12/10: A Fractured Relationship

We noted last Monday that there appears to be a disconnect between the netroots rank-and-file -- who, if Daily Kos straw polls are any indication, overwhelmingly oppose Hillary Clinton -- and the bloggers with the most prominent platforms -- who generally seem comfortable (if not enthusiastic) about HRC's candidacy. However, perhaps the real story here is not so much HRC's ability to appease the leading netroots bloggers, but Barack Obama's pattern of repeatedly disappointing and angering them. Obama's rhetoric about unifying the electorate and transcending politics never made him a perfect fit for the netroots, and his campaign's mistakes (such as the Donnie McClurkin incident and the more recent Paul Krugman dust-up) have only compounded his issues with Jerome Armstrong, Jane Hamsher, et al. But now that Obama's message seems to be resonating with Iowa voters, will the 'roots be willing to listen?

DEM FIELD: HRC, Back On Top?

Although he wrote last Saturday that he considered Obama the frontrunner for the Dem nomination, Open Left's Chris Bowers now gives HRC the edge: "The last seven media polls out of Iowa show Obama ahead in three, and Clinton ahead in four (although in two of the polls where Clinton leads, Obama actually leads among all voters). Clinton also leads in the [John] Edwards internal poll from Iowa. And yes, I include internal polls in the means. So, while Obama is now clearly in position to take both New Hampshire and South Carolina should he win Iowa, and close enough in Nevada that a double Iowa--New Hampshire sweep should be more than enough there, I can no longer say with an certainty that Obama is ahead in Iowa. Until Obama regains a clear Iowa advantage, Clinton will remain the frontrunner."

OBAMA: Taking On...Paul Krugman?

After New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote two op-eds criticizing Obama's health care plan, the Obama campaign fired back by releasing a memo that accuses Krugman of being inconsistent. Krugman responded by accusing Obama's campaign of launching a "personal attack": "Here's what I said about the Obama plan when it first came out...And I was prepared to leave it at that -- Obama's plan was weaker than his rivals' because it wasn't universal, but I hoped that he would fix that in practice. But then Obama started attacking his rivals from the right, denouncing their proposals using exactly the same false claims that conservatives will use to try to derail reform in the future. And now, having been caught out on the facts, the Obama people respond with a personal attack, lifting quotes out of context to pretend that I never had problems with the plan. Something is very wrong here."

A number of liberal bloggers are questioning both the substance of Obama's push-back against Krugman and the strategic wisdom of challenging someone who's as respected in progressive circles as the NYT columnist.

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong, a frequent Obama critic, thinks Obama's attack on Krugman reflects a troubling willingness to attack progressives: "It's obvious that Obama feels comfortable attempting to trash the credibility of progressives like Krugman. It's even more disturbing when coupled with the admiration that Obama holds for Republicans in his post-partisan quest...Is Obama just plain ignorant of the fight we've faced this decade in going after Krugman? Why is he going after the Clinton and Edwards plans to push forward the idea of universal coverage? Does he really have no clue that using the term 'crisis' to describe Social Security is Rovian? It's mistakes like these that make me think that if Obama gets the nomination, it's going to be disgusting to watch as he turns against progressives in his bid for the middle, and as he says, that's the way he'd govern too."

Ezra Klein, who's frequently criticized Obama's health care plan for its lack of a mandate, is surprised by Obama's attack on Krugman: "Something's really gone off the rails when the Obama campaign decides to release an oppo document on Paul Krugman. It's not only the actual attacks that are weak (most of them rely on misinterpreting one comment, then misinterpreting the next, then pretending there's a contradiction), but, seriously, it's Paul Krugman. Arguably the most progressive voice in American media. When I argued that the campaign should take the gloves off, I really didn't expect their target, in this document and in the health care fight more generally, would be progressivism. What in hell is going on over there?"

Atrios is also surprised: "Normally I get pretty excited when Democrats take on the media, but this is just weird."

