March 16, 2007

3/16: As Go The Bloggers ...

... so go the voters? Netroots detractors love pointing to the implosion of Howard Dean's candidacy as proof that blogger preferences don't mirror those of primary voters. And it's true that Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly do better in actual primaries than the 3%-5% she collects in netroots strawpolling . Nonetheless, trends that show up in online polling often translate into more traditional polling as well. While trying to explain why Barack Obama does so much my better in MyDD polls than Daily Kos ones, Chris Bowers notes that MyDD readers skew almost eight years younger than Daily Kos readers. Bowers then shows that more traditional polls, like Pew, also demonstrate that Obama does much better than Edwards and Clinton among 18-29 year olds than he does with any other age bracket. Should Obama be concerned that young voters won't show up on primary day?

DEM FIELD: Out-Foxing A Weasel

Possibly due to Barack Obama's "weasly answer" on the morality of homosexuality or John Edwards' "leading the charge" against Fox News, Edwards has surged ahead of Obama among Daily Kos readers. Over 20K Kossacks voted in March's dKos straw poll. The top five finishers were:

John Edwards 38%
Barack Obama 26%
Other 9%
Bill Richardson 8%
No freakin' clue 8%

Edwards also won Feb.'s straw poll but by a much smaller margin (26%/25%)

DEM FIELD II: Generation MyDD

Noting the 15-point gap between John Edwards 38%-26% margin over Barack Obama in Daily Kos' straw poll and Obama's 36%-33% victory over Edwards in his own's straw poll, MyDD's Chris Bowers digs in to MyDD demographic numbers and finds "the readership of MyDD is much younger than that of Dailykos." MyDD has almost twice as many under-30 readers as Daily Kos does and the median MyDD reader is eight years younger than their dKos counterpart.

Bowers further observes that other polls, including Pew, also show "Obama did vastly better among younger Democrats than he did among older Democrats, while for Edwards the situation was reversed." Bowers concludes: "I can't prove it definitively, but I think the age gap between MyDD and Dailykos is one of the main causes, if not the main cause, behind the different preferences for Edwards and Obama in straw polls on the two sites."

CLINTON: Let Hillary Be Hillary

Hillary Clinton's belated admission that she does "not think homosexuality is immoral" is only reinforcing netroots doubts about her. Daily Kos' mcjoan blogs: "The kneejerk reaction to answer carefully and conservatively is becoming a hallmark of Clinton's campaigning. I'm sure that this statement is the much more honest one, is much more reflective of who she is and what she believes. So why don't we see more of that in her appearances."

OBAMA: As Tolerant As Bush

Helping Barack Obama respond to Los Angeles Timesclaims he "bowed to Allah" as a six year-old in Indonesia, TAPPED's Garance Franke-Ruta tells readers, "we need to be very clear when talking about this issue that being respectful to someone else's faith says nothing about what a person actually believes."

After reminding readers of all the interfaith services Pres. Bush has participated in Franke-Ruta continues: "If Obama says he has never been a Muslim, we have to believe him, regardless of what his early teachers say about how he was registered at school or what he studied, because only Obama can speak to what he genuinely believed. ... The instinctive conformity of a 6-year-old nearly four decades ago is of far, far less public significance than the prayers of a sitting president in formal public ceremonies, except to the extent that it dovetails with an adult commitment to tolerance."

GIULIANI: You Wanna Talk About 9/11 ... Bring It On!

RCP Blog's Blake Dvorak breaks down Rudy Giuliani's troubled relationship with the International Association of Fire Fighters into two separate issues. First, Dvorak quickly dismisses suggestions Giuliani could be hurt at all by the unions non-endorsement noting that Rudy fought with the union long before 9/11 and that, as a union, they have never "endorsed a Republican anyway."

