Accountability Now grew out of the backlash over the 2008 FISA vote.  That summer AT&T basically bought off Congress, which passed a bill that resulted in the dismissal of suits against them for warrantless wiretapping.  People were outraged that members of Congress felt so little responsibility to the voters that they could do something this flagrantly unethical just because their corporate donors wanted them to.  Glenn Greenwald and I formed Accountability Now with the intention of holding them accountable to their constituents, and did a fundraiser to raise the initial startup funds for the organization.

The best way to impact an incumbent’s responsiveness to their constituents is in the form of primary challenges, whether they are successful or unsuccessful. Nothing else we have ever done has had as much impact.  Coming from within their own party, they don’t let incumbents resort to tribalism in order to draw attention away from their record, which they are thus forced to defend.  Primary challenges have never been wasted effort, so that is what we decided to pursue.  We launched the 2010 Primary Project in October of 2008.

But because the parties are essentially incumbency protection rackets, when you’re supporting a primary challengers you’re running against the party and its ability to wield power.  You’re also running against the corporate cash that probably triggered the accountability issue in the first place.  Those factors present a very powerful set of obstacles.

Ned Lamont – 1.0

In 2006 we joined together with other blogs to support the candidacy of Ned Lamont.  Ned was recruited to run by local Connecticut activists who were sick of Joe Lieberman.  Matt Stoller went up to Connecticut and met with Ned, and liked him.  He also thought there was a good operation set up to support his race.  Eventually MoveOn and SEIU joined.  But Lieberman was able to pull a lot of strings once he thought Ned could become a serious threat, and Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the AFL-CIO wound up backing Lieberman.  That was problematic, because it allowed him to have validation on the left he didn’t deserve. (cont’d.)

We didn’t really know how much it would cost to run a Senate race in Connecticut, or that Ned would wind up writing a $17 million check to fund it.  Lieberman was able to raise a ton of money.  He did the corporate shakedown that all incumbents can perform, but also had his pal Steve Rattner fundraising for independent expenditure efforts from his Wall Street buddies.  The DSCC, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid denied Ned the support of the party, even when he won the primary (someone should remind Robert Gibbs, who now thinks it’s everyone’s obligation to “support the Democratic nominee”).

After Lieberman declared as an independent candidate, Bill Clinton torpedoed Ned by going on Larry King and saying it was a “win-win” for Democrats and it didn’t matter who won. Obama promised to help Ned, but stopped returning calls and wound up taking a train through Connecticut on his book tour and wouldn’t stop to support him.

Because Lieberman was successful at getting the word out that Ned was wealthy, it dried up his fundraising. Which, as Rob Johnson pointed out to me the other day, may have meant that his supporters didn’t have the buy-in that they might have with a campaign that they had donated to.  Hard to say, people were pretty enthusiastic about Ned, and about defeating the insufferable Lieberman. ActBlue was just taking off, and I think FDL raised about $90,000 for him before things dried up.

A lot of energy and great ideas went into the Lamont race, but in the end there was also a lot of chaos and inexperience.  We learned a lot and made mistakes that we would correct in the future.

Donna Edwards – 2.0

Donna Edwards was a candidate the blogosphere supported through two cycles.  Al Wynn had been a key player in passing the bankruptcy bill, which was one of the most regressive pieces of legislation to come out of the Bush years.  Donna did well against him in 2006, and took him on again in 2008.  ActBlue was becoming an important vehicle in funding such challenges. I remember taking on Emily’s List for not supporting Donna in 2006, and they subsequently did in the next cycle.  But it was hard to rally groups to take on the party leadership.  When the Democratic establishment came out for Al Wynn and Nancy Pelosi turned her back on Matt Stoller at a 2007 fundraiser, the blogosphere used it to raise about $140,000 in hard money for Donna in one weekend.  It kept the campaign alive with cash it badly needed at the time to sustain itself.

Early in 2008, polling indicated that Donna had a good chance of beating Wynn.  About five weeks before the primary, SEIU, 1199, Planned Parenthood and other groups decided to drop about $1.4 million into the race in the form of an independent expenditure.  Edwards wound up crushing Wynn, 60-36.  But Donna was a special case.  She lived in Maryland and had strong ties to the DC groups, vendors and resources she could call upon for help.  Most other places in the country, those kinds of ties don’t exist for primary challengers.  Had Donna not been able to keep a campaign running for years, the opportunity to drop a million dollars in the race at the end and push her over the top would not have existed.

