Isn't it problematic that after firing feminist bloggers, Edwards is the darling of the netroots

Edwards for a while now. And voted for him at DK. What does that say about me? Hmmm. . .

I think it says I care more about all the issues, not just blog-related ones (and I seem to remember they resigned (?)). And I think it says I'd like for a Dem to win and I don't think Clinton or Obama have a chance. For all the old horrible reasons.

So I guess I should have voted for Hillary while really wanting Edwards, to fool the poll-followers?

Nance

I hope that Edwards is not doomed to the same fate as Dean. With regards to your main point, I think that it is a drastic piece of irony that this is all going down at this time. My problem when that situation went down was that Edwards didn't step up and speak out for them. He said that he wouldn't fire him, but that's not really important. That's just a stand. He needed to say something.

Also, I'm troubled by the fact that we are in the election cycle right now. We still have over a year and a half until the general. Why are we talking about this right now? All the candidates, even the ones that don't really stand a chance like that guy from Alaska, haven't had a chance to present their platforms to America. While concern always runs high in politics, why don't politicians worry about doing actual work instead of being telegenic and doing community service for the cameras?

Those daily kos/mydd polls are unscientific and subject to repeat voting by people. What is scientific is the first quarter money raised online. Those numbers are in (source: washington post) and Barack Obama has raised about as much money online as Hillary and Edwards *combined* online. 50,000 of Obama's 100,000 donors in the first quarter were online. Check out his website and blogosphere, and check out Hillary's and Edwards, and you see that Obama's are clearly more active and getting more hits than the others. Those numbers don't lie and aren't manipulated, Obama is clearly the netroots favorite candidate and by a substantial margin.

There is another reason those polls are untrustworthy-- as great a site as dailykos is, it is demographically narrow. The vast majority of the people who read and use that site are white and educated, and of specific age demographics. The older (age 50's to 80's)who might support Hillary aren't the ones coming to that site, nor are necessarily the 18 to 20 year olds for whom Obama is their new hero. Kos even admits this when he talks of his site. I think a lot of the Kos readers also seem to lean strongly libertarian, and so don't necessarily gravitate to those who seem the most establishment (Hillary) or the most traditionally liberal (Obama) Some of them might think Hillary is unelectable and that Obama is going to blow up under pressure like Dean, and Edwards ends up getting their support by default.

that voting for who we want makes no less sense when it chooses Sanjaya than when it's for her. And she seems okay with it, or wants us to think she is!

Maybe tonight on AI the world will make sense again and justice and sanity will be restored, but I'm not counting on it. And maybe the next prez election will make more sense than the last - well, ever. But I wouldn't put any money on either one; it's not hard to understand why folks grow ever more cynical.

Hi. Marcotte and McEwen both make it loud and clear that they quit and were not fired, that it was psycho behavior from right-wing nut jobs showing up at their door and getting rape mail from them that made them quit, not Edwards.

Granted, Marcotte and McEwene were not fired, they did quit. But the clear impression given, which they have not denied, is that they were pushed. They were fired by Edwards under pressure from outsiders and then he re-hired them under pressure from his staff. But by re-hiring them after they had been villified in the media, those two women had bullseyes on their backs. They were set up to be targets for the entire rest of the campaign. Subsequent posts they have made clearly give the impression they felt that Edwards was not and had not been defending them enough, and thus the targets weren't taken off their backs.

I think Edwards was going to have to fire them again, as the right was continuing to attempt to make their past comments symbolize his campaign. But he couldn't fire them again without again upsetting the netroots base he was trying to build. Re-hiring them, so that they could save face with the netroots, and then just as quickly and quietly pressuring them to quit was, and I am only conjecturing, possibly the only way they saw out of this mess.

Edwards didn't handle this well. He was trying to please both sides in this matter as opposed to taking a principled stand. He flip flopped. Hired them. Fired them. Pressured them to quit maybe? Whatever works right? He came off looking more like a typical politician here than a bold and decisive leader. In my opinion anyway.