The real problem the IAFF poses for Giuliani, stems from the groups displeasure over Rudy's "cutting short their search-and-rescue efforts for victims lost in the World Trade Center rubble, many of them fallen firefighters." Dvorak references a Robert PolnerSalon essay sketching out possible "Swift Vets" style attacks on Giuliani featuring family members of victims who might have been saved. Unlike Polner, Dvorak argues such ads could not be effective:

Look at this way: Has any credible person or group come forward to claim that Giuliani's handling of 9/11 and its aftermath on the whole left New York worse off? Setting aside the charges of one aggrieved group (and the firefighters are a big one, admittedly), who is claiming New York suffered more than it benefited from Giuliani's leadership in the days and weeks after 9/11? Were the Democrats to go after Rudy on 9/11, Rudy could respond with all the equally heart-wrenching footage from that day, with him in the thick of things -- the same footage Democrats howled that the Bush Team was exploiting in 2004. Rudy would win that tussle.

HUCKABEE: Granite State *Hearts* Huckabee

Mike Huckabee "was quite well received" on a recent trip through NH, according to RCP Blog's Tom Bevan. Bevan reports: "Many of the folks I talked to were getting their first look at the Governor in person, and most generally liked what they saw and heard from him. Up close Huckabee is a pretty darn good retail politician; warm, funny, quick on his feet - yet still remarkably disciplined."

ROMNEY: A Blogger In A Book Tour?

Power Line's John Hinderaker was going to hold off on plugging Hugh Hewitt's 'A Mormon in the White House?' until he finished a longer review, but after realizing Hewitt's quoted him in the book, he decided to "go ahead and plug it now."

Hinderaker pitches: "Whether a candidate like Romney can win, of course, depends on how many people take the trouble to investigate him. So I urge you to read Hugh's book, not only because I'm sure it's well-written and fun to read, like all of Hugh's books, but because I think it's important that conservatives take a hard and well-informed look at a candidate who now, clearly, is a serious contender for the Republican nomination."

Speaking of Hewitt, Hugh plugs a John Mark Reynolds post explaining why social conservatives ought to trust Romney over Rudy Giuliani on the issues that matter to them: "In any church, the person who does the most work and is most dedicated to the cause is the convert or the prodigal member who has come back to faith. ... Far from worrying about our prodigal Romney who has come home to social conservative values . . . I worry about him least on these issues. Romney has the zeal of a new covert tempered by the pragmatic wisdom of one who knows the strengths and weaknesses of his old views."

The Brody File's promotion of an '02 video showing Romney pledging to protect a woman's right to choose elicited a response from Romney spokesman Kevin Madden: "The video from 2002 doesn't show anything new and it's from before his stance on the issue changed. Governor Romney has been very clear and very emphatic about his pro-life position and, like Ronald Reagan and Henry Hyde before him, he has changed on this issue."

More from Madden this time on YouTube: "I'd lose sleep about YouTube clips driving the news only if I didn't have a New Media plan of my own designed to deal with it. Our campaign showed that you can quickly and effectively combat anonymous attacks launched by opponents that use distortions by setting the record straight via the very same medium and with a full archive of the facts."

PROSECUTOR PURGE: "Heads Must Roll"

Two new MSM stories are driving netroots blogging on the US Attorney firings. Daily Kos' Hunter links to ABC Newsreports that emails show Karl Rove imitated the idea of firing all 93 attorneys in Jan. '05 and a National Journal's Maury Waasarticle claiming Pres. Bush stymied an investigation into AG Alberto Gonzales's role in the NSA surveillance program. Hunter adds: "This scandal goes to the heart of the ultraconservative method of governance: restructuring the very government itself into a political tool for defending and protecting a "permanent" Republican majority."

Also at Daily Kos, Kagro X says, "the long term effects of this scandal are incalculable" and urges Dems not to stop investigation into the matter even if Gonzales resigns: "Heads must roll, and they must roll in numbers." To aid understanding of story, Talking Points Memo has posted a "US Attorney Purge timeline stretching from 2001 until this very day."

On the right, few seem willing to defend Gonzales, but most argue the story is overblown. The Corner's Jonah Goldberg writes: "But here's the thing. As I see it, there are only two possibilities. Either it is a really big deal, in which case Gonzales should go. Or, it isn't a really big deal, but through his incompetence Gonzales has made it one. Either way, it seems to me that Gonzales should go." Similar thoughts from Rich Lowry: "I don't think there's anything wrong per se with removing the U.S. attorneys ... I'm not calling on Gonzales to resign, but I think it's more likely than not the way things look right now, and I obviously wouldn't be upset about it."

