progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital
As a post script to the Great Blog War of 2008, this from two Clinton-supporting blogs. One of which has laid down their weapons, the other of which seems to be decamping to the hills and marshes, preparing themselves for the next skirmish. I’ll let you be the judge which one is which.
Big Trunk Democrat @ TalkLeft:
So let me get this straight — the first act of the self declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama will be to state that Michigan and Florida will not count? This is insane. Two key states in November will be dissed in the first act of the newly crowned Democratic nominee. At the least, Obama should wait until he has 2209 delegates counting the existing Florida and Michigan delegations.
D. Aristophanes, in an extremely classy gesture, apologizes and asks:
…what do Obama and his supporters need to do today to get you into this car?
One answer is pretty simple: don’t be jerks about it. That and more progressive policy positions.
The worst possible downside to the thousands of hours we have all spent paying attention to this campaign is that democratic voters who supported the losing nominee will be so pissed off that they won’t show up to vote in November.
All it takes is a few percentage points in a few battleground states to lose this thing. Half of Americans don’t vote and a lot of them just because they’re too pissed off about something or other.
BTD is a tough cat to read. Is he blogging about this because he’s concerned about Florida and Michigan? Or does he just like the attention? The good news is that if BTD really feels disenfranchised, he can campaign for voting rights for our nation’s capital. It’s easy to forget after a bruising primary like this, but those of us that live in Our Fair City, DC, don’t get a vote in congress. That’s not just during the Democratic Party primary. That’s all the time.
Btw, where was BTD in 2004 when DC moved up it’s primary to vote for Howard Dean, and got the same treatment that Michigan and Florida did in this election? (Okay, the punishment was to make the vote “non-binding,” but if the issue is making every vote count, it’s hard to see how that differs from MI and FL in any practical way.) You can read about it here.
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95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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On a muggy Florida evening in 2008, I meet Iraq War veteran Forrest Fogarty in the Winghouse, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of Tampa, his favorite hangout. [Link]
The Labor Department announced this morning that new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 last week. It also revised the figure from the previous week down to 515,000. [Link]
A team from IBM has spent the past several years constructing a virtual-world version of China's Forbidden City. [Link]
Following confirmation that Google intends to open its virtual world Lively to games developers, creative director Kevin Hanna has revealed the long-term goal is for the service to become an online games platform. [Link]
CHIBA, Japan (AP) -- Video game rivals Sony and Microsoft are going head-to-head in virtual worlds for their home consoles later this year. [Link]
a) He was paid by Dick Cheney's henchwoman Mary Matalin to write a book on Obama [Link]
One bunch of guys is getting up and saying, "we hafta." Another bunch of guys is getting up and saying, "nuh-uh." [Link]
To be able to say to folks, "You can keep what you have" is a big political selling point. [Link]
Here, based on 16 years experience watching Bill Clinton campaign — and interviews with a half-dozen veterans of his political teams — is a reasonably safe bet about his campaign advice to Barack Obama: [Link]
WASHINGTON — Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday. [Link]
We are going to have a new administration. Do we want these policies continued or not? [Link]
You can try Counter Culture coffees at: - Baked and Wired, 1052 Thomas Jefferson St. NW, 202-333-2500; www.bakedandwired.com [Link]
In sum, we concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal law and Department policy, and therefore committed misconduct... [Link]
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May 10th, 2008 at 10:51 am
I forgot who said this, but I think it’s fairly accurate. This primary has essentially revealed who on the liberal side of the blogosphere is reasonable, and who is (to be a little uncharitable) just a left-wingnut.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Yes, our punishment in 2004 was to make the primary nonbinding, which is exactly what happened with primaries in Michigan and Florida. We even had most of the candidates withdraw their names from the ballot. The difference is that DC’s Democratic Party reacted to that by setting up a later caucus (really the same as a primary except run by the party and with fewer voting locations) that then was allowed to count. Michigan and Florida reacted instead by holding their breath, stamping their feet, and hoping that the DNC didn’t really mean what they said.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:59 am
KCinDC:
You know, I would have liked to have seen the 2004 DC caucus. The so-called “Pre-primary caucus” was really interesting, and was a good omen for future political conventions in DC.
It’s hard to imagine that the Clinton campaign would have allowed for caucuses in Florida and Michigan, despite the allegations of Obama shutting down the voting in those states.
Jamelle:
It’s very unsettling for me, particularly with TalkLeft, who for many years ran a respectable venue. From a brief conversation I had with Eric Boehlert at TBA, it sounds like an account of the Great Blog War of 2008 will make it into his next book.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
The 2004 caucus wasn’t that exciting. I just remember standing in a fairly long line waiting to vote. It wasn’t very caucuslike, really not much different from a primary. It might have been what they were calling a “firehouse caucus” in some discussions of Michigan and Florida solutions, though if I remember correctly the Ward 3 location was a synagogue.