Within the boundaries of the blogosphere (and according to Joe!), the Obama won yesterday’s snowball fight — he “refused to back down,” while HRC’s team apparently got caught playing a little fast and loose with titles (Geffen is not Obama’s “campaign finance chair“). But yesterday’s praise (some of it in comments here) for the Obama campaign’s rapid response is souring as word spreads around the net that the architect of that rapid response, Robert Gibbs, comes with some baggage. He was the spokesman for “Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values,” the group behind an anti-Dean ad you might remember:
The ad slowly moved in on a Time Magazine cover featuring bin Laden, zooming in on a close-up of Osama’s eyes, while saying that Howard Dean was an unqualified Democratic candidate because of his lack of military or foreign experience.
Clinton’s case for Geffen’s comments making Obama a hypocrite was pretty weak, but this strikes much closer to home and the Netroots are noticing. Matt Stoller states the obvious:
And does Gibbs still believe that a Presidential candidate with “no military or foreign policy experience” is “unqualified”? Then how Gibbs, is Barack Obama going compete with John McCain on foreign policy. Howard Dean was right on Iraq too, ya know.
and Kos follows up:
Politics is dirty business, indeed. And there’s no doubt that Obama’s rapid response has been stellar.
But one can’t help but get a little cynical hearing Obama talk about “changing the tone” and all that bullshit, while hiring a well-known smear-meister best known for his work trashing other Democrats.
This may turn out to be nothing, but more than any other front-runner, Obama needs the kind of energy the Netroots can summon. He’s trying to build a movement, not just a campaign, and the Deaniacs would be an obvious model if not actual base. Having Gibbs on board might not be enough to alienate them entirely, but it suggests that there’s still an opportunity for another candidate to become the web darling. (How to avoid meeting the same end as Dean but raising the same ridiculous sums of cash is another question.)
And, to head some commenters off at the pass: I promise I’ll post at some GOP catfight next.