You Sank My Battleship... Or Maybe Not

If you were reading blogs back in August 2006, you may remember that Joe Lieberman's campaign threw a big Hissy Fit, claiming that Ned Lamont's team (and in particular those dirty fuckin' hippie bloggers) hacked their website and brought it down. It was clear within about 10 minutes that the "joe2006.com" site was strained because they paid something like $100 for server space and couldn't deal with the expected traffic for a hotly contested primary. Since Lieberman and his staff probably think "the Internet" is something you catch butterflies with, they didn't understand such things, and simply decided that those Lamont nerds must have put a "net-worm" or "hack-moose" on their CyberPages and ruined everything.

Well, it took the FBI a bit longer, but they eventually came around to what everyone in the blogosphere already knew:

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.

"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

The point of the Hissy Fit was to get the media to report on those mean, dirty bloggers, not to necessarily gain an advantage in the particular primary election but to set the narrative for the 2006 general election. So it worked.

One of these days the media isn't going to get punked so easily... Scratch that, they'll keep getting punked.

Obama's Connecticut Win, And What It Means For Our Movement

(the disclosure is I voted for Obama, but I would write this even if I was a Hillary supporter)

The one thing that didn't match up in last night's results, to me, was Barack Obama's victory in Connecticut. Hillary Clinton's leads in key northeastern states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York) all seemed to hold up - EXCEPT for Connecticut. He won despite exit polling showing that 59% of the electorate was female, and 30% was over 60. Why? What did this mean?

The New York Times thinks it has the answer.

Ned Lamont was not on the ballot, but his presence was nonetheless felt in Connecticut’s Democratic presidential primary.

It was the young, the rich and voters who called Iraq the top issue who helped provide the margin of victory for Senator Barack Obama in Connecticut, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls, narrowly defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in her own backyard.

With 96 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Obama had 50 percent of the vote, compared with 47 percent for Mrs. Clinton. The exit polls, conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, showed Mr. Obama doing well among what some in that state might call the “Ned Lamont coalition.”

I am not trying to say that the Ned Lamont endorsement, which came late after Lamont went in strong for Chris Dodd, had an impact. No, I would argue it was not Lamont but THE MOVEMENT THAT LAMONT LEFT BEHIND that helped Obama the most. Bunches of new voters were energized by that campaign in 2006. It appears that they didn't go back to their couches and stew after the general election loss to Joe Lieberman, they stuck around and became part of a movement for change.

“The Lamont campaign was part of my political awakening,” said Bill Dauphin, 47, a technical writer who attended the Obama campaign’s victory party Tuesday night at the Sweet Jane Bar in Hartford. “That’s the thing that got me off the sofa and onto the street.” [...]

In a state where Mrs. Clinton consistently held double-digit poll leads until mid-January, Mr. Obama ran strong among voters who made up their minds in the last month, the last week and the last three days, the exit poll showed. Thousands of unaffiliated Connecticut voters joined the Democratic Party in recent weeks in order to cast ballots in the primary, and among the nearly 20 percent of voters surveyed on Tuesday who identified themselves as independents, Mr. Obama won 6 of every 10 votes.

My Left Nutmeg has a bit more.

While I actually have zero interest in linking Clinton to Lieberman, it must be said (as Scarce mentioned last night) that this primary cycle in CT cemented the realignment that happened in 2006 – Clinton's campaign in the state was made up of many of Lieberman's most enthusiastic post-primary Dem supporters (you know the list), and the results from last night showed their weakness.

That DeLauro and Larson joined up with Obama surprised me when I first heard of their endorsements – but in retrospect, it looks like they at least in part interpreted the political tides in a correct and savvy fashion. (That's why they're in Congress, and I'm just some schmoe. Ah well :)

Winning begets more winning. Ned Lamont, Don Williams, Chris Murphy, Rosa DeLauro, and John Larson are mainstream CT Democrats. I feel pretty good being in that coalition, personally.

It's frankly unfair to Clinton to link her to Lieberman; nothing could be further from the truth. But her war vote was probably a factor, as Iraq has been a galvanizing cause for the progressive movement.

