Hit Back Hard John Edwards

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday February 07, 2007 · 12:41 PM PST

2007/02/07 · 12:41

I think by simply castigating John Edwards we are missing an extraordinary opportunity. Once again we are not seeing the forest for the trees. We need to have Edwards rally the netroots troops and hit back hard. A few things that people who are commenting are not taking in to account,

This was a coordinated attack to knock John Edwards out of the race early. I think he is the one they are most scared of. I am a big John Edwards backer but I would drop him like a hot potato if he fired those two bloggers. I believe John Edwards is smart enough to know this. But this was an extraordinarily well planned sneak attack. There is not way the story would have moved so fast otherwise. The story of the bloggers broke yesterday and it made it in to the New York Times, AP, and ABC news in one day. These blog initiated stories rarely move that fast. This means,

Edwards has no time to respond. My guess is he believed the story was a joke yesterday, and anyway everybody was concentrating on the weather and the Senate. And he should have been right. This story was too trivial to become so big so quickly, especially in this environment. Think of Daou's triangle, the story went from the political operatives, to the blogosphere, to the mainstream media in a matter of seconds. By tomorrow there will be politicians commenting on it. It is based on the strategy of blitzkrieg - that if you move quickly you can get people to play defense, panic, and make terrible, irreversible mistakes. Again, this could not have happened without a great deal of planning and coordination.

People are going to panic. I don't care how good your operation in, when there is this type of all out push against you people in your organization are not going to be able to hold it together. My guess is one of the consultant class took it upon himself to fire the bloggers. Honestly, I think they panicked as well. Instead of doing the smart thing which is to go talk with Elizabeth Edwards, they became hysterical and felt they were being thrown under a bus. You can't really blame the people who are panicking - look at what's happening on this website right now.

As much as you think the response is easy, it's not. Not firing the bloggers is easy. It would be idiotic to do so. But the other side is smart. They set up the predicate as Catholic bigotry. In other words, if Edwards doesn't fire the bloggers he is promoting Catholic bigotry and this story is going to have legs. Edwards needs his response to be just as coordinated and just as well thought out as the rightwingers. If he is smart he is one a conference call right now with Kos, Chris Bowers, and John Avarosis.

The response need to be well thought out but it needs to be brutal. You don't bring a knife to a gun fight. He has to go on offense, he has to go after people, he has to be vicious and take no prisoners. He understands that much of the mainstream media will be against him initially which makes it harder. And people always blame the person who throws the second punch. It doesn't matter - because any other scenario means he was bitch slapped and didn't fight back, and his presidential run is for all intents and purposes over. But when he does get up we have to be right behind him - if he chooses a hit back hard strategy, which I hope to God he does, that has to be everywhere, wall to wall, without let up. And maybe, just maybe, this rightwing nightmare is over.

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

Hit Back Hard John Edwards

Comments are closed on this story.