I think this is a debate we should have as a community. I know blogs need money to survive, and that advertising provides a lot of that money.
I also know that newspapers and TV stations need advertiser dollars to survive, but they have standards re what they will and won’t run, no matter how much money is at stake.
I submit that it is harmful to our party to run attack ads from one Democrat against another.
More below the fold…
I think it makes sense to insist that BlogAds be about the candidate paying for the ad, and not about their opposition. If the ad gets people to click through to their site, then they can find out about the opposition.
Take the current attack ad on Cynthia McKinney prominently placed on orange’s front page. I was really sickened by that, because McKinney has a great record on progressive issues, has been outspoken against Diebold in particular and electronic voting in general, and has showed more balls than anyone else in the Congress on the issue of 9/11.
Her supposed “attack” on a Capitol Hill policeman? She said it started with “inappropriate touching.” Whatever that meant, the Grand Jury evidently believed her, because they refused to indict her for this.
Her alleged statement that Bush was behind 9/11? She never said it, as Greg Palast pointed out in his piece “The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney.”
Now the press is making a big deal of her being “missing in Congress” all week. But context is everything. She missed Monday and Tuesday because Tuesday was her primary! And she missed Wed-Fri because neither candidate won, and she’s in a tight-runoff against her challenger.
But I don’t want this to be a discussion of McKinney. I want this to be a discussion of whether or not the blogs we frequent should act as circular firing squads (when Dems attack Dems).
I’m all for runnning political ads, campaign ads, etc. But I’m NOT for running attack ads against our candidates. I think it only weakens our party, in the end.
What are your thoughts re this?
I’m having this same conversation with some people in email, and one of them said, well what about Ned Lamont? I don’t like Lieberman, and don’t want him to have that seat. But if by some miracle Lierberman were to retake it, would we have done more harm than good by running attack ads against Lieberman? He is a good environmentalist, at least, which is something in the current Congress. I mean, I would take Lieberman over a Republican. I just wouldn’t want to have to have that choice.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t run negative campaigns either – it wouldn’t matter if I made that argument, because they’ll happen anyway, because they work.
I’m just saying that we, as progressives, should consider whether such a ban would be useful or not. I know there is a lot of damage after primary campaigns. Dean supports were not eager to embrace Kerry when Dean lost the nomination. The attacks from Kerry, overt and covert, had done a lot of damage.
It’s bad enough that it happens on TV and in print. Should we welcome that into our “homes” online as well?
and should Markos ask for $2025 dollars from his members to make up for his refusing to run the ad?
Are members going to buy $2025 worth of Daily Kos merchandise every time he turns down an ad?
Why not just use my policy, which is that I will run any ad from a democrat, even Joe Lieberman.
I don’t see it that way.
I think the campaign would go out of their way to accommodate Kos, and would create a positive message ad to run in it’s place.
And I know, for example, of groups who wanted to advertise in the New York Times, and were rejected, unless that ad was changed. So they changed the ad to comply with the rules. No money was lost.
Maybe Daily Kos has that kind of clout. I certainly don’t. Much less the smaller blogs.
But it’s probably not a good time to ask my opinion since I have zero ads sold at them moment. Working for free is not fun.
I’m sorry, Booman. And I forgot, when I posted, that you’re in the same pool.
I was thinking specifically of Kos, which DOES have the clout. I think people who want to advertise there would do anything to get their ads in front of that audience.
I know. I’ve been online for over 15 years – three web sites, two blogs, etc. I’ve made probably a whopping few hundred dollars in all that time. Please don’t be discouraged. What you do is really valuable.
Well, continuing down my current path of winning friends and influencing people, I just have to say that it’s always puzzled me how scoop type dkos satellite blogs were going to make money by being basically kinder, gentler clones of dkos.
I mean, they might, of course! Blogs and so on are new things, but mostly it reminds me of FOX, CNN and MSNBC, where the latter two saw FOX serving the a portion of the market and attempted to re-fashion themselves in a like model in an attempt to pick off parts of that market, instead of going after the existing underserved market. (note: this is not saying that dkos is right wing or like FOX, or anything like that… just using those familiar examples.)