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum understands the Obama campaign's need to push back against Krugman's criticisms, but questions the substance of the push-back: "Krugman has been hitting Obama pretty hard lately, and I can understand why the Obama campaign has hit back: Krugman is extremely influential among likely Obama voters, and they can't afford to just let his grumbles sit there unanswered. What's more, Krugman isn't some kind of progressive Delphic oracle. It's OK to fight back against him. Still, attacking Krugman as inconsistent, as they did on Friday, is indeed bizarre. He hasn't been. What's more, although it's true that Krugman prefers the Edwards/Clinton approach on both healthcare and Social Security, his complaint isn't primarily with the substance of Obama's plans anyway. Rather, his complaint is with Obama's rhetoric, which has been fundamentally an attack from the right that will only make it harder for progressives to fight similar-sounding right-wing attacks in the future."

Open Left's Matt Stoller, who actually agrees with Obama that mandates are bad policy, nevertheless thinks Obama's attack on Krugman is foolish: "The Obama campaign offers a weird attack on Paul Krugman, calling him inconsistent in his attacks on Obama's health care plan. Krugman is perfectly consistent, as Ezra notes. It's a strange fight to pick, since it forces Krugman into a position where either his credibility is damaged or he responds. More to the point, Krugman isn't running for office. Is Obama looking for more opponents or something?"

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat (via an email to Jeralyn E. Merritt) uses the incident to explain why he prefers HRC to Obama: "Krugman PUSHES ALL THE CANDIDATES from the progressive point of view. Including Hillary. Barack Obama has a history of attacking progressive voices. The Hillary Clinton campaign, as it has all this year -- attending Yearly Kos, fighting [Bill] O'Reilly, skipping Fox Debates, etc. -- understands that Dems do not all agree on the issues but welcomes ALL Democratic voices, especially progressive voices. Barack Obama prefers to attack Democrats instead of fighting for Democrat values against Republicans. Hillary Clinton knows who the REAL fight will be with."

Taylor Marsh, an HRC supporter and perhaps Obama's harshest online critic, delivers a scathing broadside against Obama at the Huffington Post: "Obama's audacity of a smear against a leading progressive shows no political conscience whatsoever. This comes as no surprise to me. Skipping out and not being counted where it matters on the issues is what Obama's been doing all year...Mr. Obama has no compunction of going after the leading progressive economist, Paul Krugman, because Obama's loyalty is not to Democratic principles, but to his own agenda, which at it's core can be summed up in four words: Let's Make a Deal."

OBAMA II: Who Cares What Oprah Says?

In response to this weekend's considerable media coverage of the Obama rallies featuring Oprah Winfrey, several of Obama's netroots critics are downplaying Oprah's influence and criticizing her political views.

Jeralyn E. Merritt doubts that Oprah can sway black voters in SC: "Can 'the nation's wealthiest African-American woman' have an impact on the voters of a poor state like South Carolina? The race card is already in play. African American supporters of John Edwards are calling the Oprah-Obama tour a publicity stunt...People will turn out in droves to see her, but I doubt it means they'll buy the candidate she's selling."

Jerome Armstrong accuses Oprah of helping to elect Bush in 2000: "Back during the end of September 2000, when Gore had Bush on the mat following the bounce from the LA convention and the RATS ad, it was Oprah that picked Bush up off the ground. 'My pleasure,' he purred when she thanked him for the kiss. The establishment media went gaga after Oprah embraced Bush. That's what I know about Oprah and her politics."

A number of the commenters at MyDD pushed back against Armstrong's post. Here is a sampling:

royce: "You're really reaching, Jerome. Would this diary appeared if Oprah was campaigning for Kucinich or Clinton or Edwards?"

Jim Engler: "Wow, three anti-Obama posts on the front page....Record?"

jello: "next, jerome is going to critique obama's kindergarten and 3rd grade essay."

jbsloan: "Jerome, who's paying you? The anti-Obama bias that is coming through in your posts is so strong that it makes me doubt your authenticity."

Meanwhile, Blue Hampshire's Delegator disagrees with Merritt's appraisal of Oprah's influence: "I find it amusing when pundits or other campaigns try to minimize the affect that Oprah will have on this race. Oprah is the rare case of a celebrity whose endorsement has a huge upside but essentially no downside...nobody I know dislikes her. She's not like a Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, or even George Clooney, all of whom alienate some people by wearing their politics on their sleeves."

OBAMA III: Dividing The Netroots

In addition to Jerome Armstrong's four negative posts about Obama, several other leading netroots bloggers have taken Obama to the woodshed this weekend.