Bill Halter -  3.0

Accountability Now was set up expressly to overcome many of the problems we’d experienced in the Ned Lamont and Donna Edwards races.  It is primarily a service organization for other organizations. We don’t actually do campaign work, and once a candidate declares, AN’s work is largely over.

One of the biggest problems in finding good primary challengers, as the Grim/Stein article notes, is that those who are capable of running credible races and already have promising political futures don’t want to risk them by pissing off powerful incumbents who dominate party infrastructure.

If you shoot the king, you better kill the king.

So it becomes a chicken-and-the-egg syndrome.  If groups are waiting for good primary challengers to declare themselves before they offer the support that could counter the heavy corporate cash incumbents can raise, many of the established community leaders who could actually take them on and win won’t take the plunge.

Accountability Now brought together the groups that had been involved in the Lamont and Edwards races for a meeting in early 2009.  We spoke about incumbents who were in serious need of accountability moments who might be vulnerable, and who were on the radar of individual groups.

Our plan was to send staff into those communities to ascertain if local leaders felt they were being well-served by their representatives, and if not, whether there were people being talked about to take them on.  (Trust me, when someone is doing crappy constituent services, it’s always there.)

We subsequently did that in numerous districts across the country. We couldn’t  write about it publicly for the most part, because we found people quickly got spooked if incumbents found out we were talking to them, and tongues do wag in closed political circles.  Our job was to evaluate the district, estimate how much money it would take to run a successful campaign, put together primary turnout models and do a thorough workup on the incumbent and also profile potential challengers

When we find promising candidates, we present these materials to groups who might be interested in a particular race.  Not every group is right for every race, and what might be right for a choice group, for instance, might not be right for a union.  We calculate how much we think that interested groups could collectively raise.  If there is sufficient interest in a particular candidate, we may do polling, start an oppo website or begin a “draft” campaign.  We may arrange for meetups or phone connections.  Or, groups who already have a presence in the community may take that initiative on their own.  But by the time they do, they have all the background information AN has assembled with which to evaluate their commitment to a race.

They also have the benefit of knowing what other groups are interested, and are able to factor that in when making their decisions.  That was really important to many groups in deciding whether or not to get involved in a high-stakes Senate race.  Then we start working them all towards the finish line (which is not as easy as it might seem — everyone wants their own assurances or conditions to be met, which might be at odds with what the candidate wants). Groups also have to deal with all their own organizational politics.

By the time the candidate declares their candidacy, Accountability Now’s job is over.  I think we may have done some ActBlue fundraising for Halter to coincide with the campaign announcement, but that was pretty much it.  But the support was there such that he had unified backing and didn’t have to face the problems Donna Edwards did, of having to fund her campaign on fumes until she could prove she could beat Al Wynn.  And Blanche wasn’t able to pick off individual organizations because they had already collectively committed their support.

It gets confusing because FDL is one of the “groups” that supported Halter throughout the race. AN fulfilled its mandate and recruited a candidate who was right for Arkansas, and so every time I wrote about him I did so with the caveat that he wasn’t that progressive.  But that wasn’t the point.  Neither Halter nor Lincoln stood a good chance against Republican John Boozman for the fall, who was polling 20-30 points ahead of both of them (though Halter polled better than Lincoln).  The seat will most likely flip to the GOP.  Regardless, it was a strong accountability moment not only for Lincoln who was forced to fight for her own seat, but for all members of Congress who thought that their divine right of incumbency might be challenged if they grew to non-responsive to their communities.

Accountability Now doesn’t do what the PCCC or the unions or Color of Change or DFA or MoveOn do. Those groups deserve the credit for bringing their strong staffs, their political skills and their organizational resources to the race, and Bill Halter deserves credit for running a great campaign.  We first contacted Halter in August of last year and began evaluating what it would take to win and whether he was capable of doing that, and get that information to organizations that could help him in that effort.  Our mission is to identify challengers who fairly represent the voters in their districts, and connect them with the institutions that can help them run successful races.  Many of them won’t even be aware of what we’re doing behind the scenes to coordinate help for them (for the most part, Halter never was).