This is why we have to keep fighting in these primary races. Real and vital infrastructure does get left behind every time we do a primary in one of these states, and it has residual effects. If we had a "50-state Ned Lamont strategy," the amount of activists and energy that would engender would be incalculable. It's a seeding strategy, where new leaders are cultivated.

Now, in a way there's a wistful quality to this, because Obama kind of screwed Lamont in 2006 by not going to bat for him completely. It's one thing to see a progressive movement defy odds, and another to direct where it channels itself. But over time, I believe those activists will get things right. I'm less concerned about who won and who lost here than the idea that a progressive movement borne from the ashes of a primary challenge can overcome structural disadvantages and win.

Push (Poll), Nevada?

This is interesting. Pollsters will be taking a pass on Nevada, gun-shy from blowing New Hampshire and understanding what we're all hearing - that Nevadans don't have a damn clue about these caucuses. They're vaguely aware of an Election Day, but the caucuses are very new to the state, and the voters don't seem to understand that they'll have to spend an hour or so at the polling location. It's in the middle of the day on a Saturday, which could be a plus or a minus. This Culinary Worker's endorsement from Obama isn't going to help with everyone who'll be working in the casinos at the time. It's not like the Strip's going to close down at 11:00am on the 19th.

What a way to run a railroad.

I actually agree with Hillary Clinton, even if she is tamping down expectations for what may be a loss for her in Nevada.

"You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard. That is troubling to me. You know in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time -- they're disenfranchised. People who can't be in the state or who are in the military, like the son of the woman who was here who is serving in the Air Force, they cannot be present."

Nevada is probably tied right now, but we really don't know. They've had to understand the campaign as a national campaign, just like us out in California. From a national standpoint, Obama's endorsements from John Kerry, border state governor Janet Napolitano, and Ned Lamont certainly showed that he's charging ahead. This has unfortunately become a race tinged with identity politics, in the absence of either side making a strong contrast with the other on issues. We'll see who that benefits. But the fact that Nevada is a somewhat important primary for momentum, and yet it's so chaotic that pollsters won't even poll it, speaks to how ridiculous this primary process is.

The D-Day Interview: Chris Dodd

Yesterday myself and the Calitics staff sat down with Sen. Christopher Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chair and candidate for President in 2008, for about a 30-minute interview. Dodd impressed me as someone who thinks clearly about issues and the implications of them, who carefully ponders all of his decisions, and who always strives to do the right thing. In other words, a Democrat.

He's also embraced new media, hiring Tim Tagaris, who should be familiar to the netroots as having worked on Ned Lamont's campaign (here's a bio). Dodd talked about the new media era and how it can impact a campaign like his that is looking to get their views out in the face of the media-hyped monster that his Hillack Clintobama.

We asked Dodd about the role that blogs and the Internet are playing in his campaign. During last week's debate, they set up a live streaming "war room" where people could watch his staff react to portions of the debate (Dodd actually criticized the debate format in his convention speech, which I thought was accurate). He said that his campaign cannot "rely on what's filtered through the traditional media." He talked about how he can read articles on the Presidential race, and see where his portion of the story "died on the editor's desk," because you only have so many column inches and you have to talk about Hillary and you have to talk about Obama. The Tom Friedman quote that Brian Williams brought up in the debate ("nobody has come up with a specific energy and environmental policy") really stung him, because Dodd HAS done just that, and he said that he sent it to Friedman to boot. We talk about the proposal later.

Now I'll segue into a Q-and-A shorthand format.

Next question: When the media does stop at the Hillary-Obama phenomenon, how do you react to that?

A: "We're building an operation solidly." Dodd believes in an almost architectural way to build an organization, by making the underlying structure solid. Iowa and Nevada, he said, are all about organization; getting people to stay in caucuses for two hours and horse trade with their neighbors requires it. And in New Hampshire, he's a fellow New Englander. His crowds are "decent-sized". And people seem to have an "amnesia about the last election," where Kerry's organization in Iowa was solid enough to help him win that race.

Q: Talk about the corporate carbon tax.

