes zero sense for the Edwards campaign not to already have pushed back, hard, against this flimsy finger-pointing.  I just don’t get their weak response.

    • Media Matters has some choice excerpts from his various smears and hate filled screeds, posting as “Kerry Crusher”. One I had forgotten about was this:

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      ….A review of “Kerry Crusher’s” posts on FreeRepublic.com revealed that “Kerry Crusher”, in response to another poster’s June 21, 2004, suggestion that Chelsea Clinton had undergone plastic surgery, wrote: “Yep. She’s been Nip n’ Tucked. Just like Kerry and his girlfriend Alex. And she’s still hideously ugly!” ……

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      Often overlooked among the Swift Boat lies and other bullshit put out by the GOP in the run-up to the ’04 election, was the story that Kerry had an affair with an intern named Alex. That’s the lie that Hynes is promoting here. It eventually died, but not before it was bandied about between Drudge, Mickey Kaus, Instapundit, and various other limp dick GOP apologists.

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      It’s par for the course for these guys. Like most sleeze bag smear merchants, they only understand one thing, and that is a good ass kicking. ’08 can’t come too soon.

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