What we learned from Halter 3.0

Successes:

• The unification of all the groups in advance drew a stronger candidate into the race than would otherwise have entered it.  Blanche was forced to fight for her seat.
• Coordinated support behind the challenger, which used to happen on an ad-hoc basis after candidates had already declared, gave the incumbent less opportunity to exert institutional pressure and fracture it.
• Knowing that other organizations would be there with them gave groups the incentive to take on the party, since they wouldn’t be alone
• Accurate information about what it would take to run the campaign also gave both the candidate and the groups a measure of comfort in knowing that there would be sufficient resources to do so.
• The ability to have a reliable source of hard money to run the campaign (facilitated blogs/Moveon/online groups channeling small dollar donors) gave the candidate the ability to effectively plan and budget.
• The hard money raised by small dollar donors ($3.4 million) effectively counterbalanced the PAC  money Blanche was able to raise ($2.9 million through March 31).  That fact cannot be overemphasized.  It will play a huge role in the future in giving potential primary challengers the comfort level that they will have the resources they need to win.

Room for improvement:

• We didn’t start pushing back on the “Unions v. Lincoln” meme until it was already too late, it was all over the New York Times and Bill Clinton was successfully exploiting it in Little Rock. If there’s a role for Accountability Now after candidates have declared in the future, it’s in spreading the word that most campaign donations are coming from the mechanics and grocery store clerks and students giving on average $30 apiece, and that this is how citizens can push back against the influence of corporate money in campaigns.  Especially in an anti-union state like Arkansas, that could have had an impact.
• Bringing more groups into the effort.  On the whole, we worked with groups who are pretty risk-tolerant.  We wanted a fair degree of confidence that they wouldn’t cave if the establishment started calling them and telling them to step down.  But in the future, being able to point to the unified coalition in the Halter race may make other groups more comfortable with the model, and it would be good to broaden the effort.
• Establishing a local support committee that national groups will be able to coordinate with, to counter the charge of “outside money in local elections” (as if Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs are located smack in the middle of Little Rock).
• Because the groups we worked with were primarily interested in operating in Democratic primaries, that was our focus in this cycle.  But Accountability Now is a trans partisan organization, however, and given the crushing resources the President and the party were able and willing to expend in the race, in the future we will be exploring more opportunities outside of the two-party structure.

No matter what anyone says, the fact that the race was that close when all of the power and money was lined up behind Lincoln cannot accurately be characterized as a “stunning defeat.”  The universal judgment about the banking crisis of 2008 was that shady financial derivatives like credit default swaps were at the heart of the problem.  Blanche Lincoln was forced to offer up strong legislation to rein them in that she never would have done otherwise.  If that money winds up making a pathetically weak financial regulation bill one iota stronger than it would otherwise have been, it will have done more to weaken the corrupting influence of the Wall Street banks than the entire Obama administration.

Having institutional support lined up in advance and unified behind him was an important factor in Halter’s ability to do as well as he did, and a step forward in the evolution of our ability to improve on the Ned Lamont and Donna Edwards efforts.  It’s a model that I think everyone involved is definitely interested in replicating in the future.

There’s no more lucrative campaign business to be in than Michael Bloomberg’s. The wee Mayor bestowed his every-four-year bonuses on campaign staffers after barely winning re-election in a squeaker that was expected to be a blowout:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent $108 million to win a third term, distributed more than $2 million in bonuses to campaign staffers, according to papers filed on Friday with the Campaign Finance Board.

Three top staffers each received $400,000 bonuses, one got $150,000, and 91 others got a sum roughly equivalent to 20 percent of their salaries. The total amount distributed came to $2.4 million, campaign officials said.

I’m sure there’s a disinterested party ready to defend those bonuses, right?

“This was an extremely difficult election cycle for incumbents. Mr. Bloomberg bucked that trend,” said campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, who received $400,000.

Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up then. I do wonder, though, if Wolfson would have done better financially had his candidate done better than five fucking percent over a candidate practically ignored by the press and the national Democratic party in the face of the hundred-million-dollar candidate. I guess we — and he — will never know.

Hey, Democrats: when Wolfson comes knocking next time, let’s run the other way, okay?

