Life has been extremely unfair for the past 8 years, but right now, it's coming back around my way.

With Obama now leading polls in Ohio, people in Ohio are already voting.  Sarah Palin's performance tonight probably will not reassure anybody, nor scare off anybody.  She will probably dance around questions she doesn't know how to answer.  Biden will probably go after McCain's support of Bush's policies, and no change will result in the polls.  

The fact is that with one month to go, Obama is surging well beyond where he was before the GOP convention.  With early voting in other critical states expected to start soon, McCain would have to regain a serious lead by election day to win.  

However, the McCain campaign has been run like crap.  If this were a football game, the Obama campaign would be the team throwing short passes, running the ball well, and controlling the clock.  The McCain campaign would be the team throwing wild passes, trying lots of trick plays, and going for it on 4th down even when their backs are up against the wall.  One wonders whether the McCain campaign really has a strong GOTV team built to compete with Obama.

McCain's pick of Palin is not the problem; the pick of Palin is simply a symptom of a broken campaign strategy to try and grab attention instead of focusing on issues.

Not to give McCain advice, but what he should do is focus on the issues he cares about, talk about what he will do to solve the energy crisis, the credit crisis, and Iraq and Afghanistan, in great detail.  He should then dare Obama to  do the same.  Of course, I doubt McCain will take that advice, nor does he have the ability to do so.  However, that is his best chance.  I am not sure the whisper campaign that Obama is a Muslim will work anymore.  

I absolutely believe that Sarah Palin is the cause of her own unfavorables.  She's made too many embarrassing and public gaffes.  

I also absolutely believe that there would not have been the in depth coverage of it in the mainstream media if it had not been for blogs and YouTube.

In past election cycles, the MSM was the gatekeeper.  Now the blogs have kicked down the gate and we watch the watchers.  No longer can the MSM get away with ignoring gaffes or spinning the story.  Lies are exposed and so are inconvenient truths.

Sounds like you read Netroots Rising or something! :)

And I haven't yet finished Netroots Rising.

But it seems the ability of the Netroots to really drive the debate in the MSM is still inconsistent. Take, for example, the Byrnes-Connally contest in June.

I've been trying to understand the lesson of that. I think one factor is that the more local and narrowly focused (i.e., a primary vs. a general, a congressional vs. a senatorial) the election, the less impact the Netroots has on the substance of the campaign, although the more influence it can have on the financing.

But I'm sure that there are many elections that are contra to this observation, so I don't think it is a valid theory of everything.

...it's helpful to think about Peter Daou's "Triangle."  Nate mentioned this when we were at Perriello's speaking to the summer fellows a few months ago...

gives me a sense of how Sarah Palin is probably feeling tonight. I'm out of my league.

But that said, is your point that the blogs and the Democratic Party never formed their link in the triangle in the Byrne campaign?

If so, it raises the question of what happened in the Webb-Miller race. I mean, Miller was the Party's candidate, wasn't he?

More generally, how it Peter's construct ever relevant in the context of a primary?

came close to closing for Leslie Byrne (unfortunately).  Daou's "triangle" is relevant to everything political, pretty much, doesn't matter if it's a school board race, a Congressional primary, or a presidential election.  The point is that for maximum efficacy and power projection, you need all three legs of the triangle (traditional media, netroots/new media, political establishment) cranking.  In the Byrne-Connolly primary, what the post-election poll Nate referenced indicates is that people who got their information primarily from the blogs went overwhelmingly for Byrne, while those who got their information from the traditional media or from the campaigns directly went overwhelmingly for Connolly.  So, obviously the "triangle" wasn't really working there for Leslie...

In the case of Webb-Miller, the national Democratic political establishment (and significant parts of the Virginia establishment - Leslie Byrne, Chap Petersen, Donald McEachin, Ingrid Morroy, Jay Fisette, many others) rallied behind Webb, the race got pretty good coverage in the corporate media (much more post-"macaca," of course), and the blogs were overwhelmingly pro-Webb (and effective too, IMHO).  That's your triangle, right there.

The problem is, Connolly essentially was the incumbent in the race in an area where residents are generally happy with the way their county is being run.

Leslie was out of the spotlight for a decent while in an area that also has a lot of turnover.

But the biggest thing is ... and this is my frustration with all these sporadic field activities ... is that campaign workers come around once every year or two years and ask for peoples' votes, but that's the only time these people are ever seen or heard from. There's no united progressive base to try and utilize, and there's very little real community in these communities.

There's absolutely no easy solution to this. It takes months and years of organizing locally and at the neighborhood level and building the base. If we had progressive leaders/volunteers working to organize in every neighborhood, and doing so consistently and constantly, you'd have neighbors with credibility speaking to others in their neighborhood, and these people would be able to speak with authority. Instead, before the primary, a bunch of strangers come and knock on your door and try and convince you that Leslie Byrne is the better choice. Are they going to believe you?

This is one reason why Paul Wellstone was so successful as a full-throated progressive in a purplish state -- he never stopped organizing. That's very rare, and it takes a different kind of commitment and infrastructure.  

I think you raised excellent points, Ron. I've thought a lot about why the blogs were not more successful for Leslie.

I still stand by what I said earlier that blogs not only inform readers directly but also help drive the discussion in the general media.  They make it harder for the MSM to ignore stories or spin them without being challenged.

Blogs, though, are not magic bullets.  Their success can be limited by other factors beyond the blogosphere's control.  In the case of Connolly, I think the biggest factor is that he was seen as an incumbent in a largely well run county.  Leslie, on the other hand, faced the problem that a large influx of new residents didn't know her.  She had been out of office and more or less out of the limelight, except among insiders and activists, for years.

And Ron is also right about the ground game.  Blogs can't replace good, solid organizing and GOTV efforts in the field.  Gerry, by dint of having run more recently, had an organization out there and benefitted by favorable name recognition.  Leslie had a bunch of enthusiastic outsiders, many of whom were new to politics and were knocking on strangers' doors.

There may be other factors.  I haven't looked at polls or really examined it.  But I think blogs can do a lot to even the playing field.  But you still have to play the rest of the game on that field.

I just watched the latest section of the interview...I'll post vid when it's out.

Couric asked both Biden and Palin what the biggest mistake Dick Cheney has made.  Biden went into a long explanation of what Cheney has done to shread the constitution, about torture, etc.

Palin said his biggest mistake is when he shot that fella.