Taylor Marsh: "Barack Obama has no ideological compass. He doesn't care if it's a progressive honestly pointing out the flaws in a policy plan. All Obama cares about is the aura of him, because he has no ideological center...Obama is, while also being willing to do whatever he can to get elected, cannibalizing his own and our ideals as he goes; bringing as many people along as he can, including conservatives who will have no allegiance to what progressives have worked for over decades to achieve. That's because Obama's loyalties are not to Democratic or progressive causes."

The Left Coaster's eriposte:

"Sen. Obama has shown a tendency to either say nothing on controversial matters, or vote 'present' or skip controversial votes, or enlist the help of controversial supporters for winning votes, and claim later that his position was different from what the vote or position entailed or what the supporter believed...

Sen. Obama has shown a very strong tendency to repeatedly use false right-wing frames to negatively describe the left or Democrats in sweeping fashion on a number of issues. He has also exhibited a significant comfort level with the use of false right-wing frames to discuss policy or criticize other progressives or Democrats, even while he misleadingly criticizes Sen. Clinton for allegedly enabling Bush and the right with her vote on Kyl-Lieberman.

The voting records of both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton are very similar and much more progressive than Sen. [Joe] Lieberman's. However, contrary to the false, yet common knee-jerk linkage of Sen. Clinton with Sen. Lieberman, Sen. Obama's rhetorical history has a lot more in common with his mentor Sen. Lieberman, whom he went out of the way to support prior to Ned Lamont's win in the Democratic primary..."

Obama is not without his online defenders, however. Daily Kos diarist PsiFighter37 fires back at Obama's netroots critics in a diary entry entitled, "The blogosphere's problem with Barack Obama":

"In the past couple of days, there have been some particularly incendiary pieces written about Barack Obama by prominent bloggers within the netroots community...One thing to highlight, though, is that it's Obama -- and only Obama -- that has been the target of these kinds of irrational attacks. Neither Hillary Clinton or John Edwards have been targeted in the same manner. Why?...

There are a couple of reasons that Obama is taking a couple of hits. First, the blogosphere is once again stepping into the trap of becoming little more than a group of purity trolls. None of our candidates are perfect, but we're letting that be the enemy of pretty damn good...The netroots needs to understand this about Obama: he's not going to ever be the person who comes out and says he's sick of listening to religious fundamentalists running the country. That's not his style. But that doesn't mean he's not the most progressive candidate with a serious chance of winning the presidency in a generation. Netroots activists need to stop fooling themselves into believing in a definition of 'progressivism' that is false. Howard Dean would not have governed as a liberal if he were elected, and he certainly didn't govern as one when he was Vermont's governor. Hillary Clinton is no liberal, either in rhetoric or in governance...

In the end, the blogosphere needs to accept Barack Obama for who he is. He is not going to pander to you, nor is he going to work within the frameworks that are already set up by the netroots for how outreach on the Internet is supposed to be done. But he's doing a pretty damn good job of setting up a movement of hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country that want something different. Just because he may not be doing it our way doesn't mean he's not a progressive. It just means that his belief about what progressivism is -- in the political sense and in the activist sense -- is different.

And maybe, just maybe, he's right."

GOP FIELD: Univision Debate? Yawwwwn...

Conservative blogger reactions to the GOP Univision debate ranged from boredom to mild disgust:

AmSpec Blog's Jennifer Rubin: "How many people watched this? Does it matter? The only goof was [Mitt] Romney's healthcare answer. The rest was fine, I guess, but a bit too much of a pander-fest for my taste."

RedState's Ben Domenech: "It really wasn't a particularly riveting debate -- Ron Paul got booed for being Ron Paul, [Fred] Thompson had a couple good one liners, Mitt had to give a convoluted explanation about his hiring/firing of the landscaping company, but Craig Romney gave some pretty good spin about it (in fluent Espanol!) afterward to the reporters, nothing really out of the ordinary."

NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Last night I found myself in absolute agreement with Tom Tancredo as I turned on Univision...and saw no English subtitles or other manner to figure out what the Republican candidates were saying, beyond lip-reading...Without any English simulcast, I'm not sure what the point of this debate was."

Michelle Malkin: "For the most part, the Republican candidates played along and failed to reject the underlying identity politics premise that Hispanics are a monolithic voting bloc (as if anti-Castro Republicans in Florida share anything in common with reconquista punks in souther California)...Ok, when's the Tagalog-language Filipino debate? Vietnamese-language debate? Hindi, anyone?"