Newly-named Napolitano Department of Homeland Security spokebot Sean Smith tried to create the illusion of an illegitimate victory by Democratic Senate challenger Ned Lamont in August 2006 when he invented spurious charges of website-hackery and sold them to Villager media gasbags like Chris Matthews.

People may not recall, but the "hacked website" claim on Primary Day in August 2006 was the first step in de-legitimizing Ned Lamont’s victory so that Joe Lieberman could run as a sore-loser when he lost his party’s nomination.

 Campaign manager Sean Smith claimed to Chris Matthews — in a wide-ranging telephone interview that became the basis for wild accusations and cablenews reporting the rest of the day — that the Lieberman campaign was completely crippled and unable to reach voters or communicate internally, because Ned Lamont was supported by "the type of people on the Internet." This went a long way towards making Lamont’s victory less legitimate in the eyes of the national media and shocked Villagers, thus enabling Joe Lieberman to mount his as-planned Connecticut-for-Lieberman sore-loser run for the seat he’d held for three terms.

Sean Smith’s lies were the beginning of the general election campaign to make sore-loser Lieberman look like he might have been robbed of a primary victory due to some Internet-type-people’s lawbreaking. Sean went on for more than ten minutes with Chris Matthews about reporting these crimes to federal authorities, the type of people who would commit these felonious acts, and how Ned Lamont could make it stop simply by going on television and appealing to his supporters to cut it out.

None of it was true, of course.

Lieberman campaign manager Sean Smith to Chris Matthews, 8/8/06: "We’ve exhausted all those internal possibilities, and we’ve checked all the boxes.  We’re confident this is not a problem internally from our campaign."

Chris Matthews, setting the scene for Villager shock and dismay should Lieberman lose, as he did: "If you guys lose a close one tonight, if it’s a squeaker — are you going to blame it on this?" 

Nobody Hacked Lieberman’s Site, 4/9/08: 

Just as most bloggers thought at the time, a federal investigation has concluded that Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s 2006 campaign staff "was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut’s heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary," theStamford Advocate reports. 

"The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign’s allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash." 

This same Sean Smith will now be the spokesman for Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security. Why is Sean Smith’s lack of integrity being rewarded with a high-level position in the Obama Administration?  Or if Sean Smith believed this made-up story about website hackery, does DHS really need a spokesbot so easily hoodwinked by technical silliness, especially in a department that deals with cyberterrorism?

And why would a federal department already sorely lacking in credibility want to start off 2009 on the wrong foot, truthiness-wise?

We were way down in the polls and I was busy leaving messages on answering machines when a young volunteer came bounding into my rabbit warren and announced breathlessly, "Paul Newman is on the line." A little skeptical, I shot back that I was on the line with Vladimir Putin so hold all calls, but our savvy volunteer suggested that this was a call worth taking.

"Thanks for calling, Mr. Newman," I parried.

"Cut the Mr. Newman crap, it’s Paul," was his opening line — unmistakably the real deal.

Warming up to the task, I got right to the ask –  ads, robocalls, direct mail, fundraisers, autograph.  He said that he was a little hesitant since he had done a little work for John Kerry and that a WSJ blog had immediately called for a boycott of Newman’s Salad Dressing, which funded his Hole in the Wall Gang charity.  But Paul never sat on the sidelines and he later said, "I hate those things, but let’s do the automatic telephone call."

Before you can say "Cool Hand Luke" we had drafted up a short script, which he said was crap and he would do his own.

He wrote something up and then called around Connecticut, pretending to be a robocall and judging the reaction. He called back with the results: a couple of no answers, two answering machines, and one guy who shouted, "Hey Marge, there’s some kook on the phone pretending to be Paul Newman."

I sympathized, noted that I had developed a close personal relationship with hundreds of answering machines around the state, and he said ok. He liked writing his own scripts, and later did a TV ad where he called me ‘spunky,’ not senatorial, just spunky, and towards the end of our campaign he ad libbed a radio ad where he accused Joe Lieberman of sneaking off with his Ned Lamont for Senate lawn sign in the back of Lieberman for Senate Hummer. Let’s make sure that his Hole in the Wall Gang charity does not suffer from Paul’s indiscretions.