But! Any statisticians or demographers around? Just what part of the nation is influenced by blogs? I doubt that Edwards' supporters (ACORN, for example) are too upset about feminism, cyber-politics or other "human values" question. Many need hard cash in the paycheck.
That having been said, I laud blogging of all stripes, including that of reactionaries on the other side. It energizes the politicians to realize they are being watched. It increases participation in the money question. It introduces younger citizens to issues not covered by MSM. And it's better for folks than sitting in front of a CRT to play Free Cell.
Gotta go! Just got a message from Kate Michelman of the Edwards campaign.

Feminists have more serious things IMO to be concerned about with Edwards than the rather trivial issue of two female bloggers who weren't treated right. Why for instance, have I not heard more feminist outrage over the fact that Edwards has a well known pro-life ex-congressman running his campaign? David Bonior is the ex-house whip, former michigan congressman, fairly liberal in most respects, but he is and always been passionately pro-life. David Bonior thinks abortion should be illegal. This is not some secret, not something Edwards didn't know about. Bonior's pro life stance is well known. Bonior is one of the highest profile pro-life democrats in the country and has been for some time. He ran for governor of Michigan a couple of years back. NOW and NARAL and other feminist groups campaigned hard against him in the primary.

Now if Edwards is elected president, David Bonior might well be his chief of staff. He has put his entire campaign operation this time around in Bonior's hands. What kind of message is Edwards sending to feminists when the most important domestic advisor he has, outside of his wife, is pro-life? Isn't this like if someone was running as an anti-war pacifist and yet has a pro-war hawk in charge of his campaign? Shouldn't this make feminists concerned? Especially given that Edwards in his first presidential campaign in 2004, ran considerably further to the center than he is now in this campaign?

As a feminist, I'd rather have seen him fire David Bonior or at least not have him playing nearly so prominent a role, than fire those two women bloggers.

with Hillary's chronic lack of concern for how our president personally treats real-live young female interns and new widows in his own office! Geez, my concerns are MY concerns. Who cares what you think I should care about??

It's been my impression that both Melissa and Amanda still support Edwards.

But my real question is, why are you looking for any sort of feminism from the Daily Kos, considering Markos' remarks about the "women's studies set" and his opinion of the Kathy Sierra death threats not more than a week prior to the Virginia Tech tragedy showing quite clearly that some misogynist cyber-stalkers are seriously unbalanced?

JJ said: [quote]Hillary's chronic lack of concern for how our president personally treats real-live young female interns and new widows in his own office[/quote]

Were you or any of us privy to the Clintons private conversations? Somehow I don't think Hillary was going to necessarily make public in what way she scolded her husband for his actions. In any case, there is no reason to think or imply she endorsed those actions just because she stayed married to him..sheesh!

As for Edwards, it was reported that he has been going to high end hairstylists and paying $400 per time to get his Breck Girl haircuts/styles and billing it to the campaign. How does someone who bills himself as a populist expect poor working class voters to identify with a person who spends four hundred bucks to get his haircut? Let alone who lives in a $26 million mansion with a swimming pool, basketball court .etc

Besides, isn't one who pays that much to get his hair done a bit vain about his hair? Heck, Bill Clinton was too cheap to even *pay* for a barber back when he was running for President in '92, he had Hillary cutting his hair. Somehow I doubt Hillary herself pays $400 each time she gets her hair done (although I'm sure she doesn't let Bill cut her hair )

Had an alert this morning that Edwards webpage is the best of the candidates' but that is just another grade. It boggles my mind why we could be more interested in hair cuts and campaign managers than we are on what a candidate claims to be his main talking points. For one, I would be interested to know how much weight this group thinks Kate Michelman carries at the JRE camp. Yesterday afternoon she wrote under his name that we need to counteract the SCOTUS decision. She didn't ask for money but did ask that we forward her letter to our friends. NOW and NARAL have been in the women's rights struggle for quite some time. And it certainly seems to be part of what made Culture Kitchen so influential.
In my view Roe v Wade is important as a matter of civil rights. I guess it's because I always believed that every person has a right to protect/respect her/his own body. And I'm not anxious to see any politician fool around with that right. What sayest y'all?

I was speaking of integrity -- public policy integrated with one's beliefs and behavior in one's public role. That is a feminist worth championing. Why would anyone reduce feminism to some kind of secret breathless pillow talk??

