Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Right Wing News reviews the BoP radio show: "...really boring bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall and Ed Cone being duller than I thought was humanly possible." 4:01:40 PM    comment []

DaveNet: "The least important thing about the Internet as a political medium is its power to raise money, because over time it obviates the need to raise money. The cost of circulating ideas is dropping steadily and aggressively." 3:51:54 PM    comment []

Glenn Reynolds in Wired: "Email is the dark matter of the blogosphere." Interesting -- Dave Winer (another blogger who has appeared in Wired) has just revived his DaveNet email broadcast. 3:46:03 PM    comment []

Erskine Blogs says Bowles shouldn't be shy about mentioning which White House he worked in: "It is now safer to bring Bubba out and Erskine can stand proud of his accomplishments while heading his staff." 3:32:17 PM    comment []

The News & Record's Eric Dyer reports from New Hampshire (not posted) that John Edwards often mentions Jesse Helms in his speeches, although he never ran against Helms or even went head-to-head with his feared political machine. Fine by me. Edwards is telling voters which North Carolina he's from. Part of Edwards' appeal is that he comes from the inclusive, progressive political tradition of this state, not the cryptoracist tradition which for much of my life and his was most famously represented by Helms. And Edwards did defeat the party of Jesse Helms, which kept sending second-raters like John East and Lauch Faircloth to represent North Carolina. David Brooks is right that Edwards would benefit if voters see he has experienced "that struggle, that sense of difficulty, which is shared by millions." I think his working-class background will serve him well on that front. And to the extent you're known by the company you don't keep, Edwards is doing fine. 12:05:42 PM    comment []

The most convincing aspect of Peggy Noonan's assertion that Wesley Clark is a nut-job: it takes one to know one. She's also into rewriting history: "But we like our generals like Eisenhower and Grant and George Marshall: We like them sober, adult and boring." Grant, sober and boring? 11:39:22 AM    comment []

Who I'm rooting for in New Hampshire: everybody. I want the strongest candidate to emerge. That won't happen in a definitve way today, but today we'll learn more. I want to keep listening to what the candidates have to say, and leave the snark to the media and other conservatives. I want the most effective campaign to show its stuff. If the modern campaign really resembles open source development, we ought to see campaigns feed off themselves and each other and keep getting stronger and smarter. And meanwhile I want Bush to do a great job. I'm rooting for a little peace and prosperity, regardless of the brand name on the party in power. I want a choice in November, not the lesser of two evils. So today I'm for (in alphabetical order) Clark, Dean, Edwards, and Kerry. 11:05:05 AM    comment []