Same reason they went after Dean in the '04 primaries. They are targeting the opposition candidate they perceive as the biggest threat.
Yeah, but why would the Right consider a blatant hard left trial lawyer with little political experience a threat, let alone the main threat?
Well, to be fair, a couple of weeks ago, they went after HRC & Obama in a attempt at a twofer.
Hiring Amanda and Melissa was ballsy. It showed that Edwards was trying to shore up his support in the one place where he had a real advantage–the netroots. It’s easy to overestimate the importance of the blogosphere, but support has to build out from somewhere.
Like Edwards, and apparently everybody but Lindsay, I underestimated the right’s willingness to go there. A campaign needs young and politically aware staffers, and 99.999% of young and politically aware folks these days are going to have blogs (or at least be regular commenters on someone else’s blog). Anyone who writes long enough, especially in the unedited and unfiltered style of the blog, is going to write something that pisses somebody off. That’s all fair game now, and it’s going to hurt the right just as much as the left.
It ended up being a huge blunder for Edwards. The religious folks are offended that he hired Amanda in the first place. The people who fall more on Amanda’s side are offended that he didn’t take up for them more vigorously or sooner, and that he acted like he didn’t realize Amanda had posted some abrasive things. (“They have met you, right?” I asked her.)
I guess Lindsay feels like Cassandra now. She saw it coming.
What the left really needs is its own version of the “wingnut welfare” that keeps a steady supply of right-wing pundits nicely salaried without any particular candidates being connected to them.
I think that overstates the matter. As far as I can tell, nobody outside the blogosphere has even noticed in more than a passing way.
You’re right, and I shouldn’t post on Vicodin. What I meant to say was that it was a pure blunder–there was no net positive in it for him.
But the negative is probably negligible in the grand scheme.
I agree.
The willingness of the wingnuts to attack over anything, including stuff they’ve made up out of the thinnest pretexts, cannot be underestimated.
True, but you’ve got to admit Amanda provides more fodder for this sort of attack than most. Of the lefty bloggers I occasionally read, Amanda’s the only one who regularly makes me step back and say, “Whew! You sure you really want to say that?!” She makes a polemicist like Digby look calm and reasoned by comparison.
I doubt it. There seems to be differing sets of rules for the right and left blogospheres, and for the left and right commentariat in general.
Just after the Edwards blogger controversy, the WaPo published what was in essence a puff piece on Michelle Malkin, who makes Amanda look calm and rational.
The mainstream media has no problem representing the lefty blogosphere as a pack of ravening zealots, without ever giving examples, yet portraying the leading lights of Right Blogistan as voices deserving of a hearing. And never mentioning that leading right-wing blogs more than occasionally call for the imprisonment and execution of opponents, critics, reporters, Supreme Court justices, and whatnot.
I’m not sure that would help. The left has plenty of people making its case, but they don’t get the sort of play the right gets. What the left needs is its own mainstream news media, doing not just their own commentary, but their own reporting.
Two points.
One, Michelle Malkin won’t be working in a formal way for a political campaign, ever. She’s too controversial as well. The difference is that she and the Republican candidates likely recognize this, and won’t make the mistake Edwards did.
People like Malkin (and Marcotte) have a useful role to play, but only as independent commentators.
Secondly, as extreme as Michelle Malkin can sometimes be, she will seem more rational and controlled than some of her critics solely because she does not use profanity in her commentary. Indeed, the only time you see curse words on her blog is when she quotes a left-winger, and you can bet those quotes and her own language are carefully chosen to present a sharp contrast.
Maybe if Marcotte showed similar restraint on her blog, and didn’t make jokes about the Virgin Mary and “hot sticky Holy Spirit,” there wouldn’t have been nearly as much outcry.
No, actually it is evidence that what was said by you and DtC - that poor people “work their asses off” - is false.
IOW, somewhere around three quarters of poor families have no full-time, year-round worker. And a substantial majority of people over 16 living under the poverty line do not work at all.
So what you said was wrong. See how it works? Most poor people don’t work their asses off.
Regards,
Shodan
So what? My point was simply that the MSM applies different standards to the left and right. Can’t see that this puts a dent in that.
Well, fuck. I just invalidated my entire post!
Great standards, whether they’re yours, the wingnuts’, or the MSM’s. No amount of insanity, or just plain getting it all wrong, balances out ‘fuck.’
All hail and bow down before the all-powerful ‘fuck’!
All I’m saying is that it was very easy for Marcotte’s critics to go to her blog and find profanity ridden posts, especially ones about religion, that could be used to paint her as an extremist.
You can’t do that with Michelle Malkin. While you could dismiss her ideas, you have to do it on an intellectual and not a rhetorical level.
