Palin hates the bloggers

Oh noes111 I iz hated agin!

Two weeks ago we would have killed for a one on one sitdown with Sarah Palin. But now, while she tries really hard not to drool over that Senate seat that Ted Stevens' felony conviction and inexplicable, possible re-election win will open up, she keeps talkin' an' talkin' an' talkin'...

Ms. Palin directed most of her media criticism at liberal bloggers, whom she twice called, “those bloggers in their parents’ basement just talkin’ garbage.”

You know you want to see it again:



For the record, I blog upstairs, and I shower and do laundry in the basement. Though I bet the wifi would reach.

Meanwhile, Palin defenders hit a new low:

A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning after political analyst Michael Barone said "“The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby."

As for other 2012 players besides Palin, Ambinder notes:

By bankrolling opposition to same-sex marriage in California, the LDS church has earned some serious cred in social conservative circles.

And the Prop 8 protesters -- those who are now protesting the church -- are only fueling the impression that when it comes to standing up for "traditional marriage," the Mormon Church is where it's at.

This development has fascinating implications for 2012.

But Nate Silver--the breakout blogstar of 2008 at FiveThirtyEight--has the best take on the Prop 8 vote. There's a blame the minorities meme going around, but Nate says it's a generational thing:

If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.

The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that -- and there's no polite way to put this -- the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.

The OTHER California ballot measure, which may have a more subtle but just as big impact on the nation's politics, is Prop 11, which takes redistricting away from the legislature and sets up an Iowa-style commission. It's narrowly ahead, says Ballot Access News. Seems to be running better in GOP areas. AHnold ist term-limited, ja, und Republicans in KahleeFORnya must not be counting on a gubernatorial veto pen when the Census numbers come out in 2011.

California has long been a leader in the fine art of gerrymandering. With GIS mapping systems linked to voter and election returns databases, it's not even that hard anymore. But back in the `70s, Phil Burton did one of the all-time great gerrymanders in California, taking a dead-even delegation and getting a 27-18 Democratic majority. And he did it with pencil and paper and his brain.

In relatively homogeneous Iowa the commission setup is simple. But California has a fair number of majority black and Hispanic districts in the LA area, and court rulings have held that those need to be kept. Not sure if Prop 11 addresses that; in any case we all know it'll end up in court.

But who needs redistricting when you get all these Obama coattail wins, in Virginia and North Carolina and Ala-freakin'-BAMA. There were a few near-misses, too. (Or, as George Carlin would call them, near-hits.)

Edwards: The other shoe drops

Edwards: The other shoe drops

Melissa McEwan quits too:

I would like to make very clear that the campaign did not push me out, nor was my resignation the back-end of some arrangement made last week. This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign...

A cautionary tale to bloggers with ambitions. Of course, it may be too late for some of us.

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Gazette has Joel Miller's slam-dunk Linn County Auditor win and more on SILO.

And the Register digs through the pile of applications for the Board of Regents and finds Johnson County Treasurer Tom Kriz:

Thomas Kriz of Iowa City, the Johnson County treasurer, said the Board of Regents "has been tarnished by its lack of leadership and its poor decision-making on critical matters."

Loads of other prominent names...

Blogger Quits Edwards, So She Says

Blogger Quits Edwards, So She Says

Amanda Marcotte quits the Edwards campaign. Will the netroots buy her statement - worth a full read but here's the kernel:

The main good news is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations.

Or will they contend she got fired? See comments at MyDD for more.

Edwards Keeps Bloggers

Edwards Keeps Bloggers

Edwards passes the big test by keeping Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan on board. Loses a few style points for the "I was offended" statement and the presumably boss-ordered eat-shit posts from Amanda and Melissa. But the bottom line is Mr. Catholic Decency is still demanding their ouster, and they're still bloggin' for Edwards. Score one for our side.

Chris Bowers at MyDD:

The vast majority of established, beltway consultants would have told Edwards to fire Melissa and Amanda. By not doing so, it shows that he is capable of moving beyond tired, worn out advice. He is open to new ideas, including those coming from the netroots. We need more leaders like that.

It sets a precedent for all other Democratic campaigns this cycle when it comes to right-wing smear jobs and swiftboating. Unlike in the past, it shows that Democrats don't have to cave, and are not ready to cave. Any other campaign in a similar situation will now be judged by the yardstick Edwards has laid down. At this point, caving will make you look very bad.

Relative to the Republican Noise Machine dominated established news media, it increases the power of the netroots as a voice in the Democratic party. They listened to us, not to the establishment, and not to the right-wing.

Miss Laura at Kos has an interesting post on Elizabeth Edwards and her role in and interest in the blogosphere, speculating on her possible role in the decision to keep Marcotte and McEwan. I'm remembering Elizabeth's conversation with us bloggers a couple weks back, casually talking about peeking inder the hood at the sourcecode of a linkjacked site. Elizabeth also discusses the issue of blanging out blogs through excess control (or, perhaps, self-censorship)

There’s a process, they want to make certain everything is on message...They want to run it through this sieve and the sieve takes all the life out of it, all the life out, and it’s dreadful.

