First Presidential 08 Opinion Post

[neadods]

Pam of Pam's House Blend explains clearly and succinctly why Edwards has plummeted in my opinon from "likely to get my vote" to "wouldn't piss on that man if he were on fire."

You can pick your stupidities. Was he:
1) Too damn dumb to vet blogs before he hires the bloggers?
2) Too politically naive to realize that whoever he hired would be personally attacked?
2a) Too politically naive to know what to do when the Swift Boating hit his campaign... again?
3) Too ball-less to stand up for his own decision to hire people?
4) Too weak to protect his own people from the inevitable attacks?

Any way you slice it, someone who rolls and shows his soft underbelly at the first serious campaign mudslinging and then throws his people to the wolves to make the wolves leave him alone is unfit to lead and defend the citizens of this (or any) country.

In the meantime, there's a whiny piece in the Post about Michelle Malkin that talks of her part in the blogger harassment as "She helped lead the charge against two liberal bloggers who resigned under pressure from John Edwards's presidential campaign" while avoiding the death threats levied against them and unironically pointing out that Malkin herself has moved to avoid harassment at her home.

(That the "two liberal bloggers" might have to move for the same reason is not discussed in the rush to condemn the vicious members of the "moonbat left." That Malkin has published the personal contact information of her enemies does get a one-line mention and her rebuttal without any evidence that the Post reporter actually looked to see if her claims were true... or mentioning what she told her minions to do with the information she provided.)

Comments

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

OTOH, what about the leader of the Young Democrats (and I saw this on the box) who said she would fire anyone who blogged anti-black sentiments, but would not have fired these 2, or anyone else, for blogging anti-Christian sentiments?

Come on. What those women wrote was foul and disgusting, and if the objects of their vitriol had been members of one of the protected classes then they would have been fired out of a cannon. But no, to a particular section of the political spectrum it's perfectly okay to smear and malign Christians (most of whom are perfectly sane, decent people).

I absolutely agree they have the right to say/blog whatever they think and feel. Free speech is crucial. And so is the freedom to vigorously refute their opinions. (Threats etc are crap, always, no matter who is espousing them) and to call them out for saying some of the revolting things they said.

Edwards is an idiot, full stop. He should have done his homework before taking these two on, or, failing that, should have had the guts to see they are hate mongers and small, vicious, intolerant people who want to smear all Christians with a stinky brush because some Christians have completely lost the plot.

Hey, when the right-wingers do that to the Muslim population, all Muslims are terrorists because some Muslims are terrorists, isn't that supposed to be evil, or something?

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

(3) and (4), for sure. Donahue and Malkin have no standing to attack the bloggers on any basis that involves the writing of hatred, denigration, or insult. Except possibly "it takes one to know one."

Edwards ought to have stood up to them from the first and told them they could take their hatred, hypocrisy, and slime back to the Hell they claim to believe in.

What a shame, on all counts. And the MSM is still playing the story as if the bloggers, and Edwards, are the bad guys. What dreck!

The sad part about it

[signeh.livejournal.com]

...is this probably has little or nothing to do with what the bloggers said.

It's an effort to disrupt the Edwards campaign.

The opposition doesn't want to take on Edwards about the issues. It's too early - the issues may be different, at least in intensity, by New Hampshire.

They don't want to take on Edwards personally. He's been through a Presidential campaign - there's just not a lot of dirt to dig that hasn't already been dug, four years ago.

So if you can't work the issues and you can't work a smear, how do you destroy the guy who is probably the third strongest contender, and the only white male of the three?

You work his staff. Especially the staff that might reach younger, hipper, and otherwise unreachable voters. Like his bloggers.

Make him look stupid and careless; paint him as sympathetic to anti-Christan wingnuts. Keep him busy recreating the wheel, spending time and energy and money to restaff and rebuild his Internet image. Force him into damned if I do and damned if I don't mode; defend the bloggers and he loses the right; fire them and he loses the left.

If it hadn't been the bloggers, it would have been someone else.

Hilary and Obama staffers should take warning.

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

I went to a talk last night held by a prominent blogger who is following the Libby trial, and was absolutely struck with the simularities of the audience witih fandom. The same indepth following of details (think canon addicts), the same dogmatic stances (Slash! No, het! No, BEASTIALITY is best!), the same you-must-follow-the-leader lemming look.

The difference between the blogger (the writer, the filmmaker, the producer) and her audience was that she'd done something; they were just wanna-bees; discussing in depth why a comma was dropped from the second edition vs the first and how in the grand scheme of the (written, filmed) universe it mattered.

Personally, I think a lot of personal blogs do it to shock people - that's how the comment about the Holy Spirit struck me, as juvenile and offensive. Shrug. With a click of the mouse, I go away to find something that's not screaming crudeness at the top of its lungs like a teenager whose just discovered how people can be offended by profanity.

But I think the Edwards campaign didn't do their homework. The situation shouldn't have occured. Nor did the newspaper that hired that right-wing-blogger months ago, for balance, and found out only later what he'd been writing.

There's no excuse for not doing your homework if a blogger's work is out on the web. None.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

Well, crap. Check out of reality for one sunny week, and this is what I come back to. :-P

Guess it's time to start more closely examining my vague gut-level Hillary misgivings, and balance them against the vast swathes of uncharted territory in Obama-land. Love the guy to death, but I still think he let himself get talked into jumping the gun. Running for president is a full-time job, no matter what one's intentions, and I'd really rather he finished ONE term as my senator before taking it on. *sigh* So Edwards was way up there for me too.

There have to be SOMEBODY who can figure out the difference between centrism and pandering, dammit!