In a more defensive mood, Power Line's Paul Mirengoff admits "there's no doubt that certain statements to Congress by Justice Department officials were incorrect" in their testimony before Congress, but "so far as appears, there is no evidence that any individual who made the incorrect or dubious statements to Congress was aware of the emails that refute their statements. And the person who was in the middle of the email traffic, Kyle Sampson, has lost his job over this matter. At this juncture, then, there's no scandal as to anyone who remains at the Justice Department."

IRAQ: Lemonade Tastes Good

In the face of mounting evidence their cong. allies are unwilling to end the war, the netroots are still congratulating themselves for moving the debate in their direction. MyDD's Matt Stoller writes: "There are a number of reasons the war won't end in the next two years, but one of them and probably the most important one is that the public isn't yet ready to repudiate the militaristic posture that brought us there. The Democratic Party is becoming an antiwar party that has been pulled out of the bipartisan imperialist consensus. But it is not there yet. ... The public is against this war, but it is not for complete withdrawal. Change is still a very scary prospect."

Still holding out hope for 'Lemonade', Daily Kos' mcjoan explains how Dems can still "salvage" a "seriously flawed bill." Mcjoan urges the House leadership to make a statement ("The statement would not have to be added to the legislation.") that they will "back up the provision of bill to make the war illegal past September 1, 2008 by refusing to fund it past that date." McJoan says this promise would give "the administration 17 months to plan" for the end of the war and that Dems would not need to introduce new "defunding legislation" since "defunding doesn't have to be legislated--it just has to happen."

Previewing what a GOP ad on Iraq might look like for '08, Townhall's Patrick Ruffini posts RNC produced video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. David Obey (D-WI) explaining their Iraq war funding legislation to the press.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: They Don't Need Us, As Much As We Need Them

Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis has a thorough summary of a Online Politics panel featuring ex-Howard Dean advisor Joe Trippi, ex-Mark Warner advisor Jerome Armstrong, Rudy Giuliani advisor Patrick Ruffini, and ex-Pres. Bush advisor Chuck DeFeo. Some guy named Chuck Todd moderated the panel and had this prediction:

Todd says, by way of example, that the owner of the Washington Redskins has hired its own journalists. "In the sports world, this has become a very accepted thing." He asks how close we are to campaigns to hiring their own journalists on staff - not press staff but journalists. Trippi says he knows of one campaign that's about to do that, hiring a journalist to disseminate their story. So it's not a press release. It goes up on GoogleNews or on YouTube as a video news story. Todd says he knows of another that plans to do that. Campaigns, he said, are starting to see that they don't need mainstream media as much as MSM needs them.

LEST WE FORGET: Duke Sucks

TNR's Josh Benson explains how certain pols/bloggers approach their March Madness brackets including:

• The Daily Kos method: Whoever TNR picks, that's going to be wrong. Forever. They have North Carolina winning in the first round? You take Eastern Kentucky.
• The Lewis Libby method: Isn't Marquette just a mid-major? Not sure. Was UCLA hot at the end? I don't recall. Was the ACC overrated? Please rephrase the question.
• The Barack Obama method: Pick every team to win every game. When told you can't do that, smile and mention Jesus. Start with radical, out-of-the-box picks--Old Dominion, Southern Illinois, Nevada--but eventually realize your only hope is to accede to the dominant power structure. Place Florida, Ohio State, North Carolina, and Kansas in the Final Four. Now wasn't that easy?
• The Netroots method: Find the little teams that those AP poll-driven, silk-suit-wearing, slick SI consultants don't give a damn about. Creighton just needs a little higher seed money. VCU is the only real basketball team in the tournament. The elites are afraid Long Beach State won't carry the CBS corporate line. You're the kingmaker, baby. And nothing will convince you otherwise.
• The Bush Administration method: Don't ever change your picks. No matter how much your co-workers laugh at you. No matter when the entire starting five of your sleeper pick gets a case of lupus and falls spasming to the ground. You stay with Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Najaf State. You'll be right in the end. You're playing for history.
• Finally, the meta-rule: When in doubt, always, always bet against Duke.

Posted by Conn Carroll at March 16, 2007 11:41 AM