Newshoggers Comments
I can't imagine they take him seriously enough.
A fatal mistake on their part Michael.
Slightly tangential, perhaps, but...
If all three candidates were asked (at the same time, and without being able to hear each other's answers, to be fair) if they know what Memeorandum is, I wonder if any of them would have a clue?
I wonder if any of them would be able to name half a dozen blogs on either side of the political spectrum?
I doubt they'd be able to name even one of the great political blogs being written by everyday citizens, rather than by well-known (even though utterly daft) professional pundits.
Not that I'm convinced they really want to know anyway, but there's no way the presidential candidates are going to find out what most voters are actually concerned about by half-listening, over and over, to the same 5 or 10 vetted softball questions they allow at their campaign rallies. And god knows, they certainly aren't going to learn anything about the voters' concerns from the inane questions put to them by tv's talking heads.
Which means, no matter how many cities and states they visit while campaigning, or how many times they're 'interviewed' on the Sunday morning talk shows, they all remain firmly entrenched in the beltway bubble.
What's really frustrating (not to mention scary, dangerous, and true) is that they'd all understand a helluva more about what's going on in Iraq if they'd just bother to read Newshoggers on a regular basis.
Ditto on Constitutional issues, if they'd only read Glenn Greenwald.
And if the Dems would just bother to notice, in the takes-one-to-know-one vein, John Cole's Balloon Juice has been regularly offering up a deluge of primo ammunition for use against the Republicans for the past couple of years.
I'm sure you can think of several other excellent blogs by so-called citizen journalists that would be equally enlightening.
Maybe we should send them a list, in hopes of alleviating at least a particle of their ignorance. Because as John Cole frequently complains, The stupid -- it burns!!!
K
Here's what Peter Daou has been up to lately. He's only posted 3 blogs at Huffington since Dec 17th, and on reading the titles of those three posts, 'savvy' isn't exactly the description that leaps to mind.
K
From the looks of google's search results, Daou hasn't exactly been making a positive impression on many liberal bloggers. Two examples:
On March 17th, Jill at brilliantatbreakfast wrote 'I hate to see this happen' in response to the e-mail Daou sent out to some bloggers.
And Oliver Willis wrote, 'Clearly the pushback from the liberal blogs is making some noise with the Clinton campaign, because Peter Daou (who I know in real life and think is a great guy) has written a lame defense of the campaign's latest strategy of trashing Obama...'
It seems to me, the situation is even worse than you suspect. It's not just that the campaign's leading advisors are ignoring Daou's advice. Apparently he's been rigidly following their advice, and wasting whatever talent he might have brought to the campaign in the process.
K
Kat, I'm betting of the three, Obama is most likely to actually read blogs, although I agree he probably reads only the big ones, although I wouldn't count out FDL or Glenn Greenwald from his reading list.
As for Daou's brilliance, I think you're right in that he's following their orders when in fact they should have been looking to him to lead their internet strategy. I only know him through his work before he signed up with Clinton, but I've seen what he's done since he started. I read that memo and it didn't sound like him so much as it sounded like Penn wrote the talking points and then expected Peter to spin gold out of straw. I think they most probably wasted his talent as a tactitian and treated him more like a mere technician. It's just a guess but I don't think I'm wrong.
I suspect it's all part of the Clinton team arrogance - that they can say or do anything and get away with it simply because they are who they are.
It's hard to imagine anyone more arrogant than Penn that doesn't have an R after their name. Or if you're Joe Lieberman, an I.
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