HUCKABEE: The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

Mike Huckabee's 1992 statements about wanting to isolate AIDS patients are providing small government conservatives in the blogosphere with yet another reason to distrust him:

AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "The idea that Mike Huckabee as U.S. Senate candidate in 1992 would have advocated the draconian step of quarantining AIDS patients is appalling. It not only displays a shocking ignorance, but is further evidence of authoritarian tendencies in Huckabee that we have already seen in his support for big government, nanny state policies, such as a national smoking ban in workplaces."

NRO's Jonathan Adler: "In 1992 Hucakbee supported an AIDS quarantine, despite the lack of any real public health justification for such a step. Today he supports a federal smoking ban in public places. This causes me to wonder: Is Huckabee willing to throw the idea of limited government out the window any time there is a plausible (or even not so plausible) public health argument for doing so?"

GIULIANI: He Survived A Mob Hit And MTP

Conservative bloggers are giving [Rudy] Giuliani mostly positive reviews for his performance on "Meet The Press":

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Rudy Giuliani went toe-to-toe with Tim Russert this morning and emerged not only unscathed but the stronger for again demonstrating that in a general election showdown with either Senator Clinton or Obama, the mayor would be up to the 24/7 MSM's slash-and-burn attacks."

RedState's Mary Kilmer: "On MTP, Rudy Giuliani was splendiferous, and anyone who disagrees is not to be trusted as a human being whose soul is not a clod. (No, I'm not a, per se, Giuliani supporter.)"

Campaign Standard's Richelieu: "A confident and gregarious Rudy Giuliani yesterday on Meet the Press. He's near-bulletproof in the chair, a testament to his many years spent learning to survive New York's Darwinian media pit. Still, it was mostly an hour of tough sledding. Rudy didn't get much chance to sell his wares. Instead he was bobbing and weaving like a trapped middleweight as Tim Russert piled on the questions. Rudy pushed back hard and fought Russert off several times; his survival technique was to dance and filibuster."

Jennifer Rubin: "I suspect the Rudy people are very pleased he survived without incident. I thought it was a waste of the hour."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Race Nobody Can Win

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat ponders:

"So the latest polls have Mike Huckabee up an implausible nineteen points in Iowa and four points nationally. But he can't win, right? I mean, he's vulnerable on practically every non-social issue, he has a variety of skeletons in his closet, his policy team seems more or less nonexistent, he still doesn't have any money, and he has most of the GOP establishment united against him. He doesn't have a prayer -- or maybe that's all he has.

Except, of course, that none of his rivals can win either. If you look at the field, every candidate seems to have near-disqualifying weaknesses (a point Larison has been making for months, I believe), which helps explain why nobody seems capable of getting above 30-35 percent in any national or state-level poll. [John] McCain is still poison to a large chunk of the base and probably doesn't have enough money to capitalize even if he wins New Hampshire -- and if he loses there, he's cooked. Mitt Romney is running on a record that would have made him a moderate Democrat in any state except hyper-liberal Massachussetts. Rudy Giuliani is running on a record that would have made him a moderate Democrat in any place except hyper-liberal New York City. Fred Thompson is more ideologically appropriate, but he's lived down to his lackluster record as a politician by running a remarkably lousy and (perhaps unremarkably) lazy campaign. Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul."

LEST WE FORGET: The Crucial Potterphile Voting Bloc

The New Republic's Christopher Orr writes:

"Barron [YoungSmith] reminds me that Mike Huckabee's 'Phoenix' metaphor isn't his only recent statement suggesting an affinity for the oeuvre of J. K. Rowling. As he pointed out on Tuesday, Huckabee has also described his FairTax proposal as 'like waving a magic wand.'

It's obvious that the former governor of Arkansas is trying to signal to the crucial Potterphile voting bloc that he is one of them -- but subtly, in order not to annoy his fundamentalist base. In the coming days and weeks, keep an eye out for comments along the lines of 'Mitt Romney's immigration plan sounds about as workable as a flying car,' 'If my opponents attack me, I will hit back like a whomping willow,' and, of course, 'If you help me win this nomination, I promise you I will go on to beat She Who Must Not Be Named.'"