Anyway, I say innovate! 🙂
First, dKos isn’t a “community”, it’s a business run by a budding political fixer. “Community” is the dodge he uses to get eyes into the place, eyes which he then sells to politicians and advertisers. dKos is no more a “community” than ABC, NBC, CBS, FAUX or CNN … the bloggers aren’t the “customers” of the site, they are the PRODUCT being sold. One need only look back at the pie fight to see that the product offered by his little business has been carefully molded and groomed to give his REAL customers the eyes they want: bullying frat boys and former Republicans. They keep a few lefties around so everyone can call themselves “progressive”, the way Republicans parade their Uncle and Auntie Toms around to reassure greedy suburbanites that they aren’t REALLY racists.
Second, of course Democrats should attack Democrats during campaigns. Actually, I should say LEFTIES should start attacking more Democrats, because crap like the McKinney ad is just business-as-usual for the center-right of the Democratic Party. We will never have a real debate, in that party or in this country, until people are willing to get in each others’ faces. The reason the right is winning and destroying this country is BECAUSE THEY DO JUST THAT. The Vichy Dems “run” the Democratic Party because they repeatedly parrot the same attacks the Right uses against the left. Osama Ad, anyone?
Politics isn’t a spring fling dance, ladies, gentlemen and others … it’s sublimated physical conflict expressed through words and pictures. “Bi-partisanship” and the “center” are where you end up AFTER loud and boisterous debate brings out ALL the issues. We haven’t had that conflict in YEARS in this country, and it’s time we did again. Jefferson and Adams destroyed a life-long friendship through their political battles, waged both personally and through proxies. The country was for the better for their being willing to have those fights. Differences were fully aired, and REAL compromises were possible BECAUSE all of the issues were aired.
Calls for “calm” and “civility” are ways that the rich and comfortable silence dissent.
McKinnley’s people should buy an ad with a picture of her opponent photoshopped into a pickup truck with the Stars and Bars plastered all over it. That attack ad is just a quieter Willie Horton ad, and she needs to respond in kind.
I understand the need to go for the jugular in politics. If one doesn’t, the other guy does, and sadly, it’s the nice guys who really do finish last, in politics.
I wasn’t advocating a certain campaign style. I was just saying if the goal of a site is to get Dems elected, it might want to play down the dems attacking dems scenario, in the ads.
And re the rich – it’s also the rich and Republican who revel in attacks ads because they can afford them, and can slip them in when it’s too late for a rebuttal. It’s already a dirty business. I just don’t want to see ostensibly Democratic blogs cannabilizing their own.
that site doesn’t exist to elect Democrats. It exists to provide Markos w/ a living, and has a SECONDARY mission to elect certain KINDS of Democrats … center-right militarists and technologist “libertarian democrats”. It is a tool to manufacture consent, and part of how it does that is to attack anybody who fights for women’s health, peace, civil liberties and the rule of law.
Lieberman is in the crosshairs b/c he crossed the Clintons, that’s it. Why not the same attacks on the Nelsons, or Biden?
That site canibalizes liberal Democrats and leftists EVERY DAY. That’s what it does. It does so in the same language that Red State and Powerline do, or is “hippies” and “women’s studies set” examples of NOT canibalizing our own?
I know that you want that place to be more than it is. I used to too. I wanted to believe in “community” as well, but as the hard-core bullying and thread hijacking ramped up, it became more and more clear that it wasn’t a community, it was a frat house, and you and I are only welcome there as entertainment for the “brothers”.
Well look at the ad running on DK now, from the same candidate. It’s now a positive, look at me, not my opponent, ad. Woohoo! Maybe someone is listening? Maybe Cynthia complained?
And isn’t the non-attack ad more compelling in any case? (Please note: I’m a supporter of Cynthia McKinney. I’m just using these ads to show negative vs. non-negative ads.)