To me, Paul was Cool Hand Luke, challenging the good ol’ boys and the conventional wisdom, with a delighted twinkle in his eye.

We’ll miss you, Mr. Newman.

Sounds like the folks from CT are not terribly pleased with the way The Powers That Be in the Democratic Party are treating Short Ride Joe.

And the response from the Powers That Be?

But Lieberman’s colleagues have been much more charitable, noting his financial support of the DSCC and his agreement with the party on many domestic issues.

Despite standing only 20 yards away from the Connecticut delegates who criticized Lieberman harshly, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) defended his home-state colleague Wednesday.

Dodd said that Lieberman had given $250,000 to help Democratic Senate candidates win election this fall.

“He gave $250,000 to the DSCC a week and a half ago,” said Dodd. “He’s been very helpful to Democrats.

I wonder if Senator Dodd could clarify something for me: What is his going rate? Could Short Ride Joe stay in the caucus and keep his chairmanship if he gave just $200K? $150K? $50K? $9.99? As the cliche goes, it seems we’ve established what the Dems in the Senate are — now we’re just haggling over the price.

A Hillary delegate who didn’t give $250K to the DSCC who makes a commercial for McCain gets her credentials yanked and is tossed from the party. Short Ride Joe, on the other hand, just smiles and smiles and smiles . . .

Photo of Markos Moulitsas, Ned Lamont and
Jane Hamsher by Hekebolos

Ned Lamont visited the Big Tent today. He’s kinda like Mick Jagger for bloggers. With the serious possibility that Joe Lieberman will be McCain’s VP choice, it was great to see Ned and celebrate the fact that together,  two years ago, we kicked Joe out of the Democratic party.  (We’ll have video up tomorrow.)

 I have to admit I’m rooting for Lieberman now to be McCain’s running mate.

I’ve considered it carefully, and I’ve decided that forcing the Democratic oppo shops  to research his ugly record on Alito, energy, Homeland Security oversight, etc.  and show that he wasn’t, in fact, "with us on everything but the war" is worth the price of having his sanctimonious puss on TV 24/7.

Of course the comity pimps of the party will still run around saying he’s "a great man," but it would be satisfying to watch the party machinery forced to turn against him nonetheless and admit what we all know two years ago.

We were f*&#ing right.

Photo via biggerpictureimages.

I get asked about Lieberman/Lamont/Obama a lot, and Greg Mitchell has a good rundown of what happened:

As you may have heard, Lieberman was asked yesterday about Bill Kristol linking Obama to Marx — and we don’t mean Groucho — in his New York Times column yesterday. On the Brian and Judge radio show, asked if Obama was indeed a Marxist, Lieberman replied, "I must say, that’s a good question … I will tell you that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t … I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America."

Yet, just a little more than two years ago, Lieberman, facing a strong threat from antiwar candidate Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary, invited Obama to give a major speech in Connecticut endorsing him for re-election — which some liberals still hold against Obama.

"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," Obama proclaimed then.

An AP story in late March 2006 on the event noted that "Lieberman became Obama’s mentor when Obama was sworn into the Senate in 2005. They stayed close at Thursday night’s event, too, entering the room together and working the crowd in tandem." However, "scattered boos greeted Lieberman when he took the podium, and he had to stop three times during his remarks to shush the crowd so he could deliver key points."

So clearly Obama had stuck his neck way, way for Lieberman. But Lieberman may still be smarting from Obama’s decision, at the very end of the 2006 race, to endorse Lamont, who had won the primary, over Lieberman. The latter ran as a third party candidate (and won). Even so, liberals derided Obama for his very modest efforts on behalf of Lamont. Now Lieberman hints there may be something to this "Marxist" charge after all.

Can we just dispense with the charade that Joe Lieberman is doing any of this because he’s a man of principle who will back the best candidate, regardless of party, as he maintains?

Joe Lieberman, whom Chris Durang once called a "sanctimonious Hobbitt," had his ass kicked out of the Democratic party. He’s a petty, bitter, nasty little man and he’s backing John McCain because that represents his own personal political upside.

Outside of an appetite for endless war he doesn’t want to fight himself, ideology has nothing to do with it.

Case closed, right?

No. Not on the outstanding legal issues arising from the campaign, anyway.

