Met Mudcat at YK. As someone descended from several hundred years of died-in-the-wool hillbillis, it’s pretty obvious tome when someone is playing up the hick schtick for fun and profit, and Mudcat certainly. He’s a cartoon.

Does James Carville really need any competition for gimp-in-the-celler to the beltway bores? Ke-rist. It must be hard to talk this tough while prone.

As someone who had the displeasure of meeting mudcat at YK also(at the volunteer recognition cocktail party), I had the distinct opinion that he thought a lot more of himself than I did. There were some young men sharing a table with me who were practically prostrating themselves before this so-called God of Democratic wisdom which added to my distain of the whole encounter. As an Edwards supporter, I’m very disappointed that the campaign has hired this phony insider consultant.

Mack @ 104

Edwards does not need a Mudcat.
He has enough ‘authenticity’ all by his lonesome. …

Mudcat may be controversial, but he represents the return to the fold of the southern Democrat as much as anyone else in the swamp (the real one, not the fabricated version Mudcat writes for).

Those southern Dems hold one of the keys to our future success in ridding our nation of the pernicious influence of these “all-or-nothing” Republicans, and if the intellectual elites among us can’t find a way to show some respect to this “class” of voters, they can write them back off.

Mudcat represents a very large (and malleable) mass of special-interest voters, and when you publicly turn on people like Mudcat, no matter how insensitive and egocentric his posts might be, you turn on that entire class of voters.

Edwards NEEDS those votes.

But for all the wrong reasons (and some of the right ones), Hillary and Obama don’t have a prayer at getting those votes.

For those idiots who say “we don’t need those votes if they come with conservative strings attached” just remember the term “Reagan Democrats.” And ponder the term “blue dog.”

It is a big chess game, and we need to play like we are all on the same team, even if we disagree.

If you’re gonna govern all of America ya gotta eat some grits.

My only caution for Edwards & Trippi would be that their message, even if delivered by someone other than Edwards, should be positive, upbeat and inclusive.

at any rate, they REALLY want clinton to be the democratic candidate, they think she’s gonna be the easiest to beat

My personal theory is that Clinton is plan B, they want to make sure that if a Democrat does win there won’t be any nonsense about investigations, accountability, and above all, no war crimes trials.

There won’t be any war crimes trials anyway. It just isn’t our law.

No, I figure whomever becomes president will be very very busy straightening out a bunch of the Bush messes.

Of course, being the cynic that I can be, I expect the Repubs to create those messes and federal debts just to tie us up, so we can’t do our own plans. Sad really.

Yeah, I go along with the idea that Hillary is their best hope for the Dem party, so regardless of who wins the general election they’ll get pretty much whatever they want.

I left West Virginia decades ago, but nothing makes me want to “whup ass” more than listening to some elitist trying to “hillbilly up.”

So what to do? The answer he came up with is to piss off the left blogosphere, knowing that almost every Democratic pol has at least one staffer that reads the blogs, and get them to yell his name, loudly, for days and days. The fact that his “critique” is alignment with the most well-funded part of the party, the K Street wing. A few additional clients and the guy becomes a millionaire, and we helped.

The next time some faux-populist comes along and tries this stunt, I suggest not naming or linking to him. Perhaps posting general responses, talking about Bob Shrum and his horrific losing record, and mentioning that publication X ran a piece by another wannabee, would about do it.

No, we’re from Washington.
OK, but D.C. isn’t really the south.
No, Washington state. We were still a territory during the Civil War.

It’s the only state that is called state because lazy media are too lazy to call the city, Washington, D.C. so people have forgotten that Washington is a state. If you google Washington, you find the city. Speaking of the Civil War, we here sometimes talk about suscession and joining British Columbia, that’s B.C. in Canada.

JEP @ 122

Mudcat may be controversial, but he represents the return to the fold of the southern Democrat as much as anyone else in the swamp (the real one, not the fabricated version Mudcat writes for).

