Net loss: Why liberal bloggers don't love Obama

It was less than two years ago that Mark Warner hosted his now-legendary bash for liberal bloggers--with its ice sculpture and $50,000 price tag--during the 2006 Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas. At the time, the Democratic former governor of Virginia was mulling a White House bid and looking for netroots support. Tom Vilsack, a fellow aspirant, also appeared at the convention, as did Bill Richardson. Hillary Clinton didn't show, to the chagrin of many, but even she, a few weeks later, hired liberal blogger Peter Daou, and she made sure to swing by Yearly Kos the following year. The liberal blogosphere, it seemed, had become a key constituency for any Democrat seeking the White House.

On the surface, that should have been a good development for Barack Obama. Obama is, in some respects, the ideal candidate of the Yearly Kos contingent--an insurgent who opposed the Iraq war, generated grassroots enthusiasm, and built a massive online fund-raising apparatus. But the bloggers who champion these things have not all rallied around Obama. In fact, many are strikingly ambivalent about his candidacy.

'The relationship is frosty," explains Micah Sifry, cofounder of techPresident, a blog that focuses on the interaction between candidates and the Web. "At various points in the campaign, Obama has said or done things that have antagonized progressive bloggers"--from calling Social Security a "crisis" to criticizing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "I think his instincts are liberal, but his governing style may not be," says Open Left blogger Matt Stoller, adding that Obama's readiness to embrace conservatives and chastise his allies on the left have caused many bloggers to wonder how strongly he would fight for liberal priorities as president.

There is a reason Barack is being opposed by liberal bloggers. His campaign staff has aggressively went out of their to piss off and belittle liberal bloggers and social networking users who were early Obama supporters.<P>Read more here: http://techpresident.com/node/301

The Battle to Control Obama's Myspace
By Micah L. Sifry, 05/01/2007 - 10:15pm
In November 2004, Joe Anthony, a paralegal living in Los Angeles, started a unofficial fan page for then-newly-elected Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) on MySpace.com. Inspired by Obama's keynote address at that summer's Democratic convention, Anthony had never been politically active before. "I was just blown away," he told me. He put time into the site every day, answering emails from people wanting to "friend" the page, pointing them to voter registration information, and, once Obama threw his hat into the ring, telling them where to find out more detailed positions taken by the candidate.
By the time of Obama's official campaign announcement in late January, Anthony's Obama profile--which had the valuable url of myspace.com/barackobama--already had more than 30,000 friends, well more than the other contenders. Over the following weeks, it continued to grow at a rapid pace, generating lots of headlines about Obama winning the "MySpace primary." Yesterday, the profile had just over 160,000 friends. Today, that url has only about 12,000. And it's under new ownership. Joe Anthony, one of the super volunteers of the Connected Age, has lost control of the page he started to the professionals on Obama's staff.
How all this happened is a complicated tale that is still unfolding, and none of the parties involved--Anthony, the Obama online team, and the MySpace political operation--emerge from this story unscathed. Speaking on background, Obama campaign staffers are spreading word that Anthony just wanted a "big payday." Anthony in turn has posted a missive on his blog (that was originally sent to me as an email) accusing the Obama team of "bullying...[and] rotten and dishonest" behavior. However one parses those accusations (more below), the Obama campaign's reputation as the most net-savvy of 2008 has taken a big hit. And MySpace executives have been forced to take extraordinary action to resolve a dispute between two high-profile users of their invaluable site, one a passionate volunteer with a huge network of friends and the other a frontrunning presidential candidate who has helped make MySpace a new factor in the 2008 contest.

"I think his instincts are liberal, but his governing style may not be," says Open Left blogger Matt Stoller,

The person that believes Obama is anything but a fledged liberal is only fooling himself. A President Obama will do a great deal of damage to this nation.

Think about it. Anyone who opposes his policies will be branded a racist...and that goes double for Republicans.

Rush and some of the conservatives on this board seem to think it would be better to elect Obama than John McCain because that would leave Republicans in Congress free to oppose the President. That won't work if Obama is the President.

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