. . . how any woman is actually treated by the president in the Oval Office can't be dismissed as a private matter either for the First Lady and a President in the Past, or the First Gentleman and a President in the Future.

This is the same monstrous bad-boy mindset of too many men in both parties and other bastions of power (from the Kennedys forward in my lifetime, at least) -- assuming real-live women individually and in the aggregate, no matter how accomplished, are mere children to play with and then leave with a sitter while you do important things, or sex objects to be wooed and charmed with promises, exploited until we finally catch on and demand you deliver and perform as promised, and then quickly dumped to make room for for the next wave of sweet gullible young things.

Wow, did some men actually drink the kool-aid while his presidency was being publicly defended by high-powered, clear-eyed feminist women, those who held their noses and served it up to wash down the policy pretzels into which they had to contort themselves, so desperate were they to block the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary had evoked as the public call to arms? (on Sixty Minutes BTW, not in her White House bedroom)

That was imo a cynical and costly choice made by feminists -- including but not limited to Hillary and influential women in positions of power throughout his administration and the Democratic party. It was a political and policy trade-off to side with the lesser of evils. Not because they loved his lip-biting charm or his boyish haircut and dreamed he might favor them with a kiss and a copy of Leaves of Grass, but because they sensed the spectral clash of public and private feminism that was to come embodied in another real young woman treated as mere object, Terri Schiavo.

Not private between one husband and wife. Not about bad boys and sex. Very public policy about all women, how we are viewed, the rules that control our choices and access to power, how we are treated and who doles out our treats.

Which isn't that far removed from what's happening with the bloggers at issue and the Edwards campaign. Young smart women are welcomed and even prized in Dem politics for their policy acumen, until they threaten to derail a sexy male Dem who claims to be as much of a feminist as they are -- and then guess how they are treated? As objects.

I will never forgive or forget the other party for publicly exploiting Terri Schiavo's private life and death and objectifying her, and me along with her. I personally expect progressives/feminists to stand tall in public contrast to that, and to integrate all those values and principles in their treatment of individual women, including their own wives and daughters.

That's why I am struggling with the Edwards thing. Like Liza and Nance I do like him as a progressive and feminist candidate and I REALLY like his wife, not just because she is his wife but because I think she would get what I am saying right now as PUBLIC, not private attraction. I also think she really is a feminist, not just female, though it's hard to be sure.

One thing I am sure of after all this -- the real irony would be for Hillary to take advantage of women and feminism AGAIN for her own personal gain, exploiting the Edwards campaign stumble, as if we're supposed to believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary that she (just becuase she's biologically female) would champion wronged young women even if it cost her personally.

Truthfully, I am leaning to Obama, but if I were wagering money on it, I'd predict the 2008 general election matchup is going to be Hillary vs. Fred Thompson. Here's why:

If you look back to 2004, Howard Dean had the stronger domestic agenda, he had the best message and the early momentum. But when Iowa's caucuses came around, their voters decided the general election discussion wasn't going to be about domestic issues, it was going to be about the war in Iraq. It seems like they decided being an anti-war candidate, like Dean, wasn't going to be enough. That in the end the democrats needed to nominate someone who was going to be anti- war but also credible enough to deal with the situation and the soldiers if we couldn't just get out. The nominee had to have foreign policy experience, and Dean didn't have any. Kerry got their support.

I think for most of the rest of this year Obama, whom I support, is going to have the momentum. He's the new star. But the day before the Iowa caucus, caucus goers are going to watch the news. If the war is still going on, if there are internatonal tensions .etc, they are IMO going to look at Obama and Edwards and wonder if they going to be credible nominees if the discussion in November is mainly foreign policy and not domestic. Neither one of them has much of that. Hillary is the one who does, and has her husband-- one of the world's experts on foreign policy, as her closest advisor. That is going to count for something, particularly if voters wonder just how careful an Obama or Edwards would be with policy decisions in the middle east. Whose advice would they take? If they think Obama might be pro-palestinian, and they think Edwards has turned into a total dove, who are voters in Iowa going to vote for if they think foreign policy credibility is more important in november than domestic policy creds?

