Triangulation

This came out of the mouth of one of Hillary Clinton's surrogates, the governor of Pennsylvania :

Gov. Ed "Don't Call Me 'Fast Eddie' " Rendell met with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week to talk about his latest budget. But before turning the meeting over to his number-crunchers, our voluble governor weighed in on the primary fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and what the Illinois senator could expect from the good people of Pennsylvania at the polls:

"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," he said bluntly. Our eyes only met briefly, perhaps because the governor wanted to spare the only black guy in the room from feeling self-conscious for backing an obvious loser. "I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann [2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate] been the identical candidate that he was --well-spoken [note: Mr. Rendell did not call the brother "articulate"], charismatic, good-looking -- but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so."

I know I have a habit of sometimes zoning out in these meetings, but it sounded to me like Mr. Rendell had unilaterally declared Pennsylvania to be Alabama circa 1963.

On a mailing list I am part of, people made this point about the Clinton campaign : if it is not mysogyny, then it must be the latinos who'd never vote for a black man or, as in Rendell's Hillaryland, white people who would never vote for a black man.

Now, here's some questions I have :

The one debate I decide to skip is the one debate that becomes the one to watch. Had it not been for Tim Russert's Botoxed eyes, I would have grabbed a mojito and enjoyed the truthiness, but I did not.

Which is why I am aghast by this clip put together by the John Edwards campaign. This one is too good to pass up.

Wow.

Now I can see why there's so much clucking about this debate. She really flip-flopped badly, didn't she?

The Barack Obama campaign has one of the worst track records in reaching out to the blogosphere for support. Not only have they snub the so-called netroots bloggers that strategize through the Townhouse mailing list, but they have actually gone out of their way to not reach out to prominent black, latino and women bloggers who are outside of said mailing.

The best example of this snub was the campaign's absence from BlogHer, the largest convention of women bloggers in the United States and, technically, the world. At BlogHer we had the pleasure to have Elizabeth Edwards as one of our keynote speakers. The Hillary Clinton campaign made a lukewarm appearance by sending in a representative. The biggest omission was Barack Obama himself. After all, the conference was in his hometown of Chicago.

Not sending Michelle Obama to speak to the 800+ networks of vote-ready of mostly mommybloggers who were in attendance has been, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes of the Obama campaign. Worse than the unforgivable muscling-out of the volunteer Joe Anthony from the largest volunteer Obama network on MySpace.

So it does not come as a surprise that Barack's blogger outreach guy has left the building :

I honestly do not know what to make of this.

These are the 20 liberal bloggers that met with Bill Clinton in Harlem. As you can see, not one of them is black or latino.

Via Republic of T.

This photo proves that It's official : Hillary to run for President, so she kills the Liberal Blogosphere first.

I am just shocked at the glee with which Peter Daou has shown his disrespect for Pam Spaulding, Steve Gilliard, Louis Pagan, Chris Rabb, Earl Dunovant and me when he decided to not invite neither of us, or for that matter, any other black or latino bloggers.

Yes, Steve Gilliard, Pam Spaulding, and me have been vocal about Hillary's run for the presidency. You'd think though our opinions would be given the weight they deserve within the blogosphere itself --let's not even talk about the Clintonites or Washington.

Which is why I stand by what I said : In order for Hillary Clinton to run for president, she will do anything and everything to squash the voices of dissent raised through the progressive netroots. Stuffing their faces with lunch is one tasty way to go about it.

Peter Daou has given me permission to post his response as to why not one black or latino blogger was invited to the meeting in Harlem:

From: peter@daoureport.com
Subject: RE: There are no black bloggers in New York City or Harlem
Date: 15 September 2006 06:53:51 EDT
To: blogdiva@culturekitchen.com

Hi Liza - several bloggers were invited who couldn't attend, including
Oliver Willis (who you didn't mention in your post). Also, I was told =
that more events like that are planned, and there will be an opportunity to
invite bloggers who didn't attend the first one.

So respectfully, you may have reached a conclusion without all the =
facts.

Best,
Peter

P.S. Feel free to publish this email as an update to your post.

Grock! I totally forgot Oliver Willis and I read him every day.

Here's the deal: I am not the political consultant, he is. As a campaign consultant I would actually find interesting that most of the top colored bloggers in the nation are opposed to Hillary Clinton. I would be all over that one because it is a fact that Bill Clinton, Hillary's husband, was given an honorary ghetto pass by people in the colored community ---do I have to bring out Chris Rock's skit to prove this one? Bill is the quintessential WIGGAH and we love him for it.

First off, a hearty congratulations to Ned Lamont. I didn't think he would pull it off. But he did. Congratulations as well to the many people on and off line who made Lamont's win possible.

But I honestly think many people have been unfair to Joe Lieberman. He is not and never has been like Zell Miller. Zell Miller's entire voting record was right in line with the most rabidly right wing Republican. He was in every way a nut case.

Lieberman's political career may now be dead. Perhaps even more so if he runs as an Ind and the Democratic Party does the right thing and turns its back on him. Maybe his career will survive, but I don't think so. But I think we should be fair to Lieberman.

Lieberman, more than many Democrats, was a man of conviction and strong beliefs. This affected how he viewed politics. He viewed politics as a conservative, religious man, yet managed to maintain (in sharp contrast to Zell) a reasonable voting record on choice, the environment and labor, at least according to LCV, NARAL and AFL-CIO. He was on our side in many fights throughout his career. And when he wasn't on our side it wasn't because he was triangulating. It was because he believed that what he was doing was the correct thing to do. I admit that I admire that about Lieberman. He did what he thought was right.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the coming on an article written by Lakshmi Chaudry in which this blog is mentioned on the cover of In These Times and in passing in the article itself.

It irritates me that I feel the need to tackle this article when I still have not responded to Peter Daou's ideas on triangulation. It also irritates me when, even if in passing, it presents culturekitchen in a positive light.

As a former literature critic with a penchant for deconstructing rhetoric though, I have to address it's structural inconsistencies. There is something about the way this article was put together that bothers me. It reads as a good article overall. There are sides quoted, in a "he said, she said" sort of way. The article reads as neutral. And that's what's bothering me. It reminds me of Jay Rosen and his ideas on the production of innocence in journalism.

Rosen's article is important for understanding the rhetorical dynamics at work in Chaudry's article. He starts and spends a good deal of time on his essay talking about the interest groups such as Independent Women's Forum and People For the American Way's "preparing for the war", of the ideological kind, that would ensue around the Supreme Court nominations.

Rosen outlines what I consider an economics of dissent. Economics comes from the greek workds oikos,'house', and nomos, 'rule'. Housekeeping, house management or the rules of "keeping it in da house". The way interest groups like NARAL take care of their business is by finding an opposition and using it for self-definition.

[PressThink: The Production of Innocence and News of a Vacancy on the Court]:

How do the leaders of the Independent Women’s Forum know that the president’s choice for the Supreme Court is “mainstream