Those southern Dems hold one of the keys to our future success in ridding our nation of the pernicious influence of these “all-or-nothing” Republicans, and if the intellectual elites among us can’t find a way to show some respect to this “class” of voters, they can write them back off.

Mudcat represents a very large (and malleable) mass ofg sepcial-interest voters, and when you publicly turn on people like Mudcat, no matter how insensitive and egocentric his posts might be, you turn on that entire class of voters.

Edwards NEEDS those votes.

But for all the wrong reasons (and some of the right ones), Hillary and Obama don’t have a prayer at getting those votes.

For those idiots who say “we don’t need those votes if they come with conservative strings attached” just remember the term “Reagan Democrats.” And ponder the term “blue dog.”

It is a big chess game, and we need to play like we are all on the same team, even if we disagree..

Read that bit I linked to upthread by Sara at TNH. If those structural problems are not addressed along with the problems in the DOJ regarding active disenfranchisement of voters under the guise of “voter fraud”, the votes in the South will not be enough to do much just as they haven’t been for some time for the very same reasons.

Mudcat is doing jack about those problems as far as I can tell.

And Edwards was already doing a fine job with the south, particularly because of his work post-Katrina in NOLA. I know African-American folks who use the candidates’ response to NOLA as their single issue for choosing a candidate, and Edwards has their vote right now.

Mudcat’s frankly stupid comments slamming bloggers puts another constituency at risk, one that has been courted by all other candidates because of its ability to rapidly muster cash, for the nebulous benefit of some equally nebulous group of voters. Proof’s in the pudding; Mudcat needs to actually pull the southern vote for Edwards and stop throwing rocks at us, when our pocketbooks make it possible to reach and win the south.

Rayne, I wholeheartedly agree, Mudcat and his Southern Dems don’t seem nearly as concerned about the voting machines and caging as they are about gun rights, and that should be corrected.

If there was ever a single issue we can gather round and join together over it is the election fraud and vote caging.

Maybe it would be a good dialogue to open up with these re-awakened Southern Dems.. to encourage them to bring Election Integrity way up on their list of precious rights to protect.

Above all, White Southern Dems should be willing to encourage and enable Black Southern Dems to vote. If they can’t find a way to do that, and their only issues are gun rights and personal freedoms, we have not accomplished enough. And if they refuse to acknowledge the mutual discrimination they have suffered at the hands of a Schlotzic Republican Civil Rights Division at DOJ (now there’s an oxymoron; “Republican Civil Rights”) then we will struggle, and possibly fail once again to rid ourselves of Republican bullies.

If the Dems, Progressives and Liberals don’t figure out a way to develop a code of unity and stop this pattern of divisiveness and dissension, from “both” sides, we might have to endure a psuedo-Reagan Republican like Romney in office, vetoing everything we stand for over the next four years.

But as for civility on the Liberal Blogs, when I remember George Allen’;s infamous battle-cry “kick their soft teeth(Democrats)down their wimpy throats” (that is a paraphraze)” and Rove’s constant demonization of Dems as unforgivable evil beings, I have no sympathy for the Republicans.

If they wanted civility, they should have offered it themselves.

Now they cry foul every time someone uses the “f” word in a blog post, or identifies the Republicans by a blanket negative term, as if such swearing and insults should be reserved for the Halls of Congress and the offices in the White House.

HYPOCRITES!!!

The Golden Rule is also Karma, you get what you give and vice-versa. It is like the bully who cries to his momma whenever he gets bullied.

“those Democratic bloggers, who have appointed themselves as intellectually superior and believe the only way to win an argument is to shoot the loudest with personal attacks, you can go to Hell.”

Sometimes, the term “jackass” just seems to fit.

But I do agree with him that the Democratic Party is top-heavy with elitist assholes who look down on working-class and rural voters. They don’t understand the lives or sensibilities of people who could be a powerful progressive voting bloc, if they felt like the Dems were on their side.