I wanted to let you all know that Senator Patty Murray will be doing a Live Chat with Blue America over at Crooks and Liars from 5-6pm PST this evening.
For eighteen years, Patty has been a leader on progressive issues. Her opponent, perennial candidate Dino Rossi, has been attacking her constantly on TV with the help of shadowy special interest groups aligned with Karl Rove.
Ballots arrive in Washington's mailboxes in one week – and we need your help to keep Patty in the Senate and send the special interests packing!
That’s right. Yesterday at a debate between Rep. Virgil Goode of Virgina’s 5th district and his Democratic challenger Tom Perriello Goode said this
“And they want me out of Congress, the liberal Democrats want me out. And they want me out because I’m a conservative voice, if we can silence that person that’s exactly what we want, we want more mushers up here in Congress that won’t speak out and stand out. They want a Obamajority in this country, Tom is on the Obamajority list for the US House of Representatives, they want to get him in there because they know he is going to be voting with them. They want to control the White House, 60 votes in the US Senate and a strong majority in the US House of Representatives.”
Goode is famous for using bogeymen to scare people, he attacked Rep. Keith Ellison for being a Muslim and repeated tall tales about China that even Dick Cheney said where false.
Now he’s found a new bogeymen. He’s attacking the Obamajority, an ActBlue page started by a 14 year old blogger–me.
That’s right, back in March I started an ActBlue page, “The New Obamajority”. After asking for suggestions I added Tom Perriello to the page. Apparently the 587 dollars we raised from 12 donors over the internet terrified Goode so much that he decided to attack a internet fundraising page in his closing remarks at a key debate in his race.
That internet fundraising page is even more terrifying to Goode because it was started by me, a 14 year old blogger with close to no political experience before two years ago. I’m trembling in my boots!
Personally I don’t think 587 bucks is anything to be scared about. If I were Goode I would be more worried about the fact that he’s getting outraised by Perriello. But I say we give him something to really be scared about.
I’m setting a goal of getting to 50 donors for Perriello on the Obamajority page to send Goode packing.
Goode doesn’t seem to like “mushers” which is odd because it is the name of people who race dogs similar to dogsled racing, I guess Goode has a problem with mushing, maybe if we retire him he’ll have enough free time to try out mushing and maybe he’ll learn to love it.
Also, Goode came close to breaking a secret I’ve been keeping. Tom will not be voting with “them” as Goode said, he will be personally calling me up before each vote and asking me how to vote. In fact, he got me a slick new phone for that purpose.
Let me assure you of this, Tom will march lock step with the powerful Teenage Blogger Caucus!
We’ve got a goal, we’ve got a teenage blogger attacking congressmen, we’ve got a terrific candidate to replace him.
Now time for action! It’s time to make a difference and let’s do it. Let’s use the super-powerful Obamajority internet fundraising page to elect Tom Perriello and say “Goodbye” to Virgil Goode. We can use the series of tubes to make a difference!
Despite handing back to the keys to Swing State Project a year ago, I felt it appropriate to defend myself against Danny Glover’s NYT hitpiece on the only blog I’ve ever called home. I can’t speak for all the bloggers on his “list,” but I can correct MANY of the innacuracies about me personally and the Lamont campaign in the piece.
I do think it’s interesting that some bloggers made a name for themselves by fighting the establishment and billing themselves as revolutionaries but at the same time are willing to work for campaigns. That, to me, is part of the establishment — at least in a broad sense. And that is the point of my article.
I’m curious as to what part of Ned Lamont’s campaign was “establishment” when he was down 60 points in the polls to a former VP nominee; when every single organ of party infrastructure was fighting tooth and nail against us; when I decided to leave the DNC (now that’s establishment!) to join Ned and people literally said it would be “difficult to hire” me in the future if I made that move. Yet three of the thirteen candidates on his chart were hired “bloggers” by the Lamont campaign — that’s of “four bloggers on his campaign team.” Of that group, one was paid to actually blog … me. The other three were a tech guy, research staff, and graphic designer who wrote favorably about Ned before ever joining the team.
Here’s something else Glover apparently doesn’t get. Blogging was probably one of the smallest pieces of my employment. It’s a conversation I’ve tried to have with others at the National Journal, but no one quite seems to get. When you take on the role of an “Internet Director” on a campaign, it’s more than just blogging and talking to bloggers. Scott Shields of the Menendez campaign has more on this.
Further, I personally am not blogger turned campaign staff. I worked on a campaign long before ever consistently blogging on any independent site. Glover’s chart cites me blogging for the “now defunct” Grow Ohio. But Grow Ohio was the site I was paid to write for by Congressman Sherrod Brown. It had his picture all over the site and a nice disclaimer at the bottom that said “Paid for by Friends of Sherrod Brown.” The only independent blog I have ever been a regular front page poster to is Swing State Project, and he doesn’t even list that on my line … he also conveniently omitted the fact I was the DNC blogger for some time as well.
And finally, his chart implies that a paycheck is driving bloggers to write nice things about our employeers. Maybe that’s not the intent, but it’s the implication. But the quotes he pulls from Sirota and I (Lamont staffers) were both written AFTER the campaign was over. Could it be that some of us he noted in the piece have the ability to work for candidates we believe in before receiving a paycheck and continue to believe in long after our final one was cashed?
Tim
P.S. They even got the amount of $$$ I made with Ned wrong. Go figure. I even let Glover know that via email after his first piece showed up on MSNBC’s website.
