I got a taste of it back in '06 when I decided to do a bit of freelance work against George Allen. In August, I stopped by a campaign rally near Harrisonburg to ask Allen if he had "ever used the word 'n*****'".
Allen denied it, "no... no..."
I reiterated the question: "never in your life?"
Allen doubled down, "No."
"Can you explain the confederate flag and noose in your office?"
I recorded the interaction, sent it around the blogosphere (it was rec'd here), and within weeks, the entire political press was talking about all the people that had come forward to say that, yes, indeed, they had personally witnessed George Allen acting all sorts the racist fool. It took Mark Foley's page scandal to push Allen out of the news.
Allen decided to return to my neck of the woods on Halloween. Big fucking mistake. The race was still a statistical dead heat, but between his visits, some more dirt surfaced: Allen had been arrested for something back in the 70's and, according to at least one well-placed source, had a record of abusing his wife. Since Allen had made an issue out of Webb's treatment of women, I thought the latter was particularly relevant... And since your minimum wage bank teller needs to pass an FBI background check, I thought a sitting United States Senator should at least personally account for his arrest record. So... I showed up at the Omni with my questions, got man-handled (and eventually tackled) and found myself at the center of a media firestorm.
And what did the Virginia bloggers have to say?
Well, it was pretty fucking pathetic.
After about four years of zealous partisanship in the blogosphere... After we elected Howard Dean Chairman of the DNC because we wanted someone that would stand up, take ownership and be proud of Democratic principles... Well, much of the Virginia blogosphere clutched their pearls, decried my "incivility", and begged me to go away so that they could focus on their "positive" campaign.
Less than a week later, Allen lost the election by a few thousand votes (out of millions cast).
And today... the same jokers are at it again.
These dimwits have already forgotten that the Democratic Party of 2000-2004 was directly responsible for creating the Howard Dean-led people-powered phenomena. That milquetoast, never a bad word for the bad guys, yay to Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle and Harold Ford way of doing things dragged our party to the deepest pits of failure. Nobody was willing to say a bad word about George W. Bush forgawd'ssake.
Well.
There were a lot of us out here that wanted to die fighting rather than live with the consequences of cowardice. Funny thing is, that's not the way it turned out.
Instead, we began by replacing Terry McAuliffe as head of the DNC. We put our guy, Howard Dean, in the crow's nest. And we ruthlessly mocked Joe Lieberman. We primaried the mother-fucker. Yeah, horror of horrors! We attacked a Democrat! And we didn't stop there. We fought Jane Harmon, Ellen Tauscher, Rahm Emmanuel, Chuck Schumer and scores of other establishmentarians. And in the end, we made our party stronger.
But have the dim bulbs that occupy Virginia's "civil" wing learned a fucking thing from this? Fuck no. If they aren't openly supporting Terry McAuliffe, they are attacking Brian Moran for running ads that "aren't nice". Nimrods.
A coupla months ago, McAuliffe had me over for a blogger's dinner. He was all smiles and back slaps and he promised then that he wouldn't have a bad word to say about any of the other Democrats in the race.
I noted cynicism of the strategy. When you've got a 30-year trail of dirt in your wake, it's easy to call for a positive campaign and then tut-tut every time one of your opponents calls you to account for your record. And of course, that is exactly what McAuliffe has done.
But that's not the end of it. He's technically kept (so far as I can tell) his promise not to say anything negative about his opponents. Instead... Instead... Instead that dirty motherfucker has been running push-polls against Moran and Deeds. LOL. But McAuliffe has never said anything negative. Fucking yay.
This sort of two-faced bullshit surfaced in another way a few weeks back. McAuliffe, in predominately black parts of Virginia, ran radio ads touting his support of Barack Obama. Talking shit about how "we" elected him President. Of course, we all know that McAuliffe did everything he could to make sure Obama did not become the party's nominee. If it had been up to McAuliffe, Obama would never had seen the other side of Iowa.
Worse yet is the idea that Obama has ever wanted the first thing to do with McAuliffe's "pay-to-play" model of government service. Obama cut lobbyists out of his administration; Mcauliffe sold the Lincoln bedroom to anyone with the bankroll. Yeah, that included a noted Republican bankroller (one of McCain's top donors) and financier of terror organizations. I'm not exaggerating when I say McAuliffe would take anyone's money. (In fact, he's taken even more money from Lindner for his Virginia campaign).
But let's gat back to the bloggers.
Because not only have several of them (lost causes, so far as I'm concerned) gone off the deep end and committed their support to McAuliffe, many others (stoopid beyond belief, but not lost) have decided that holding McAuliffe accountable for his cynical ways and past corruption is somehow a bad thing. We shouldn't be attacking Democrats and all that shit...
I guess these folks were happy with Lieberman in '06. Because attacking a Democrat is wrong, wrong, wrong. They must love Jim Webb when he says that we don't need torture investigations. Because criticising a Democrat is wrong, wrong, wrong. The Nelsons, Pryors, Specters and Harold Fords in the party? Great to have you! Need a fluffing?
Please.
So Moran has decided to run ads in the same markets where McAuliffe ran his "positive" ads regarding Barack Obama. Moran sets the record straight; he calls out the McAuliffe deception.
And the Virginia bloggers - just like they did to me when I worked against Allen in 2006 - blame the honest broker because they say things that aren't in keeping with their Hallmark Card style of campaigning. (You know, the style that worked so well for John Kerry against George Bush in 2004 - while McAuliffe led the Democratic Party).
Let me conclude by asking Virginia bloggers to learn to deal with politics. Nobody - I repeat... NOBODY has won a race acting like a bunch of sissies. There is plenty of room for making the positive case for your candidate, but let there be no doubt: if you don't expose your opponent's weakness, you're leaving a lot on the table. And you just can't do that. You owe too much to the volunteers, donors, and paid staff and others that are invested in your campaign.