As a good friend of mine who does netroots consulting said to me recently, "one thing about doing this stuff, you see what nimrods the press are." (note: American Heritage Dictionary defines "nimrod" as "a person regarded as silly or foolish") Well, speaking of "foolish" (actually, clueless), check this out by Howard Fineman in an article on why Obama/Kaine "is a relationship made in vetting heaven":
Thanks in part to the influence of his consultants, Kaine ran a blog-savvy, net-based campaign.
Well, that's certainly news to most of us in the netroots who worked our butts off in 2005 to help elect Tim Kaine governor. That was a "net-based campaign?" Gee, I could have sworn that it was a top-down campaign, and that the "net-based" part was done by independent bloggers like Waldo Jaquith, Ben Tribbett, Virginia Centrist, the people here at "The Blog Formerly Known as Raising Kaine" (ha), etc. True, the Kaine campaign did have an official blogger and internet director - John Rohrbach. But as John himself makes clear in my interview with him for Netroots Rising, what Howard Fineman's saying is not really how it went down in '05:
Feld: There wasn't a lot of communication between Kaine campaign and bloggers. I had decided that I wanted RK to be independent...Rohrbach: That suited the campaign as well. We really liked the things...RK could do things that the campaign didn't necessarily want to answer for, so we were able to do it all very honestly by not coordinating where we were pretending to be something we were not.
Feld: For the Kaine campaign, was there a conscious decision that the bloggers were doing their thing, let 'em do it?
[...]
Rohrbach: I think we did that a couple of times, but really tried to maintain a sort of distance...I wouldn't call it plausible deniability. The netroots community had come of age in Virginia, we didn't have a lot of information that you guys didn't know about. When you think about Waldo [Jaquith]'s institutional knowledge of Virginia politics, there wasn't a whole lot that anyone knew that he didn't. Or the information that bloggers found out by talking to people in Richmond.
So, maybe that's what Howard Fineman considers to be a "blog-savvy, net-based campaign" - keep your distance from the blogs, maintain "plausible deniability," and other than that run a top-down, traditional campaign? Well, alrighty then! :)
P.S. Just to be absolutely clear, I am NOT criticizing the Kaine campaign for what they did in 2005, in fact I think they ran a highly disciplined and ultimately effective campaign (great job by Mike Henry!). I'm just pointing out that Howard Fineman doesn't know what he's talking about when he says that Kaine for Governor 2005 was a "net-based campaign." As someone who was heavily involved throughout that entire campaign, I can confidently say, that's utterly preposterous.
P.P.S. Tim Kaine himself wrote an article in February 2006 explaining "How I Won." Words you will NOT find in that article: blog, blogs, internet, netroots, bottom-up, grassroots... Case closed.
I mention it as back story to explain that Chris, I think you're absolutely right. Governor Kaine's campaign had fortuitously laid the groundwork for that response with the introductory ads where the Governor talked very candidly about his faith, and bringing it back to his faith and values in response to the Hitler ad let him knock it right out of the park. It didn't feel unnatural or forced, it simply felt honest.
If Kaine is nominated, is Ben going to be on the convention floor trashing Kaine?
Are you still supportive of Ben going to Denver?
With your falling out with Governor Kaine over a number of issues, changing your website name, etc., how objective can you be in your blogging if Governor Kaine is nominated by Senator Obama for V.P.?
As an Obama supporter, I am worried about what will be coming out of the convention by a group of bloggers who are not supportive of Governor Kaine at this point in his career and anything negative is just going to hurt Senator Obama.
And how does Ben's words to the national press help Mark Warner and other Dems?
The one thing that will help Mark Warner and other Dems is to NOT HAVE Ben blogging from the Democratic convention.
And you still didn't answer my questions.
I respect your right to link to another Virginia blog on your blog roll without it being taken as an endorsement of everything that blogger has ever posted. I further respect your right to link to specific stories as a tacit endorsement of the view expressed in that particular story. I hope you'll respect my right to think it was a questionable decision on your part that has made some intelligent people wonder--even for just a little bit--whether your differences with the Governor are about something beyond a powerplanet and a tunnel.
Anyway, it's your blog, you're an adult, you can do what you want, but might I suggest that in the future, if you don't want folks like Flipper to get the impression that you're endorsing the "views" that NLS is expressing, maybe you ought not to link directly to them?
You were named as the embedded blogger for Virginia by the DNC. It was your choice to bring along Ben for the ride. So do you still think it is appropraite for Ben to be rewarded and go, since it is your choice for Ben to go.