I was going to post on this last week, and in fact I had written up a draft that languished in the raunchy perdition that is my “One Day You’ll Be A Post, Baby!” queue. Oh and what a queue it is, featuring posts that will one day grace this august blog, posts such as “How Would Norm Coleman Do On Star Search?” and “Katie Sieben: One Day Will All Of Our State Senators Be This Crush Worthy?”
But I digress (precisely the reason why I have a “One Day You’ll Be A Post, Baby!” queue).
Last week Al Franken was endorsed by the netroots group Blue Majority, an organization made up of the chief-high-muckity-mucks and the members of DailyKos, MyDD, OpenLeft, and the Swing State Project.
This quickly came under fire from some members of the Progressive Minnesota Blogosphere, and was picked up on by the usual cast of characters of Republican haters.
Chief among the liberal bloggers was Da’ Wege, who said;
We’re half a year from the caucuses and out-of-staters from our own movement butt in and tell us who to support? How could this have possibly passed any sane netivist’s radar? How is this one iota different than the DSCC (messing) with last year’s primary?
….It would be better, imho, to rescind this endorsement now, than it would be to force Minnesota Democrats to turn our endorsement/primary system into a ratifying process on the importance of the netroots’ endorsement.
It should be noted that I edited the Wege’s words, it is in italics and my apologies Wege, I try to keep this blog the only PG thing in my life. I have two quibbles with the Wege. Firstly, the netroots isn’t as powerful or as organized, and it does not carry the same cache as the DSCC or the DCCC and the DNC. And secondly, I do not think that the netroots has any substantive impact on our endorsement and primary system.
I think that like many other groups, this should be viewed as an endorsement and nothing more. Just like the Sierra Club, Stonewall, NARAL, and EMILYs List Al Franken received an endorsement. It doesn’t carry as much weight or money as the Sierra Club, or Unions, (or likewise before Republicans think they can get all high and mighty you guys have the NRA, religious organizations, CoC’s etc) but it’s an endorsement none the less, and one he should receive kudos for.
Good job Al.
Why did he receive the endorsement? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that Al Franken has had a much more engaging internet presence than Mike Ciresi (and no, JD didn’t pay me to say that). Ciresi has a good internet portal, but it’s not as intricate as Franken’s and he hasn’t engaged the netroots like Franken has. There are judgment calls that went into this, which I’m not going to get into here, but that I understand. Like any other endorsement it should be seen in its context.
This race will not be decided by who gets the ‘coveted’ netroots endorsement. It will be decided who organizes the best, who engages caucus goers and primary voters better, and the message that engages Democrats and Minnesotans best. And the good news is that both campaigns are doing a bang-up job of that.
I think it’s important to have all of the arguments that have been presented, the Wege continues here, and at his website, www.norwegianity.com (the greatest source of fun Friday MP3 downloads on the internets), and Noah Kunin wrote about this on his blog here (and it should be noted that it was seeing Noah’s post that reminded me to pull this post out of the hell that is my half-written posts queue).
There is so much more to discuss about this, so there may be another post, but hopefully there will be a great comment section.
People Are Shouting
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