Update: I have received an email from another credible source that insists that Jordan Lieberman was never an Associate at Alexander Strategy Group, and that it was a typo made by the American Association of Political Consultants once, in 2004. Also, Lieberman resigned from the Publius Group January 2002. The source further claims that that at that time there were no partners in the group, although some claim otherwise--Chris

Last summer, I wrongly accused PoliticsPA and all PoliticsXX sites of being funded by the Claremont Institute, a major arm of the right-wing noise machine. When it came out that I was wrong, I think I was listed as the "loser of the week" on PoliticsPA three out of four weeks in the late summer. It was a little embarrassing, but not really that embarrassing, because the entire incident did result in nearly every local progressive blogger to stop linking to, and even reading, PoliticsPA. That caused a very real downturn in their traffic at the time. I'll gladly exchange that for a personal loss of credibility within the Pennsylvania political establishment.

Even though I was wrong, the incident was revealing to me on a number of fronts. First, it brought the insider / outsider dynamic within politics to the forefront of my attention, an idea that eventually led to what I think is my useful activist class war formulation. It served as an object lesson that made it patently clear to me how severely those individuals well-ensconsed in the power structure of any political establishment, be it national, state, or local, would guard their power when faced with the rising tide of grassroots, outsider, reformer activism. In time, that has become even more clear to me, given the struggles to replace the ward leaders we have faced in my neighborhood, the legal challenges to people running for committee person we have faced in the city, the Philadelphia Democratic Party organizing "to battle the bloggers on their own turf", and a whole list of other, uglier crap that I'm not going to go into here (here is the tip of the iceberg, read Young Philly Politics regularly for more).

Second, the incident also revealed to me the total market failure for local news in America, especially local political news. During the incident, I talked with a number of people who worked in local and state politics, and they indicated that while they thought something odd may or may not be taking place with the funders of the Publius Group, it didn't really matter to them. PoliticsPA was the only news outlet that provided the sort of up to date, detailed information on Pennsylvania politics, and so they were going to keep reading it until another outlet came along to do the same thing. In short, even if the right-wing noise machine was behind these local sites, it was still providing a unique service invaluable to local political activists and operatives. It thus also became obvious to me that any properly done vast left wing conspiracy was going to need to match and surpass these efforts in order to do real damage. In a total market failure for local news, progressives could step in and create active, solid local blogospheres to fill the void and counter the Republican Noise Machine at a local level.

So even if I was wrong, the experience was extremely useful to me. However, new information from commenter NJprole has appeared that suggests I may not have been that wrong after all

There's more...

The campaign to discredit bloggers has been going on for some time. For example, some of you might remember this:

Blogger Chris Bowers at MyDD perhaps is the best example of how clueless some bloggers really are about politics.

Political forecaster Stuart Rothenberg wrote that. Stuart Rothenberg also didn't include Geoff Davis in his list of the ten most endangered House incumbents (nine Republicans), even thought that list was published today. However, in my House forecast last week, I did include Geoff Davis in my list of the eight most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

I point this out because in my projections I did not have the benefit of a new poll that shows Ken Lucas up ten on Geoff Davis. Rothenberg did have the benefit of that poll, and he still didn't include Davis in his longer incumbent list. However, I can't imagine that there are even three districts, much less nine, where polls show a Republican incumbent in more trouble than yesterday's poll showed Davis.

Who's clueless now, Rothenberg? Is it the guy who knew KY-04 was one of the best eight Democratic opportunities to knock off a Republican incumbent before a poll even showed that was the case, or the guy who didn't include KY-04 in his list of the nine most vulnerable Republican incumbents even after a poll showed what a great opportunity it was for Democrats? I'm gonna go with Rothenberg as the clueless party on this one.

And to think, you can read my analysis for free, but you have to pay for his.