Your Morning Laugh
Joe Conason, showing how life looks from the liberal cocoon, on the bloggers’ role in the Lamont campaign:
As for the liberal bloggers, they seem considerably more calm and pragmatic than their distraught critics. If the legions of Daily Kos are truly hell-bent on an ideological purge, why would they endorse Senate candidates Jim Webb, the “Reagan Democrat” and former Republican Navy Secretary running in Virginia, and Bob Casey Jr., the “pro-life Democrat” running in Pennsylvania? For the same reason they haven’t targeted Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, another blue-state centrist with a pro-war record—because they prefer races that can be won.
Wow, that is truly rich – there is not a single clause, dependent or independent, that is true in that paragraph. Seriously – break it down, just like you learned in school. One falsehood after another, from top to bottom…
You’re gonna have to give me more than that if you want me to accept that it’s false that bloggers are supporting Jim Webb or Bob Casey or Hilary Clinton. Just saying that it’s not true and dismissing it out of hand comes off as more than a bit snarky. Or are you also trying to deny that, say, Bob Casey is pro-life, or that Jim Webb is a Reagan Democrat? Or that Hilary has a pro-war record? The snark can’t outweigh the substance, man.
For one, he specifically mentions that the ‘legions of Daily Kos’ (that’s very specific) are supporting Hillary Clinton. Do you think so? Can you back it up? The burden of proof is on him, not me…but you and I both know that Hillary is not the preferred Kossack candidate by a country mile…
As for Bob Casey, this poll at Kos shows 60% support for his Democratic rival (you have to vote in it to see the results)….
As for Jim Webb, it IS ideological purity that draws Kos to support him – i.e., his opposition to the Iraq war, which is the same issue on the flip side that causes Lieberman to lose so much support.
I repeat: there is not a single premise in that paragraph that holds up to scrutiny; let Conason show Nutroots® support for a pro-war candidate if he wants to prove there is no litmus test…
Mark, I don’t know if it’s fair to lump together “liberal bloggers” and the Kos readership (though admittedly, Conason seems to do that). The bloggers themselves do seem to be fairly pragmatic in their choices. Kos, Atrios, et al. seem more than willing to support people like Webb and Casey. And perhaps the central thesis of Kos & Armstrong’s book is that the Democratic party and particularly liberal interests groups need to be more pragmatic and less ideological in their decisions regarding who they support. They point out repeatedly that it makes little sense for, say, abortion rights activists to support someone like Lincoln Chafee, who is pro-choice but enables a Republican majority that is hostile to abortion rights, while refusing to support people like Bob Casey or Harry Reid, who are pro-life but would enable a potential Democratic majority that would be much more friendly to their concerns.
As for Clinton, you’re right that she is not a favorite of the liberal blog crowd. But they’re not openly hostile to her either. They recognize that she has some value to the party. Many don’t want her to be the nominee in 2008, but they have much less problem with her as a Senator. Lieberman’s case truly is unique. He is hated by the netroots for much more than his position on the war. They hate him because of the way he denigrates his own party. It’s one thing to take moderate positions. It’s quite another to be openly hostile and deragatory to those within your own party who disagree with you. This is something McCain understands but Lieberman doesn’t. Lieberman pisses people off because his antics and rhetoric actually hurt the interests of the Democratic party.
Well, one point for now – as you note, I didn’t say liberal bloggers. I said Conason’s entire paragraph was composed of falsehoods and distortions from start to finish, and it is. He is the one that said ‘legions of Daily Kos’.
Liberal bloggers is such a huge field that of course you can find examples of any and everything you like, just as there are conservative bloggers who hate Bush with a passion and are atheists. But if I said, instead of conservative bloggers, that the ‘legions of Michelle Malkin’ are more interested in winning than in ideology, surely some smarty pants like myself would call foul…
The difference between the right and left blogosphere right now is that Republicans are in power and Democrats aren’t. So the right can afford to be less pragmatic and more ideological.
But there seems to be more or less of a consensus among the major left blogs that minor ideological disputes don’t matter so much when your party is entirely out of power. Winning is more important, for now.
But what about Lieberman, you ask? How practical is it to waste time trying to unseat a Democrat? Well, that’s a good point. But the Koses and Atrioses of the world justify that by pointing out that Lieberman is in the blue-est of blue states, so there is little risk of losing the seat regardless of outcome. Second, Lieberman’s actics, at least arguably, hurt Democrat interests generally in ways that other moderate Democrats do not.
They may not be right about this, but that’s what they believe. They are not ideologues, despite what the David Brooks of the world say. You may disagree with their strategy, but they at least believe they are being pragmatic.
Re: Joe Conason,
Your observation is good. My personal favorite Conason sin against truth is the imputed knowledge fallacy.
Clinton could be completely unaware that his AG was committing American troops against civilians, and that didn’t bother Conason at all. However, if the gardener for one pub shares the same barber as the first cousin of the second pub; those two pubs are clearly involved in whichever conspiracy theory suits Conason: Q.E.D.
Read him for two weeks and you are bound to see an example.