Democratic Strategist
by digby
MSNBC featured a lively segmentthis morning between Dan Gerstein, Joe Lieberman’s personal WATB, and some other guy on the subject of the Edwards blogger brouhaha.
Nameless MSNBC blond host: Here to talk about how much this could hurt John Edwards are Dan Gerstein former senior advisor for Senator Joe Lieberman and Democratic strategist, as well as Brad Blakeman a Republican strategist.
Let’s start with you Dan. These bloggers that we’re talking about. If Edwards is so personally offended by their comments, why not just fire them and be done with it?
Gerstein: Well, it sounds like a simple question, but there’s a big problem in the Democratic party right now. And let me preface what I’m about to say by saying I have a blog, I’m a big believer in the power of blogs in politics to make it more Democratic and empower people’s voices, but for a lot of the Democratic bloggers there’s extremism, anger, and there’s a kind of lack of accountability for what people say and do and I think this is more and more going to become a problem in presidential politics as the blogosphere and the campaign world start converging. And I think, to sum it up, I think this is a warning sign there’s a risk of getting fleas if you lie down with blogs.
NMBH: Interesting. Hey Brad I have a question. Can you really hold John Edwards accountable for something that low level staffers posted this one in particular before she was even working for the campaign?
Blakeman: Yes you can because, you’re directly responsible for your employees. And this isn’t a third party who has no connection to Edwards. These are people who work for him. And there’s no way to defend this type of activity whether they are Republican or Democrat.These people need to go and they need to go quick. And if they don’t go quick, it’s going to be very detrimental to Senator Edwards.
NMBH: Dan, when you see someone like Bill Donohue jumping all over this. This is the head of the Catholic League,about 350,000 catholics across the country that are members of that, does it make you think that this incident might haunt Senator Edwards down the line, especially as he tries to court the conservative Christian voters?
Gerstein: Well in the short term it’s gonna help him because in the Democratic base, the activists, he stood up to the far right and he refused to be bullied, and the won the favor of the bloggers which are an important constituency in the Democratic Party. My concern is that how this is going to affect him and the Democratic Party down the line and particuarly in the general lection and here’s why.
The Democratic Party has made great efforts and I give Howard Dean great credit for this, for reaching out to the evangelical community, and the faith based communities in general to try and rebuild some of the trust that’s been eroded over the years. And an episode like this, what it does is, regardless of whether John Edwards fired them, he appears to be tacitly condoning anti-Catholic bias when there are a lot of Catholic Democrats in this country and that’s going to have the potential to turn off voters to the Democratic Party.
NMBH: Guys listen, I’ve got to call it a wrap, this time. I know you’re both coming back. Brad, I’m going to begin with you next time, make it a little more fair and balanced.
I know that we can’t expect MSNBC to know that Bill Donohue is a date-rape defending crackpot or to know that Dan Gerstein is a far right neocon who represents about three nominal Democrats in the whole country — Lieberman, Lanny Davis and Martin Peretz. The media are all very distracted by the breaking news that Anna Nicole is still dead and they don’t have time to seek out any real facts or provide serious context.
But really, do they not even know their anchors are using the FoxNews tagline? No wonder they languish in third place…
Cliff Schecter has more on the recent ramblings of Dan Gerstein, the Democratic “strategist,” who’s written an analysis for the DLC positing that Lieberman is the true representative of the base of the Democratic party.
Update: Uh oh. We’ve lost Bérubé.
From the comments:
Well, I used to be a Democrat, but these foul-mouthed liberal bloggers have left me no choice but to join forces with Bill Donohue and Dick Cheney. I’m looking forward to the restoration of civil discourse in the public sphere, and might I add, now that I’ve decided not to hate America any more, I’m really angry about Chappaquiddick.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot: I didn’t leave the left blogosphere — it left me.
Michael Bérubé
.