I wonder how much of this dustup was because Marcotte and MacEwan are young, strong-minded and opinionated women who on occasion use "unladylike" language. Profanity is by tradition supposed to be a male perogative, though we all know that tradition is honored only in the breach if at all.

Iowa Hawk has a mildly amusing post of mock Marcotte memos featuring excerpts of Amanda at Panda. I'm linking because I believe that when language is being discussed, the actual words need to be examined. I hate hate hate news stories that talk about "offensive" language in terms of f word this and n word that without giving us the option of deciding for ourselves.

Finally The Carpetbagger Report cautions Edwards' rivals:

If other Dems will go after Edwards for keeping Amanda and Melissa on his staff, the ferocity the netroots would have aimed at Edwards would immediately shift to whomever launched the first attack.

Agreed; any Dem who pulls a Tipper Gore by bashing Edwards over this is off my list. But I wonder how long it'll take Joe Lieberman? I don't know if aanyone in this year's field is as clueless as Joementum...

So my goal in my next post is to offend someone. Who knows, might get me a job.

Edwards Blogger Dustup: We Have All Been Dooced

Edwards Blogger Dustup: We Have All Been Dooced

Update: Amanda and Melissa stay on the campaign. More later.

Interesting happenings today with the Edwards campaign. Anyone who 1) blogs and 2) is employed should look at this seriously, and anyone who also 3) is an activist should take this really seriously. As for me I also 4) work for an elected official so it's even closer to home.

Recently John Edwards hired bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan for netroots outreach work. Now the Catholic Church is demanding their heads on a platter. The New York Times describes their writing in Old Gray Lady fashion:

Ms. Marcotte wrote in December that the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of contraception forced women “to bear more tithing Catholics.” In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Ms. McEwan referred in her blog to President Bush’s “wingnut Christofascist base” and repeatedly used profanity in demanding that religious conservatives stop meddling with women’s reproductive and sexual rights.

In other words, they wrote like progressive young women outraged by the institutionalized sexism of the Church. Not all that different from what lots and lots of other lefty bloggers have done in their own way on their own target of outrage.

Here's the bad part: Edwards is actually thinking about sacking them.

In this era it's impossible to hide from your past. It will find you. A Google cache is forever (shudder). I'm not as familiar with Melissa, but Amanda Marcotte is a wonderful and spirited writer. If she's fired, the standard is set: any blogger who's ever written anything remotely controversial is off limits. Anyone with professional ambition will have to filter their writing through the Blandness Filter and their blogs will sound like mindless campaignspeak mush. Or disappear entirely, the way we lost Patriot Skullface last year when Charlie's excellent writing was thrown in his mom's face.

It hurts progressives and Democrats by making a major talent pool off limits, and it hurts the blogosphere by mental prior restraint. I know I'm stressing about some of what I've written over the past four years and what it does for my job prospects, and one live resume has already affected my writing. Bloggers, we have all just been Dooced.

Edwards, who's been the class of the field at blogger outreach, is under pressure from both ends. Chris at MyDD is going to the mattresses, both on and off line:

While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired. Consider the heinous reporting that is being done in this story, where bigot William Donahue is somehow an authority on what defines hate speech, it is clear that the Edwards campaign will take a lot of flack from outside the netroots if they do not fire Amanda and Melissa. Keeping them on would show a willingness to take risks and stand up to the media in a way that most Democrats just are not, all because the campaign will be doing so in order to defend the netroots.

The Edwards camp faces a series of simple choices right now:

• Are you with the people who work their asses for you, or are you with right-wing extremists who hate you?
• Are you willing to point out the double standards and hypocrisy behind this story, or will you cave to even the mildest pressure from the Republican Noise Machine?
• Do you have any loyalty to the netroots, or was it all just sweet talk, where loyalty actually only flows uphill and shit actually only flows downhill?

This is a big opportunity for his campaign. Whether he stands up or backs down will be a turning point for his campaign online. Either way, he won't be tied with Barack Obama in Dailykos straw polls anymore. It will be hard in one direction or the other.

KagroX at Kos points out this is not just Edwards' fight:

To the extent that the netroots seek to demand a show of loyalty by Edwards, that same demand must be made of every Democratic campaign. Today, the target is Edwards. Tomorrow, should this vendetta prove successful, the target could be anyone. If the other campaigns cannot demonstrate that they would have displayed the same courage we call upon Edwards to display, then they benefit from the right's strategy of divide and conquer.

And just about everyone has examples of winger hypocrisy and outrageous things that conservative bloggers now in the employ of various campaigns have written. But the right sticks by their folks, subsidizes them, rewards them for their evil talents. And it was beginning to look like Democrats were going to nurture folks too.

This may be stale by the time I get posted but I'm surprised none of the other Iowa lefty bloggers picked up on this today. Are we all job-hunting and keeping our heads down?