John Lapp of the DCCC posted on MyDD.  That's so awesome.  He made a few rookie mistakes when posting on this blog, but I'm not going to hold any of them against him.

I'll leave aside his caps lock title for his diary.

I'll also leave aside his embrace of Melissa Bean and his desire for more Democrats who hurt the Democratic Party nationwide by voting for politically radioactive measures like CAFTA.

And I'll forget about his consistent refrain about how the DCCC doesn't have unlimited resources and therefore it's going to pursure the same strategy it always has of targeting a few districts when that strategy hasn't EVER won the majority for Democrats.

And I won't care about his failure to lay out the DCCC criteria for choosing which races are competitive.

And I'll ignore his 'challenge' to the blogs to get involved in politics.

I won't let it bother me that he expresses genial sadness when people disagree with him, and uses terms like 'negative energy' instead of addressing real points about strategy.

I won't care about his general tone of 'we're only one committee why don't you do the work'.

I'll leave aside his pandering to the netroots with his statement about "movements like MyDD, DailyKos, and others" while ignoring the arguments of people like Bob Brigham and Tim Tagaris that bloggers actually trust.

Who really cares if he uses awful concessionary points like the term 'Republican districts'?

Let's put all that aside.  If you ignore everything he wrote, his article was pretty good.

Let's stop calling it the energy bill.  Let's call it the Fossil Fuel Bill.

And let's stop calling him the President.  Let's call him Mr. Bush.

And finally, let's stop calling him a 'weak leader'.  Let's call him a weak executive.

There are three preconditions to framing:

In all the hubbub about Hackett, there's one question no one's asked.  Why is the right-wing not supporting or raising money for Jean Schmidt?

The GOP already has trouble with comments.  Does this inability to mobilize for anything but a media smear campaign mean that the characteristics of the two blogospheres are different?  I think so.

Here we have a special election.  Hackett's our guy.  Schmidt's their gal.  We're putting up money and volunteers, and they're relying on an air war sponsored by big committees.  Interesting.  I don't know what it means, though.  Any thoughts?

This is galling.  Karen Hughes is appointed as the chief PR agent for our efforts to burnish our image in the Middle East, and Joe Biden's comments are as follows:

Hughes, who held the title of counselor to the president during Bush's first 19 months in Washington, returned to Texas in deference to her teenage son, Robert, who will enter Stanford University this fall.

Hughes, who was part of Bush's inner circle of advisers, was guardian of his image through both his Texas and national campaigns. During Bush's reelection campaign, Hughes became a consultant to the Republican National Committee and flew on Air Force One throughout the fall.

Democrats have accused Bush of harming the country's international image with his handling of the prelude to the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath of deposing Saddam Hussein. To the surprise of administration officials, none of the eight committee Democrats attended the hearing. The chairman, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), and Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) were the only lawmakers who attended and asked questions.

The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) met with Hughes privately Thursday and said in a statement -- read by Lugar at the hearing -- that he could not attend because of previous commitments but is "particularly interested in and supportive of the nomination," and that Hughes will bring "new energy and creativity to our public diplomacy efforts."

Karen Hughes is part of the problem, not the solution.  And apparently, so is Joe Biden.  Disgusting.

Copperhead.

I'm glad Biden is using the blogs to "amplify what he's doing." I don't suppose that means he'll comment here, even though he's willing to come here to get emails for his agenda. No, I don't suppose that.

Copperhead.

ThinkProgress has more on how disastrous Biden's behavior is.

From the diaries--Chris

I have a friend looking for a job.  If you know of any openings, please let me know.

From the Beltway Blogroll:

Unite Our States is newer to blog advertising but just as enthused by the prospects. "We're trying to find politically aware, politically active Democrats," said Eric Carbone, a one-time Internet entrepreneur and now the coordinator of Web development for the group. "I find the blog ads to be a great way to get people to be aware of what you're doing."

Noting that Biden is "intimately involved" in the confirmation process, Carbone also said the PAC's online activities, which include ads on major sites like the Yahoo and Google search engines, are designed "to amplify what he's doing."

Carbone served as the director of online communications for the failed 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat Wesley Clark and helped create a blogging community for the campaign. He said Unite our States also will be creating a community of bloggers, and blog ads are helping spread the word about the PAC.