As you might recall, the Lamont campaign filed an FEC complaint, coincidentally just two days before the whole server crash case was closed in October 2006, noting that Joe Lieberman had a campaign finance entry for "petty cash" expenditures that were way beyond the legal limits: $367,000 of "petty cash."

The Friends of Joe Lieberman committee, and Joseph I. Lieberman, individually have violated the clear and unambiguous terms of 11 C.F.R. §102.11 in at least the following three ways.

First, according to the FEC October Quarterly report filed on October 13, 2006, the Lieberman campaign has petty cash disbursements amounting to $387,561.00, which is roughly 8 percent of its total disbursements, or one out of every twelve dollars spent. On several occasions, petty cash disbursements greater than $100 were reported, as supposed payment for “volunteers.” As summary of these disbursements from the Friends of Joe Lieberman report are attached hereto. These disbursements reflect patent violations of 11 C.F.R. §102.11.

Second, the report does not include the name and address of every person to whom any disbursement is made, as well as the date, amount, and purpose of such disbursement. Again, Friends of Joe Lieberman stands in clear violation of 11 C.F.R. §102.11.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, the Associated Press reported earlier today that Lieberman spokeswoman Tammy Sun claims the cash was supposedly used pay to field coordinators who then distributed money to workers who were canvassing (Andrew Miga, Lamont Questions Lieberman’s Spending, October 23, 2006). There is no evidence that the Lieberman committee kept and maintained a written journal of any kind regarding these disbursements as required by 11 C.F.R. §102.11. As I am sure you are aware, the rationale for this regulation is to, among other things, prevent the creation and utilization of slush funds for illicit purposes. The $387,561.00 involved here is a sum of supposed petty cash expenditures unprecedented in any race in our state’s history. The Lieberman campaign’s patent disregard for this regulation calls for the immediate investigation of this matter by your office to ensure that the voters of Connecticut can be fairly informed about the conduct of their elected officials. [my emphasis]

I started transcribing this video from Lamont/Lieberman primary day 2006 but frankly I’m just too pissed to do it. Although the FBI investigation in to the incident was concluded in 2006, due to the perseverance of the Stamford Advocate the results were revealed today, and found what we all know to be true at the time — no blogger hacked into Joe’s website.

Joe Lieberman crashed his own website.

But that didn’t matter. Joe needed a way to own the news cycle, and gave it to himself by flapping his lying weasel lips all day long for the benefit of the cameras. And they let him. Over and over again. Watch the clip of Matthews talking to LieberLiar Sean Smith (who went on to teach at Yale about how to run a campaign). Matthews then made Ned Lamont come on and distance himself from blogger terrorists who would do such a thing. Which Ned did.

It was a completely trumped up issue that never should have been given a bit of oxygen beyond "crazy old Joe Lieberman’s got nothing in the tank but a bunch of wild conspiracy theories," but it was everywhere all day. I remember sitting in the blogger room and staring at the TV with Bob Geiger and Mike Stark in open-mouthed disbelieve as it ran across the fucking chiron. It was the Story Of The Day, when that story should have been how anti-war candidate Ned Lamont was proving everyone wrong in their "shhh, don’t talk about the war" wisdom that had dominated Democratic politics. It changed the general election. Its effects reverberated far past Connecticut and shook not only the party but the country to its very foundation. And yet all the talking heads were focused on were some calculated hysteria from Joe "nobody wants to end the war more than me" Lieberman and nobody challenged him about what an obvious crock it all was — then or now.

Anyone who reported on this and doesn’t want to give the same amount of time to re-evaluating this embarrassment, and what it reflects about our media system that this kind of thing could happen, should find themselves another profession.

Lieberman won’t comment. So story over, right? He effectively kills it by shutting his mouth. Meanwhile, he filed charges with the FBI that anybody with half a brain knew to be false, purely for political purposes. Screwing with law enforcement and wasting their time for political grandstanding. It’s immoral and one would guess illegal.

It wouldn’t be so bad but this corrupt prick and the hacks who work for him, like Dan Gerstein, are allowed to lie over and over again and nobody ever calls them on it.

It’s fucking disgraceful.

