Interesting, thanks for clarifying.

Posted at July 17, 2008 6:27 PM in response to Group Runs Newspaper Ad Demanding Hillary Be On Ballot At Convention

Some people from the DKos/MyDD/OpenLeft clique got to interview Dean at Netroots Nation and specifically asked about this TPM article here. They don't have a transcript up yet but apparently Dean basically said that Clinton is on the ballot at the convention, the rules don't give Dean leeway to do otherwise even if he wanted to, and the people running this ad must just be crazy.

Posted at July 17, 2008 3:44 PM in response to Group Runs Newspaper Ad Demanding Hillary Be On Ballot At Convention

Sweet.

When the phone rings at 3 AM, I'll be ready.

Posted at July 15, 2008 3:49 PM in response to McCain: "I Know How To Win Wars"

Well in Risk the best strategy was to grab Australia early and then just camp out there forever, continually generating troops to send against everybody else in waves. They'd beat you back, but only just in time for you to regroup and attack again.

Posted at July 15, 2008 3:28 PM in response to McCain: "I Know How To Win Wars"

It's interesting to me this is receiving so little attention. The Democratic presidential candidate lays out his Iraq policy in an NYT op-ed, to be followed up tomorrow by a major speech on the subject. The blogosphere, which on other occasions might tend to push the argument that Iraq is the most important issue facing America today, seems to be focusing its attention elsewhere.

Posted at July 14, 2008 8:28 PM in response to Obama's Hagel-Brzezinski Plan for Iraq

What say the Prussians on this matter?

Posted at July 14, 2008 4:47 PM in response to McCain Again Refers To Czechoslovakia, A Non-Existent Country

This diary is incoherent from start to finish.

You mix a grab bag of large, small, and utterly insignificant issues from the last few months together without any apparent order or sense of proportion, and mysteriously attribute the controversy on each of them to "the left". (The "left" was attacking Obama over the comments about his Grandmother? Really? So by "the left" in this diary do you mean Rush Limbaugh?)

Some of these things you mention are examples of bloggers legitimately overreacting. Some of them are cases where people had legitimate policy disagreements with Obama but criticism over those disagreements was never anything but light. Some of these things are real problems. Mixing these things together as if they were equivalent makes it really difficult to talk about any of them in a meaningful manner.

In particular there's a real "one of these things is not like the other" thing going on here with FISA. This was not some vapid 3-day cable news controversy or a minor policy issue where we can really just agree to disagree and move on-- it's a real, serious problem which is causing very serious doubts about Obama's candidacy among the precise people that Obama's candidacy most depends on. Surely many of the people upset at Obama on the other issues felt quite legitimately strongly about their concerns, but the scope of the thing just isn't comparable-- Obama's position on executing rapists didn't have the largest part of his online campaign community organizing to push back, or mybo flooded with Obama supporters saying they could no longer support him. There is something very serious happening here.

So by trying to defend Obama on this point in such a flip way-- equivocating Obama's FISA cave with damage control on a Wes Clark gaffe or something-- you both make it extremely unlikely you will reach anyone upset about FISA (because you will fail to give the impression you know or care what they're even upset about) and undercut your attempts to calm people on the other issues (because once you seem to be papering over one real issue as irrelevant, it makes it easier to believe you're papering over other real issues elsewhere in your laundry list of Obama grievances).

And as far as that goes:

He does not support the immunity clause.

Indeed-- he's made that quite clear. Which is precisely why it hurts his credibility so much that he voted for it.

The critics don't even mention his heavy qualifications.

...because the qualifications don't seem to have impacted his behavior in any way. Here is the problem: His qualifications are just words. But to many of the people upset about FISA, I think, the precise problem is that in the aftermath of going against his earlier words on telecom amnesty it is very difficult to take as credible his words on telecom amnesty now. If the problem is people no longer taking Obama at his word, then how are more words going to solve this problem?

And I think it's reasonable to say that this is the cause of the other current problems as well-- there have been people trying to sow doubt about Obama since last year, but I think the FISA cave was really what created the space for this entire "Obama moving to the right" meme to be born, the reason why many or most of these other controversies you're seeing now have become a problem. As somebody noted above, a lot of the things people are complaining about now-- like the support for faith-based charities-- are views Obama's had for awhile, and it isn't Obama that changed on that issue but just the way Obama's actions were reported. But perhaps Obama's actions wouldn't have been reported that way if Obama hadn't first created the space for people to re-evaluate his actions-- by reversing himself on telecom amnesty.

The challenge for Obama supporters now is how to again convince people that Obama can be taken at his word about his progressive goals and values. But I don't think you're going to achieve that goal by burying the biggest source of doubt on that point five paragraphs into a laundry list-- or by trying to imply that even concrete actions Obama takes against progressive goals were part of some secret, unexplained plan to advance progressive goals in some unspecified way at some later unspecified time...

Posted at July 10, 2008 4:58 PM in response to The Left's Attacks Against Obama: Borne of an Ignorance of Organizational Change

Do you think Obama has been consistent/vocal enough on this issue that the message is getting across now? It has been difficult at times for me to figure out exactly what specific immigration reforms Obama favors, but then again I do not follow this particular issue very closely.

I hope he keeps hitting on this issue.

Posted at July 8, 2008 7:11 PM in response to Obama Tells Latino Group That McCain Sold Them Out On Immigration

It's worth noting that we don't recall ever hearing a conservative blogger ask a question on an Obama call. The McCain campaign has reached out to liberal bloggers to go on their calls

Who cares about bloggers? The original question was about news outlets, and specifically whether selective access is being used to influence the reporting of those news outlets. The interesting question isn't whether American Thinker or whoever could get on an Obama conference call, the question is whether the Obama calls are taking questions from fox news etc.

Posted at July 8, 2008 6:49 PM in response to McCain Camp Responds To Charge That They're Screening Reporter Questions

I don't really have anything to add here, I just want to make note of this breathtaking headline from the LA Times:

"Carly Fiorina touts McCain's tech credentials"

Posted at July 7, 2008 5:22 PM in response to Should the POTUS be computer literate?