Richardson has great foreign policy creds as was pointed out, but he has a unique problem out in the heartland that the other candidates do not, which is that he is hispanic and many of those voters in places like Iowa and Ohio are obsessed with the immigration issue. Even if you go out to Long Island, you see locals whose biggest problem of all is that they see, or think they see waves of people from central and south america are coming over the borders to take their jobs. It is not right, it is awful in fact, but there are voters who would see the election of a hispanic american president as symoblic of how the country is being changed by immigration. This particularly true in specific states, and among independents and the more protectionist minded democrats. It makes me sad to say it really, but I don't think Richardson can win the general because of this. The Democrats can't nominate a hispanic candidate and not expect the republicans to make the general a referendum on immigration. So if Obama and Edwards may not have enough foreign policy experience, and Richardson isn't electable, who does that leave?

On the GOP side, McCain is fading badly, Guiliani can't get nominated IMO with his views on abortion, and Romney can't get nominated because he's a mormon. None of the others are breaking from the pack. Thompson's not even running yet and he's got better poll numbers than some of them. Fred Thompson's a tv star, Mr. Law and Order charismatic, southern and folksy, he's your Nascar candidate.

Hillary vs Fred Thompson. That seems like the most likely general matchup. But boy would I love to see Obama vs. Romney! What are your predictions?

By next year's primaries, the country will have been in a war six and half years. During the first years, job opportunities were abysmal. Now that the economy is appearing better, we have to realize that some of what the numbers reflect is cost of living. It's become apparent that people are as fed up with Iraq as they were with Viet Nam in the waning days. Even those with only a few years of adulthood in 2001 will have learned that political rhetoric does not buy the baby new shoes. Democrats have courted the youth crowd for seven years already. Youth just may answer the call and decide that what's involved is a better deal for themselves. I hope all candidates recognize that a major change may be coming.
In looking at the contenders with the above in mind, my thinking runs toward two main requirements for electability. A decent amount of charisma is involved which has little to do with gender, ethnicity, or state of origin, but experience is involved as much as personality. The second requirement I see is a person who can make clear to the electorate that it isn't The War versus The Economy. Perhaps "Americans" is the subject. Only poli sci wonks can get heated up about habeas corpus, but most people are fed up with the directives coming from Washington, including how to run the schools. They are certainly tired of hearing about what the generals have done in Iraq, whichever year. In short, the person who wins will do so because he convinces the folks that they are why he is running.
I certainly appreciate the analysis of what has been written here. And I think some bloggers will make some difference. Regardless of how well run the groups are, it remains true that netroots and grassroots are not the same thing.
I'm sure we will learn better how to fine tune the issues as we go along. After all, we are on the same page about not Swiftboating. We are bound to keep it civil.

Joe Trippi, former Dean campaign manager, who knows his stuff, is quoted in the latest New York magazine as predicting a brokered convention. This because there are three well financed candidates and a heavily frontloaded schedule. He thinks evidently that so many primaries are going to happen so quickly, that either one candidate is going to run the boards or votes are split all over the place and no one is going to get a majority of delegates. Lets say Iowa goes for Edwards, New Hampshire for Clinton, South Carolina for Obama .etc, and on Feb. 5th all these other states vote and there is no consensus going in. Is there going to be going out?

This sort of scenario could make Edwards the kingmaker, because if the polls are right, and Obama and Hillary will win their large home states and split the other large states, both could be at 40% of the delegates or so, short of majority. Edwards could be sitting there with 20 or 25% of the delegates and unable to win himself, he'd be able to crown one of the other two. Or maybe start a draft Gore movement?

I can go with this:
"In short, the person who wins will do so because he convinces the folks that *they* are why he is running."

I was out at the Earth Day street fair outside grand central station over the weekend. In between all the booths pitching various environmental causes, and the Mother Jones magazine booth, were plenty of people wearing Draft Al Gore buttons and holding clipboards. This even though Gore insists he's not running and would probably have preferred that these people were out advocating the fight against global warming rather than being preoccupied with his political future.

