Zengerle responds.
Jason Zengerle responds to Kevin Drum and me here.
As the small fry in this exchange, I'm happy to let either he or Kevin have the last word. But I stand by my argument that it was unfair -- a caricature -- to suggest the blogs only went after Cueller because he hugged Bush after the SOTU while ignoring the more substantive complaints Kos, Atrios and other blogs compiled against Cueller after the hug tipped them off. (It's very unlikely they would have gone after him so hard had he turned out to have a decent voting record or a history of supporting other Democrats.) There's also the way Ciro Rodriguez embraced the blogs for support, to jump-start his candidacy. Clearly some candidates do see the value of the activist blogs; they provide a service to underdog liberal candidates. The service is real even if the results so far haven't been stellar.
Zengerle's other claims have merit:
But is it really all that strategically smart to enter a campaign (about which you know virtually nothing) a mere month before election day? Aren't you basically setting yourself up for failure? Isn't it even possible that you risk helping the other guy by creating a backlash (a la all the Orange-hatted, out-of-state Dean volunteers who ticked off Iowa voters)?
Sure, you're setting yourself up for failure -- and that's a criticism worth making (the blogs are tough; they can take it). But is that "winnerism" or is it risking the embarrassment of defeat in order to hold an ideological line (even if, as Kevin points out, it's a fairly obvious, uncontroversial one)? It's also true that blog triumphalism can be obnoxious and occasionally surreal, but I'm not sure about holding up this level-headed postmortem from Chris Bowers (in which he actually addresses some of Zengerle's concerns) as an example of that triumphalism. Chris' levelheadedness also led him, from the start of the night, to doubt Rodriguez would pull it out --suggesting he's learned from his previous over-optimism. Personally, I was over-optimistic to the tune of losing a hundred dollar bet on the 2004 presidential election. So, come to think of it, were various TNR columnists.
Finally, there's a difference between activism and commentary. Part of the activism of blogs is rallying the troops -- assessing what went wrong and the possible upsides to having undertaken the effort. At some point that shades into a self-righteous disconnection from the real world. But I don't think it has in this case.
As the small fry in this exchange, I'm happy to let either he or Kevin have the last word. But I stand by my argument that it was unfair -- a caricature -- to suggest the blogs only went after Cueller because he hugged Bush after the SOTU while ignoring the more substantive complaints Kos, Atrios and other blogs compiled against Cueller after the hug tipped them off. (It's very unlikely they would have gone after him so hard had he turned out to have a decent voting record or a history of supporting other Democrats.) There's also the way Ciro Rodriguez embraced the blogs for support, to jump-start his candidacy. Clearly some candidates do see the value of the activist blogs; they provide a service to underdog liberal candidates. The service is real even if the results so far haven't been stellar.
Zengerle's other claims have merit:
But is it really all that strategically smart to enter a campaign (about which you know virtually nothing) a mere month before election day? Aren't you basically setting yourself up for failure? Isn't it even possible that you risk helping the other guy by creating a backlash (a la all the Orange-hatted, out-of-state Dean volunteers who ticked off Iowa voters)?
Sure, you're setting yourself up for failure -- and that's a criticism worth making (the blogs are tough; they can take it). But is that "winnerism" or is it risking the embarrassment of defeat in order to hold an ideological line (even if, as Kevin points out, it's a fairly obvious, uncontroversial one)? It's also true that blog triumphalism can be obnoxious and occasionally surreal, but I'm not sure about holding up this level-headed postmortem from Chris Bowers (in which he actually addresses some of Zengerle's concerns) as an example of that triumphalism. Chris' levelheadedness also led him, from the start of the night, to doubt Rodriguez would pull it out --suggesting he's learned from his previous over-optimism. Personally, I was over-optimistic to the tune of losing a hundred dollar bet on the 2004 presidential election. So, come to think of it, were various TNR columnists.
Finally, there's a difference between activism and commentary. Part of the activism of blogs is rallying the troops -- assessing what went wrong and the possible upsides to having undertaken the effort. At some point that shades into a self-righteous disconnection from the real world. But I don't think it has in this case.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home