Joe and Ned slug it out

It's certain that the press will inflate the Lamont-Lieberman primary today into something like five presidential elections rolled into one.

And it's also going to be painful to hear all the bizarre opinions, uninformed pronouncements and hairbrained analysis about the role of bloggers, specifically the liberal variety.

They're already blaming some sort of evil liberal computer masterminds working for the Lamont campaign for the fact that Lieberman's campaign website went down.

A guy who knows just reported that it was a type of DOS or denial of service attack which could have been accomplished by one person anywhere in the world. All they did was go to a bulletin board or some page on the Lieberman site which had forms to fill out with name, address, etc. By entering a super long string of characters in a particular way, they can confuse the computer into allowing access which they the use to flood the site with so much data that the site shuts down. It's simply a relatively common attack which floods the system with so much information so quickly that the thing just sputters and chokes. Hardly enough to go to the press accusing your opponent of doing it. And cerainly not worthy of the massive press attention that it's getting at the moment, where they're treating it like someone was assasinated.

The fact is, THE LOSS OF THIS WEB SITE COULDN'T HAVE ANYTHING BUT THE VERY SLIGHTEST NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN. So though predictable, the fact that Chris Matthews and the rest of the press are trying to make some HUGE deal out of this is just stupid.

The Lieberman campaign is even saying they've asked prosecutors to look into this blah, blah, blah. How pathetic.

The Lieberman camp demanded that the Lamont campaign condemn this supposed hacking of their site. So Matthews called them and passed on the demand. Of course, the Lamont spokesman calmly and rationally said that they think it's a bad thing and of course they condemn it. Oooops. End of story.

And finally, one news bunny asked the key question of Matthews. She finally had the sense to ask essentially, what difference does it make if the dumb web site is down on election day? Matthews had to admit that it really made little to none. With any luck, this dumb diversion will run out of steam.

One reporter earlier said that the web site had gone down, "just when they needed it most".

Excuse me, but a campaign website is about as useful as a campaign button on election day, or ever less. It's purpose is to communicate with potential voters, organize and attract volunteers, and collect donations during the campaign, and it's a bit late for any of that on election day.
But what do they know?

And the talking morons are busy constructing the conventional wisdom for this primary battle.

Expect to hear them spout endlessly about the "larger implications" of a Lamont win.

To be perfectly honest, you can't extrapolate anything to a national scale based on this particular primary with these particular candidates in this particular state.

It will, I believe, make it a little tougher for those who try to dismiss the influence of bloggers and their ability to raise funds, mobilize volunteers, and to be a key factor in political races, which is a good thing.

But of course, those sorts of people are the type that usually only state their case even more loudly in the face of evidence to the contrary. They usually don't let facts (or the lack of them) get in the way of what they believe.

And if a Lamont victory makes candidates finally understand that it's safe to come out and get right with reality and condemn this misadventure in Iraq in less sheepish and mealy-mouthed ways, then great.

But the fact remains that what this primary means if Lieberman loses is simply that the voters of one party (Dem) in one state (CT) were tired of Joe.

Sick of his toady-like behavior, sick of him actively undermining the party, constantly giving aid and cover to the Bush administration, and most importantly, his looney support for the phoney "war" in Iraq and insistance that things are going just fine. But perhaps even more key was his ridiculous statement on the floor of the senate. Joe pontificated, ""It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years. We undermine the President's credibility at our nation's peril", in effect saying that any Dems who were critical of Bush somehow endangered the country.

Go here for Charles Pierce's piece on why that quote was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

The Dem voters of Connecticut, and by extention, people across the country who can't stand Joe for the above reasons and more, simply want Joe to go. Period.

I've heard it reported that polls have shown that most voters who report they plan to vote for Lamont say they are casting their votes AGAINST Lieberman rather than for Lamont, which seems plausible.

And the third side story we'll have to suffer through is all the goofy spin from the anti-liberal blog forces out there, trying to portray bloggers as some sort of rogue, irresponsible, ...who knows.... some sort of bad scary people I guess, who somehow stepped in and sabotaged poor, poor, Joe Lieberman.

Bull.

Joe sabotaged himself. All the bloggers did was see a chance to get Lieberman the hell out of congress, and worked to raise funds and organize in order to elect an opponent they felt more closely reflected their views.

Nothing sinister about that in my opinion.

But to many who don't know squat about blogging or bloggers, or to those in the print media and others who have a free-floating fear and/or resentment of blogging in general, it's a perfect opportunity to spread yet more uninformed crap to demean or denigrate bloggers. (as if they're some sort of monolithic "thing" that all think, act, and believe the same thing. Yeah, sure.)

This is not to say that bloggers can never be criicized legitmately, but rather that the carping about the role of bloggers in this particular contest has been routinely uninformed, unfairly generalized, and spurred too often by ulterior motives.

So... we'll see what the score is early tomorrow morning, and try to endure the pundits and blow-hards as they struggle to fill countless hours with the "larger ramifications" of the Lieberman-Lamont race. UGH.