Today's lessons in oppo research response

Publius, who's stopped writing his own blog at Legal Seafood or whatever, is now a member in good standing of the Obsidian Wings team of very smart people. Today he wrote a typically well reasoned take on the John Edwards blogmaster dust-up this week that is very much worth a read. I, however, have some differences with a few of his conclusions.

What’s less obvious is that signing up for Edwards was also a bad fit for Marcotte. To write for a national political campaign, Marcotte has to neuter herself (so to speak). Quite simply, she must stop being the writer she is, for good or bad.

I'm not so sure of that. First of all, I don't think she'd have taken the gig if she hadn't been promised a fair amount of editorial independence. Clearly John, or more likely, Elizabeth Edwards, liked her overall take on things, such as those having to do with poverty, women's rights, the "two Americas" to name a few. I don't think that would have changed. Would she have self-censored more than on her personal blog? Why, yes, certainly. But they hired her for her passion and she would have continued to deliver it. Of course, now, after the rapid response attacks she's undergone, I'm not so sure.

Also, why are the rules different for bloggers? Influential "intellectuals" and writers have worked on campaigns for years. That never stopped them from going back to writing their own opinions once the campaign ended.

Where I do agree with Publius is that Amanda should probably have known that once she joined the Edwards campaign she was going from way-bigger-than-Vegacura-but-still-relative-obscurity to the big time. She should have known that her writings over the years would be combed through by someone and it would be brought to the attention of the Mighty Wurlitzer with results damaging to both her and the Edwards campaign. Lesson to bloggers: self-censorship can be a good thing, especially if you crave being a part of the public face of a presidential campaign. And if you are asked to be a part of the campaign you, and the candidate, better know that up-front [note to Dennis K., thanks for the offer, but I've written some very nasty things about both Karl Rove -- and cat owners -- over this blog's life].

She was naive. She thought opposition research wouldn't find her and nowadays, that's just not possible.

A few thoughts here. First, Edwards — like other Democrats (e.g., Tears Durbin) — needs to learn what Rove & Pals have long understood, which is that news cycles don’t last. I mean, good Lord, Ari Fleischer made a living out of this. You evade for a day or two, and then the story goes away. And when it’s over, you don’t look like a wimp. Compare the reactions of Dick Durbin after the Nazi thing to Karl Rove after Reid called for an apology. Teary McTearFace Durbin cried and Rove ignored it.

Yes. And no. That was the strategy John Kerry used when the Swiftboat attacks made their first, filthy presence known. He assumed the news cycle would be short. That lies and misinformation would not be picked up by the Em Ess EM, and the story would quickly pass. His strategy was to ignore the attacks so as to not give them credence. Made sense. Didn't work.

Publius is ignoring the fact that the Rightwing is provided ample time to air their views on TV -- the whackier they are, the better TV they produce. What Marcotte wrote is not nearly as offensive as what Malkin says everyday, but the latter is invited on TV all of the time. Malkin may be used as a foil, as Chris Matthews used her on Hardball, basically calling her a liar. But there's no such thing as bad TV time for these people. Their TV appearances kept the ball in the air and eventually real journalists were forced to report on their credibility. The Swiftboat stories were debunked, but the effect on the Kerry campaign was the same. People heard this constant droning in the background that Kerry lied about his service, his medals, Christmas in Cambodia, you name it. Bottom line for lots of voters: sure, Bush lied about WMD, but Kerry's a liar too.

The truth is, while we're getting better at it -- YouTube creates its own TV time, just ask George Allen -- progressives just don't have the access to the cable news shows that the Right does. Furthermore, the Times and the Post love attacking "vulger" bloggers, but they sure as hell won't take on Bill "anal sex" Donahue or anyone else who stands for some aggrieved minority, like, um, Catholics. Dobson and Donahue don't challenge newspapers in the way that bloggers do. But challenging them puts those newspapers at risk of, you guessed it, "liberal bias." We are systemically challenged by that.

Second, it isn’t that big a deal. Yes, those writings are bad and offensive. But the overwhelming majority of the public barely knows what a blog is. People just don’t care about this, politically speaking. Bloggers (and I indict myself) tend to live in a bubble, not understanding that most people don’t have the blogosphere on their radar.

Finally, Edwards needs to remember that his goal right now is to win the primary election, nothing more. He doesn’t have the luxury right now of worrying about what Republicans think of him. And firing Marcotte would hurt him with primary voters far worse than keeping her would.

Yes, the blogosphere is a self-reverential echo chamber. But see reference to constant droning, above. This wasn't the blogosphere buzzing, this was The New York Times and CNN. Again, Bill Donahue is a swine and a nut, but he has quite a Rolodex. And, yes, firing Marcotte would hurt him with Democratic voters, but, on the other hand, it's a nick in his veneer and primary voters -- even fractious Democratic ones, want someone who can beat whichever Fundamentalist Christian beholden fuck the GOP nominates. In other words, yeah, we care about principles, but we care about the General Election too.

Finally, Publius' main conclusion is that this is all about not bending to the attacks that are sure to come at any candidate perceived as a leading contender. He's right. But I'm not sure that we on the left are ready for what's to come. Read the comments to his post, in which arguments as to who's more guilty for this debacle, "flame throwing" leftists or "sensible" leftists, rather than a reporter who'd rather write an easy, snarky piece on vulgar bloggers instead of maybe providing some context as to what Marcotte wrote, why, and who the hell is Bill Donahue and what are some of the fetishistic things that have come out of his mouth.

Point is, I don't think you'd ever see such hand wringing and self-flagellation on a Rightwing blog. Truth is, the Swiftboat attacks and this latest dress rehearsal featuring Malkin and Donahue show that these attacks can come out of nowhere, and nowadays they're not necessarily driven by the opposition candidate, so they're not going to be fact-checked in the same way a campaign's attack ads would be, at least not until they've attained wide circulation. So, it's going to be a lot tougher to know the right response to the attacks, but at the same time we're going to have to be quicker and more unified in our response to them. Trouble is, if we were, we probably wouldn't be Democrats.