NextGenDems

Who Needs Those Internets When You're Smart?

From Gail Collins doing the Hillaryland postmortem in this month's Vanity Fair:

Such was the hubris of Hillary’s team that they discounted Obama as a passing pop star to non-voters. Politico.com reported that at a November 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, where 9,000 people showed up, 3,000 were already for Obama. “Our people look like caucus-goers,” Mandy Grunwald sniffed, “and his [Obama’s] people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook.”

“Did they sleep through the 2003–4 election cycle?” asks an incredulous Joe Trippi, referring to Howard Dean and his new form of communication. As the pioneer who kick-started the bottom-up, low-dollar style of campaigning, tapping grassroots organizers and “newbies” for Dean through the Internet, Trippi was appalled that the Clinton machine stuck with a top-down, status-quo campaign. But the Clintons were out of touch with new forms of communication. Bill Clinton still doesn’t use e-mail or own a BlackBerry.

Why hadn’t they been using the Internet all along as a bulging cash register the way the Obama forces were doing? Hillary’s team had held a retreat in the fall of ’07 to huddle with propeller heads from Google and Yahoo, hoping to update their Internet savvy, but basically gave up on trying. “We tried direct mail but we couldn’t come close to him,” admits one member of Clinton’s brain trust. “Obama tapped a different sensibility. They had a more, uh, viral [i.e., spreads by itself] campaign.” The very word “viral” in his mouth sounded foreign.

Obamawitztoon

Maybe Obamawitz has a point.  NGD is fast becoming a clearinghouse for rampant and gratuitous anti-Obamawitzing. Yesterday, a NGD-inspired new blog pops up that shreds him on its way to the top google spot.  And today we receive this totally unsolicited cartoon from a NGD-inspired reader. 

My guess is that Newell's incessant moralizing really annoys people. He'll blame NGD, of course.  But that's OK, we'll gladly take credit.

Anthony Weiner Tees Off on Mayor Mike

Geez, sounds kinda personal, maybe Bloomberg publicly insulted him or something.  The NY Sun today writes:

Mr. Weiner, 43, said Mr. Bloomberg's signature approach to navigating Albany — donating millions to Senate Republicans — is one he's never seen work, and he argues that it's incumbent upon any mayor to "constantly be leaning into the idea that Albany has too much control over our fate," a theme sure to come up in the mayoral race.

"The people of the city of New York should have much more control and more final say. If we want to decide to put a dopey tax on drivers coming in and create a horrible system that puts 40% of all the money we collect back into infrastructure to have this Big Brother, cameras, big government — as dopey as it might be, I don't want some assemblyman from Skinnyapolis, or whatever it is, having a vote on it," he said, referring to Mr. Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal, which he opposed. "I just think that every day, mayors should be leaning into that problem."

Obama Kicks IdiotNation to Curb

From today's NY Post:

Barack Obama yesterday landed a right hook on one of his biggest left-wing supporters yesterday - blasting MoveOn.org for labeling Gen. David Petraeus "General Betray Us."

Obama, in a patriotism speech in Independence, Mo., hit the Web site for taking out an ad in The New York Times last year that targeted Petraeus, then the top US commander in Iraq.

While not naming names, the Democratic presidential candidate - who had been heavily supported by the Web site in his primary race - said, "A general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.

"We can no longer afford these sorts of divisions."

That's all fine and good, but what would Obamawitz say?