A: Dodd believes he can generate 50-100 billion dollars annually through this tax, which can be put into alternative energy programs. This will have the effect of equalizing price for peopple. People want to go green, but if it's cost-prohibitive and they're struggling to get by, they may not make the sacrifice. It makes it easier to purchase things like wind and solar and ethanol, etc. Dodd said that he got a great response on the proposal, particularly from Al Gore. He also wants to mandate a 50mpg fuel economy standard by 2017. I'll quote his Boston Globe op-ed for a more detailed description:

That's why, in addition to whatever else we do, America must enact a corporate carbon tax. Used in conjunction with cap and trade systems that allow clean corporations to sell pollution credits to dirtier companies, a corporate carbon tax can be implemented quickly, affect every energy sector, and above all provide the strongest disincentive possible to polluting.

Some argue that corporations would simply pass on costs of a corporate carbon tax to consumers. But in an era where the price of gasoline already jumps 30 to 40 cents in only a few weeks' time, such arguments ring decidedly hollow. You cannot be serious about acting on the urgent threat of global warming, about making us less captive to Middle East oil, or investing in renewable energy, unless you have a corporate carbon tax that eliminates the last incentive to pollute: that it's cheaper. With all we are facing -- from health and environmental concerns to war abroad -- making dirty energy a less attractive option to consumers and business is nothing to be afraid of.

But it's particularly attractive because the revenues of a corporate carbon tax can be used to bring the cost of clean energy down. Used to fast-track renewable energy research and development and deployment of clean energy and energy efficient technologies, a corporate carbon tax would generate more than $50 billion annually, helping us get technologies out of the laboratories and onto our roads and into our homes and businesses, jumpstarting America's global competitiveness in the process.

Dodd also described it as a jobs program, and that the jobs of the 21st century can be alternative energy jobs.

Q: On Iraq, what are your thoughts on what to do after the expected veto of the funding bill with a withdrawal date?

A: "Any bill you send without definition is wrong." Bush obviously wants to play out the string and hand this problem to the next President. This is the first Administration in his history in the Congress that treats diplomacy as a threat or a weakness. Dodd would ramp up diplomacy and political solutions to the problem of Iraq. He says that he gets people coming up to him all the time, Democrats and Republicans, who say "Don't quit on this." Dodd is also a co-sponsor of Feingold-Reid. I'm happy with his stance on Iraq.

Q: What is the status of your legislation restoring habeas corpus?

A: Not moving. But he's committed to the issue. "When I first introduced it, I thought it would go over people's heads," would be too obscure. He didn't realize how widely held this opinion was that we need to restore habeas corpus, that it speaks to who we are as Americans.

Dodd talked about how the best advocates of his bill were the senior officers of JAG. They understand that you cannot torture people or detain them indefinitely without telling them why they were charged. He talked about all the reasons why you have to change the law. And he said that if he were President, "I don't know what I could fix by executive order." I said, "If you're like this President, everything." Big laugh. I killed with Chris Dodd.

Q: Talk about Webb and Tester.

A: He has a lot of respect for them. Called Tester "a keeper" and great with his constituents.

Q: Talk about jobs and why so many people think they're falling behind.

A: We need more union households. Ben Bernanke made a speech in Omaha where he admitted that less union households have increased inequality. Dodd has offered legislation to overturn the Kentucky River case, where people listed as supervisors cannot organize. He talked about rising costs in energy, education, health care. And he said that the GI bill was so successful in getting so many to college and into a good job.

He also mentioned that real unemployment is probably twice as much as reported, because it doesn't count those who haven't looked for work or have stopped looking. And he said that 10 million households in this country haven't been to a bank. We need to get people out of the shadows and into that system.

Dodd finished by talking about trust. Elections are rarely about the candidate; people want to know if you're listening to them (a primal reaction). He thinks America is not that divded and is just looking for leadership to get them from A to D and not A to Z.

Q: Talk about how you are interacting with Joe Lieberman now.

A: This was a great answer, and I encouraged Dodd to keep talking about it. He had a 40-year relationship with Lieberman. It was a tough choice for him to back Ned Lamont. And ultimately, he said, "I did the right thing" because he respected the wishes of the voters. He said Ned was a great candidate and would have made a great Senator.

OK, that was it.