The point is, a standard that rejects or dismisses ideas because of profanity before rejecting them because they’re just plain Neanderthal (e.g. interning Japanese-Americans) is a pretty crappy standard. (Remember, I’m talking about the media here, not easily-shocked conservative Christians.) If MSM observers - aren’t reporters generally familiar with all the dirty words already? - can’t get past the words sufficiently to come up with a conclusion as to whose words and ideas are further beyond the pale in toto, then I’d say they’ve got a real problem of some sort.
No, we are not just talking about the MSM, or bloggers, or activists, which is a point you consistently miss.
The real issue is how voters would react to these posts, which is why it became a news story, and why Edwards had to fire Marcotte.
Do you really think anyone would care about how Bill Donohue and his pressure group behaved in this, unless there was a fear or a belief that his complaints could resonate with voters? And remember, a lot of Democrats are Catholics. Even if they reject Bill Donohue, it doesn’t mean they would be happy with Marcotte either. I posted cites to that effect, which you also dismissed.
There is no possible way that such a polarizing person can get so close to a campaign. It causes problems just like that which Edwards experienced. There really isn’t a way around it.
You are responding to a point I made in my reply to DoctorJ in post 66.
I was talking about coverage of the two sides by the MSM.
I was not talking aobut anything beyond that.
You are free to rebut my defense of that point.
Or you can make some other point. You’re free to talk about whatever you like, but if you aren’t rebutting my point, then we aren’t talking about anything.
Other than this:
Cite?
Well, he could have kept her on, I suppose. But the political costs weren’t worth it.
You are implying that she was fired or that (equivalently, AFAIAC) her resignation was at the request of the Edwards campaign.
Again, cite??
Well, you tell me. Marcotte said that she was in a situation where anything she said was creating heat for the Edwards campaign from people like Bill Donohue. So whether she left on her own or was pushed out, it was because her presence there was damaging to the Edwards campaign.
Marcotte admitted as much on her own blog. Why would you doubt her on this one?
I have no reason not to believe her.
So you are saying Marcotte left, quite possibly on her own. You are NOT saying Edwards fired her, though you are not eliminating that as a possibility.
Do I have that straight? Because my problem was with your seeming claim that Edwards fired her - which is what Marcotte’s words would contradict.
No. I shouldn’t have said fired. I don’t know whether that was the case or whether the resignation was purely voluntary, and there is no way of knowing.
My original point was that this relationship couldn’t continue, and its termination, by whichever party, seems to have made that point clear.
Wha?
A lowly campaign blogger will not be tapped for a cabinet post or any other kind of senior staff, which is the high-level “inner circle” of trusted advisors that I was referring to in my post.
Okay. No duh, many people who are poor are poor because they do not have jobs or do not have FT jobs. No duh, single parent poor households have a hard time of it. Unable to afford childcare and often having to travel far to get to a job if they can find one. So, yes, job availability, having the skills for the jobs, and ability to make it to those jobs are part of the potential path out of poverty. Being paid enough in those jobs to not live a poverty life is also part of that path.
And what are Edwards positions here?
Help facilitate the poor entering the Middle Class by -
Subsidizing home payments for the first 5 yrs ($1000/yr/family).
Giving low-income Americans another $500/yr matching for savings.
Housing vouchers too, so that the poor can more afford to live in better school districts.
No “trouble” in HS then get tuition free for one yr at a public university.
No mariage penalty and fathers get help finding jobs if and only if they take responsibility for their kids.
Raise the minimum wage.
Pay for it by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthiest back to where they were before Bush’s cuts.
Sounds like a lot of give-aways. Could work if one assumes that $1000/yr/family is enough to suddenly make house ownership doable and that the poor could handle the debt load and not just end up in risky subprime loans. That matching funds can motivate savings when you don’t have the money to save. That families are interested in moving not where the jobs are, not where their support systems are, but to a different neighborhood based on school alone, and that getting the poor to flee their current neighborhoods to better school districts is the best tactic. That the potential of a marriage penalty on taxes that generally are not paid by the very poor is what creates the single parent family in poor culture and that changing that will suddenly alter what has become a cultural norm in particular poor subcultures. That there is no truth at all to the belief that tax cuts stimulate the economy.
I tend to doubt that his give-aways will have the desired effects. Raise the minimum wage? Yes. College for the poor who can get in is already well subsidized. It seems to me that it is the Middle Class that is being priced out there. Single parent households is not a problem amenable to such a glib quick fix. And better to get good schools all over and stimulate jobs all over than to imagine that you can enable everyone to lmove into the same neighborhood that somehow has both the jobs and the good schools. Eliminate those tax cuts/raise back to where they were? Yes, said as someone who pays lots of taxes and will be hurt. I don’t spend more because my taxes are incrementally less. My wife and kids spend either way! 