It is time to face facts. Gore isn't going to be a candidate. I saw him on tv a couple of weeks ago and he has gained twenty pounds. I think if he was running he'd be working out a bit right? Even if he were to get in months from now, he would be seen as not having paid his dues on the campaign trail like Edwards, Hillary and Obama. It would seem like he was trying to get the job without doing the work. We have good candidates running. I worry that this "draft Gore" movement gives the unnecessary impression to outsiders that somehow the rank and file isn't satisfied with the candidates we have.

but I doubt you'll make much on it --
"Even if he were to get in months from now, he would be seen as not having paid his dues on the campaign trail like Edwards, Hillary and Obama. It would seem like he was trying to get the job without doing the work."

What I meant was "paid dues" on the campaign trail, as in he'll never be seen as having knocked on as many doors in Iowa, attended as many house parties in New Hampshire, party functions elsewhere .etc In Iowa and New Hampshire in particular, those voters want candidates to sweat, to earn their votes. They expect to meet candidates, and see candidates showing personal concern with their state issues. Gore hasn't been doing that for months or years like the others. Fighting global warming is a fine thing, but if Gore hasn't been on the ground for months talking the economy and jobs in Cedar Rapids and Nashua and elsewhere, he isn't going to be seen by those voters as having paid dues. I have voluntereed for candidates in both states. Those voters are spoiled. They have high expectations. They expect dues to be paid. I don't think Gore can drop into the race late in the year and expect voters to pick him over the other candidates who have worked longer and harder for their votes.

Maybe in other states it won't matter as much. But we're talking Iowa and New Hampshire, and you don't win the nomination without winning there.

that Gore is singularly safe from that criticism, having gone through 2000. I was in Florida then and he was too. Not only did he pay those dues, he wouldn't leave when it was time to close up shop! We thought he'd NEVER go home so we could have CHRISTMAS after the election weeks earlier! So the man is hardly a latecomer or a coaster, and it's absurd to suggest experienced vote-vetters anywhere would view him that way.

On top of which, of course, he was elected and actually served as (vice) president through the 1990s. Even Hillary can't top that. And there's the issue Oscar for what is sure to be the one emerging movement behind which folks across the American political spectrum if not the world, can find and farm some productive common ground . . .

I don't know whether I would support his candidacy or not in a primary or otherwise, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he is more *entitled* to the chance than anyone, using any measure of dues-paying I can imagine, up to and including the early Dem front-runners currently trying to claim inevitability.

Thats a valid point, and it does seem like a number of people in the know *think* Gore will run. I heard James Carville, the Ragin' Cajun himself, who supports Hillary wholeheartedly, saying on tv a couple of weeks back that he thinks she's going to have a tougher time winning the nomination than the general. Why? Because Carville thinks Gore is going to run. He thinks Gore is far too much of a political junkie to be able to sit out an open presidential race.

Some also say Gore doesn't have the close relationship with the Clintons that he used to have. So we'll have to see. But I still think getting into a race late while others have been working for months is quite difficult. Look at what happened to Wes Clark in 2004. He got in late, skipped Iowa altogether, and I honestly think voters in New Hampshire decided that, in spite of the good ideas he had, that Clarke hadn't labored and sweated for it enough.

makes a more comparable guessing game I think. And I'd have to give the edge to Gore on:
* doing the work and paying dues as VP, then running in his own right and coming closer to actually being elected president, AND

* most visible environmental pol, although I've been mightily impressed with what I'm learning of late about John Kerry's environmental knowledge and activism (with his wife) -- I may not be an average soccer mom but I'm not a partisan either, and until recently I just didn't know this about Kerry. But I did about Gore. One Oscar is worth a TON of good works and dues-paying.

None of which is to say I think either one's candidacy would be the right thing for Dems, but OTOH, get Pelosi and Reid off the radar NOW if you're really worried about hurting the Dem chances of taking over the presidency. They are making even me nervous and I know this is shallow, but Gore's literal bulk (and Kerry's height if he would fill out some) is beginning to look metaphorically secure and comforting to me! ;-)

I've read the people who try to make a candidate the only choice rake in beg salaries. Didn't Trippi just go with Edwards?