Letters to the Editor
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Begala make a point near the end about who he would vote for in the general vs. the primary
There is this unexamined assumption (some people have already mentioned it, but it bears repeating) that the voting patterns in the primary will somehow be recreated in the general election. Of course this is not true.
Sen. Clinton has herself noted that blacks tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections; we can expect that many of the "hardworking, white" voters Clinton has identified would do the same for Obama.
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"I challenge you to find any editor in chief of any Web site or publication like Salon who engages more."
Interested readers might want to check out Brian Williams' blog, "The Daily Nightly," for example, to see how he engages with his readers. Or not.
Another commenter recently noted (on Greenwald's blog?) that Williams was no longer posting all comments, but moderating them, and posting only the "friendly" ones.
He's taken a lot of heat lately (and deservedly so) for ignoring the NYTimes' story on the Pentagon's sockpuppetgenerals. [NBC was one of the prime offenders.]
In any case, Joan's right. She does interact with readers more than other editors of similar publications. And she doesn't even censor or delete some of the most odious posts (you know who you are)... ones that I would cheerfully delete if it were up to me. But then I must be one of those authoritarian leftists you're always hearing about who risks getting called a concern troll because I object to men using women's body parts as epithets. Oh, woe is me...
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Joan Walsh only engages with those for whom she has easy answers
e.g. like she was on vacation when the Geraldine Ferraro story persisted.
When she cannot justify her many blogs which are pro Hillary and very anti Obama, she dismisses her questioners as "creepy Republican trolls" or just ignores those who call her spin.
I have never voted for a Republican in my life. I guess she just ignored my post because she really did not want to engage in any meaningful dialogue that did not promote Hillary.
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@ Carol Richards re trolls and other creeps
Hi, Carol.
By now I assume you've had time to scroll through the thread of comments that begins with your question about Hardball and ends with Joan's indictment of creepy GOP trolls posing as Obama supporters. Which would be me. I think.
She isn't clear about which of us are creepy trolls, or how many of us there are. I don't know that she means me, but the implications are pretty clear. I am, after all, the person who did (or didn't - where is the transcript?) make the mistake. If it was a mistake. And I am new, and I write pro Obama pieces which I clearly couldn't write for any other reason except that I am trolling for...McCain? Figures. When the Republicans hired me, did they say anything about McCain? Nooo. It was all Romney, Romney, Romney. He's handsome, he's rich, you'll love it. Liars. They'd just better be paying a lot. I would definitely have trouble trolling for McCain for scale. There's no honor left in trolling, know what I mean? Jeez.
So I think I am on the short list for sure.
A fascinating aspect of this is that SOME persons have been impersonating Democrats lately, and THOSE people are voting for Clinton at the instigation of Limbaugh. Impersonating Democrats is all the rage. But considering that THOSE trolls (called Operation Chaos troops by that rascal Limbaugh) are under orders to vote for Clinton and are thought by many sane people to have changed the outcome in Indiana, how very strange and revealing of her to find OBAMA trolls in Salon. You're the therapist, but it seems to me this is just brimming with possibilities.
A second aspect of this worth mentioning is that, having made this really outrageous and wholly unsupported accusation, she vanishes again. I explained how I could have been wrong, if I was wrong, several others jumped into the conversation, not happy with Joan, I wrote a longer and more careful post about why calling people creepy GOP trolls was perhaps injudicious, and our Editor is MIA again. I am so not going to talk about testicular fortitude. It would be easy. It would be fun. But it would be wrong.
And I don't wanna go there, know what I'm saying? I'm a professional. Your amateur trolls might fool around, but they're giving the whole racket a black eye. I'm paid to talk up Obama, I talk up Obama all day long. You want NAFTA, I got NAFTA. You want gas tax refunds, I give you gas tax. Push me, I might give you FICA. So it's like I said. No free shots at the editor. But the McCain angle is killing me. They told me Romney.
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Not necessarily...
Sen. Clinton has herself noted that blacks tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections; we can expect that many of the "hardworking, white" voters Clinton has identified would do the same for Obama. --John Anderson
Senator Clinton actually noted that while African-Americans have a consistent history of voting for Democratic candidates, while white working-class voters do not have that same history... at least not since Reagan. Her point was that she had made inroads into a voting bloc that the Republicans have controlled for some time by using social issues as wedge issues, resulting in lots of folks voting against their own interests on bread and butter issues.
[It's also worth noting that Reagan did a yeoman's work to set back decades of history when it comes to unions, and union members traditionally were/are likely to vote for Democratic candidates.]
My point is that any gap between the two candidates probably has more to do with class than race. Obama seems to understand it, but communicating his understanding is another story. And the vitriol from some of his most ardent supporters does not help him to make his case. Instead, why not try communicating the way he does. For example, I haven't heard him call anyone a c**t yet (unlike McCain), or an idiot, or any of the other names being heaped on Joan's head. However, I have heard of him flirting with some potential supporters/voters. Why not try that tactic instead?
I think there is a greater likelihood of potential Democratic voters being turned off by Obama's online supporters than by anything that Rev. Wright has said. No focus group or polling data. Just too much time reading comment threads at Salon and elsewhere.