I know, I know, Susie’s good people, and she’s been patient with one very persistent troll. (She’s also got car trouble, so she has more important things on her mind.) But when I read this post and saw the exact same paragraphs quoted by two different trolls — one full force nasty, one concern-like — I lost my sense of decorum and good taste.
Troll A:
I suppose you could follow the lead of historiann, anglachel, riverdaughter, and the rest of the PUMA dead enders and claim that obama is really another hitler, worse than bush, planning a totalitarian takeover of the US of A, etc. etc.
or, if you read the original article you find this:
“Tom Henderson, chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party, said it is not unusual for a presidential candidate to put his stamp on a coordinated campaign.
“The Obama campaign is doing what every presidential campaign has done, which is take over the leadership of the coordinated campaign,” he said. “For the most part, I think this was expected.”
The staff of the state campaign was merely reassigned into new positions to accommodate Obama’s campaign, Henderson said. He stressed that this is a good thing for Iowa Democrats, as get out the vote efforts for Obama will benefit Democrats at every level.
“I personally haven’t heard anyone who is angry with the moves,” Henderson said. “I think everyone will end up in a similar position, and even if there are people who are let go, there are so many campaign jobs available right now that no one is going to go unemployed. There are more jobs than people to fill them.”
that sure seems to put a different spin on things don’t it?
and, Troll B:
Follow the twisty turny links to finally get to the original story and you can find out what the anti Obama site that is pushing this conveniently left out.
” Tom Henderson, chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party, said it is not unusual for a presidential candidate to put his stamp on a coordinated campaign.
“The Obama campaign is doing what every presidential campaign has done, which is take over the leadership of the coordinated campaign,” he said. “For the most part, I think this was expected.”
The staff of the state campaign was merely reassigned into new positions to accommodate Obama’s campaign, Henderson said. He stressed that this is a good thing for Iowa Democrats, as get out the vote efforts for Obama will benefit Democrats at every level.
“I personally haven’t heard anyone who is angry with the moves,” Henderson said. “I think everyone will end up in a similar position, and even if there are people who are let go, there are so many campaign jobs available right now that no one is going to go unemployed. There are more jobs than people to fill them.”
Read their responses, and tell me they didn’t get the same talking points. It’s stunning to see such coordination in action… I hope their timesheets got docked for carelessness.
Front page
Yeah, I read the full story too
A child of six could see that the Dem officials are going to say exactly what they said, especially if they’re loyal. A child of six, but not a troll.
The bottom line is that 20, IIRC, locals were fired and their jobs handed by Obama’s people. Those are the facts, as opposed to the talking points.
And if it’s not unusual, then that means it’s only what a lot of the rest of us can expect. Surprise!
UPDATE And Jeebus, who do I have to blow to get on the shit list along with the rest of the dead enders? It hurts, not being on that list. Just makes my support all the more tepid…
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
po' lambert...
donut?
uh...
UPDATE And Jeebus, who do I have to blow to get on the shit list along with the rest of the dead enders? It hurts, not being on that list. Just makes my support all the more tepid…
well, you could start by withdrawing your support for Obama. Obots don’t care if your support is tepid or not, all that matters is that you are willing to endlessly emphasize that McCain is always worse than Obama — and that it doesn’t matter how much Obama betrays everything that you stand for, you will always move the goalposts of “McCain evil” to ensure that McCain is worse than Obama.
Um
And Jeebus, who do I have to blow to get on the shit list along with the rest of the dead enders? It hurts, not being on that list.
You could withdraw your tepid support. That kind of disqualifies you from being a dead-ender.
I keep getting accused of being a dead-ender, and I haven’t said one way or another how I intend to vote. Criticizing The Precious
is enough for that, I guess.
I don't think of them as trolls, exactly...
They’re just impassioned people with large blind spots.
And I don’t believe they’re coordinated to any degree. They did what they always do: They looked for an easy way to invalidate what I posted, and they used the same link I posted.
However, they of course missed the relevant part of my post, which is that I’ve been hearing similar stories out of Ohio. After all, I used to work with Obama’s field organization on the campaign I worked last year - and I can tell you they did a LOT of work for Obama on OUR dime. I think anyone who thinks they’re going to get a coordinated campaign with these people is naive.
Tepid to cold
But look on the bright side! Maybe I don’t have to blow anyone!
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Lambert--I think what you need is an XX chromosome.
You may have two Xes—I don’t know, and good for you if you do, but those of us listed in Steveeboy’s hall of shame are all openly women bloggers, as is Zuzu. I frankly don’t think I belong in that list myself, since I’ve written little if anything critical about Obama until this week, and in most cases I’m passing along the buyers’ remorse that seems to be afflicting many Obama supporters, both friends of mine and in the blogosphere (like Chris Bowers, for goodness sakes.) I defended Obama in the primary several times from unfair or strange media representations of him, his campaign, and his wife, although I was a Clinton supporter myself.
On my own blog I write about the phenomenon of workplace bullying a lot (especially in the academic workplace, which is where I work). While gender and bullying work in complicated ways, there seems to be an interesting parallel in the ways in which women’s ideas and women’s work is dismissed or ridiculed. I know it’s very difficult for some men to see women with informed, strong opinions that are different from theirs. I ended up instituting a comments policy because I was being hounded by a troll who seemed to live for the fresh outrage he’d get every day from my posts on contemporary politics. (Yes, another O-bot, of course!) I guess my feeling is that if you don’t like what you see, don’t read my blog. But continuing to come back to someone’s blog to insult their intelligence, reading comprehension, and reasoning abilities just seems stalkerish and abusive. (Or, bullying even!)
The good thing about banning that commenter is that lots of other people came back into the disucssion. (Surprise!) Bullies just can’t accept that there are different opinions out there, especially if it’s a woman’s opinion.
and thanks to Cg.Eye
for stopping by my place. I answered your question, I think!
Coordinated Campaigns
In 1992 I lived in Seattle, Washington and worked on the successful campaign of Mike Lowry to become Governor of the state.
After Clinton was declared the nominee, but before the convention, the coordinated campaign came to town.
I stopped being the scheduler on the gubernatorial campaign and became a field organizer in Thurston County, home of the state capitol, Tacoma.
So, while I don’t know what makes a troll or not, I do know that what I read in the above posting is exactly right - staff are moved around from all of the Democratic campaigns and used where they can best affect success.
As the candidate’s scheduler, I just managed his time. As the field organizer for Thurston County, I managed the time of lots of people who were working on GOTV.
This really is normal.
I have my own issues with Obama, but this isn’t one of them.
Here's my point.
I worked with the Obama field people. They were working on the Iowa planning while they worked on our race (quite literally, on our time), and it is my strong belief that this was to the detriment of my candidate.
Clearly, the Obama race was their priority, because it was all they talked about - and their field org on election day was pretty much a disaster. Never has so much money been spent for so little.
Of course staff are moved; I never said they weren’t. But there are ways to do that without acting like a conquering army and alienating the locals, as they did in our race.
that may be your bright side...
it isn’t mine! ;D
you were moved....
in Iowa, people were simply fired — its not about re-arranging the human resources in order to achieve optimum effectiveness, its about making sure that there is only one priority for state campaign workers —- getting obama elected.
(note that people are being told that there are lots of other jobs available…. in other words, the fired employees have to go out and apply for new positions with individual campaigns, rather than working for the co-ordinated state campaign.)