Jerome is essentially right that there are really no meaningful policy differences to be divined between our two candidates, and Samantha Powers’ comments now about Obama’s likelihood of revising his withdrawal plans if elected serve simply to remind us that the tea leaves people are currently reading during the campaign re: policy really mean nothing. If Obama were a true anti-occupation believer, he could have jumped full guns behind Lamont when he had the chance instead of ducking and running through the state and pulling the plug on his participation in a Lamont multi-platform ad buy.

So, we have no progressive candidate. We have no Wellstone, no Feingold, no ideologically based movement person. My question is this: which of these candidates is more likely to reveal an inner Lieberman of some form once in power? I don’t have an answer. People can believe what they choose to believe, but both candidates have Liebermanish historical tendencies and both propel narratives reminiscent of Lieberman, the earlier years.

So, it then has to be explained why the netroots has tended to ignore what I take to be this fundamental reality. I think many, though not all, people are doing some combination of projecting their hopes about one candidate or the other onto the candidate with whom they most personally identify, bloggers in some cases getting mau maued by very engaged partisan commenters who flock to threads, browbeat and seek to intimidate, wielding accusations of various forms of bad faith and character smear, etc. The blogosphere has tended, de facto, to divide itself among sites that lean toward one candidate or another and commenters (1% of our readers, but the most engaged and vocal ones) allocate themselves accordingly.

It so happens that, once Edwards dropped out, more of the online readership sorted itself to Obama. Now, I can’t see any meaningful policy reasons for having done so (and Edwards hasn’t endorsed), so to me it seems more like a consolidation of the anti-Clinton movement among tech literate activists than it seems like anything about any ideologically or policy based progressive agenda. Moreover, judging by the comments I read, the emails I see and the comments I hear when I talk to people, it’s pretty common to hear something like the sentiment, if not the outright expression, that "the bitch must be stopped!" This is among self-identified liberals, progressives.

I conclude from this that the hundreds of millions of dollars at least that have poured into branding Hillary Clinton – whose policies in general I hardly care for – as a lesbo cunning corrupt cold calculating bitch, have altogether not been without their effect on many online activists and readers in particular. I include in this the very many newer readers coming to our sites who have become politically engaged primarily as Obama partisans, the people who have not had as much opportunity to deconstruct the misogyny of right wing narratives pervading national political discourse since time immemorial, and certainly since the rise of feminism. These people tend to outnumber the Clinton partisans, at least online, where Obama’s stronger pull among independents, younger people and the technoliterati makes a difference.

As a result, there’s a bit more of a traffic niche to be taken for a site that leans toward Obama. One only need look at the recommended diaries at DailyKos (Obama talking point and Clinton oppo dump central) to see this in action. Still, there’s a counterniche to be filled among the Clinton loyalists. And then there’s Firedoglake, which sustains its unaligned position, pissing everyone off, although the core analysis of the site’s approach is based on a sense that, as I mentioned earlier, there is no clear "Never Become Lieberman-ish Candidate" in the race.

So, in my very personal and not claimed to be The Truth view, I think there have been subtle pressures or incentives for bloggers to line up more toward one side or another, on either end of the spectrum, though I don’t believe the people I know who have lined up one way or another have done so intentionally for these reasons. But at least, if you tend to side with one or another, by God, at least somebody likes you, and it’s not a lot of fun blogging when no matter what you write, you’re in the crosshairs of some very vocal readers, day after day, post after post. Bloggers are, in fact, human, and I think we can all admit that part of why we do this is for sheer pleasure: we find it pleasing, and we like to feel connected to our audiences.

I think all these things have tended to combine to move the blogosphere away from its previous role more akin to behavior as a referee on the process and on the narratives propelled by anyone claiming a Dem label, and toward more of a partisan candidate sorting. I see a lot of right wingy talking points coming from either side over the course of this campaign, to the detriment of any sustainable progressive movement, but I don’t see a lot of people calling out both sides. More bloggers than readers do, but readers, or should I specify, commenters? Very many, and the most passionate ones, are not holding their own side accountable. At all. And they’re working us like they’re working the refs in a sporting event.

The ultimate question I will have for supporters of either candidate during these days of pie fights will be, whoever gets power, what will you hold your winning candidate accountable for once in office, assuming s/he wins? If your winner gets some accountability fire from people who once supported your opponent, will you simply defend your winner, or will you join in for merited criticism?