"I've already had bloggers writing to me asking what they can do to help," he said.

What Eric Carbone didn't mention is how Biden sparked controversy in his posting on MyDD, and then refused the dialogue (see if you can find a Biden comment in here, or in his original diary entry.

Eric Carbone,

We are not an audience to be used.  We are a community that wants dialogue.  That you are willing to put in the National Journal that you seek to amplify what you're doing by using us is just clueless.  If you pay for ads, that's one thing.  But spamming us, and that's what this is, really sucks.

With Joe Biden posting on MyDD, this diary thing has jumped the shark.  This is a note to any elected official or candidate posting on blogs, but it's addressed to Joe Biden.  For the polite version, I'll just quote IraqFact (a better version is by Tim Tagaris on the netroots not being an ATM):

In any event, Chris and Jerome and others in the online political space have long advocated that elected officials go beyond Washington, DC and interact with Democrats everywhere. Some have done it here, others at Kos, still others on their own blog. I think the Senator's diary today was a step to begin that process.

I think the problem here is that as a "step to begin that process" you chose to use this as forum to marshal support for one of the Senators agendas. I believe the netroot community very much wants to engage elected officials. This is quite obvious from the response people like Rep. Conyers, Sen. Kennedy, Rep Slaughter, Sen Boxer, Sen Feingold, Gov. Dean, Gen. Clark and many others have received.  Although not everyone agrees with all of their positions, that has not hampered their ability to reach out to the community. BUT, they did not come to the community to forward a personal agenda but rather to join in issues of common concern.  Some in fact have made our issues, their issues as Rep. Conyers did with the Downing Street Memo. I think that is the big difference that differentiates those politicians who will be able to utilize the power of the netroots community from those who will not.  

That was stated eloquently.  Here are my thoughts, they are much angrier.

First of all, the Senator didn't post that diary.  It's fucking obvious.  Stop pretending he's 'reaching out' to the netroots.  He wants traffic and money.  Specifically, our money.  He's running for President.  I suggest that if he wants our support he actually acknowledge our main concern, which is that we don't trust him.  We don't trust him because he parrots right-wing talking points and insults us - his base - all the time.  It's not a matter of 'issues', Eric, it's a matter of respect.  And he clearly doesn't respect us as he keeps going on Timmy Russert's show and bitching about how Democrats are sell-outs on Iraq or the Bankrupcy Bill or whatever.  

Two, this isn't his space.  This is our space.  We built it.  He did everything he could to knock down our legitimacy as a political force.  His PAC 'Unite America' is a specific type of 'unification'.  Or at least that's my guess, because he doesn't really explain what he means by uniting.  I just have to go on his public record, and it ain't that great.

Three, why can't he come out and deal with his vote on the war?  He was wrong, he got snookered.  Unless he comes out and acknowledges this, why should we trust him on anything else?  And it's not just about the war, either, it's about how he keeps insulting those who were right about the war as a way of burnishing his own legitimacy as someone who's 'serious' on national security.  He's not, and until he wakes up, Biden's just a sad wimpy guy.

Finally, why is his first diary pushing his personal agenda?  Oh, great, a Senator sniffing around for support by hiring a junior staffer to post on blogs.  That's so awesome!  Wow.  He needs to use this as a place to listen, to communicate.  I'm not impressed that some flunky on his staff posts here.  I would be impressed if the Communications Director posted here, as that would mean that he actually cared about communicating with us.  But he hired someone specifically to deal with 'those people'.  I will not be one of 'those people' anymore.  I expect to be treated like a citizen who isn't blind, deaf, and dumb, and knows something about Biden, and wants to engage in a discussion about the politics of my country.

This isn't doing that.

And no, I didn't like Hillary Clinton's web site.

:)

Conservatives, and some Dems, complain endlessly about how Democratic blogs have a tendency to ban people more than Republican sites. Of course, anyone who has ever been to Free Republic knows that this is an absurd argument to make, without even mentioning that sites like MyDD have actually banned less than 1% of our more than 8,500 registered users. This post is further proof that this sort of thing goes both ways--Chris

The GOP just relaunched GOP.com, with comments on their blog.  They are having a pretty tough time with community.  Here are some sample comments from their first post on Rove: