Yeah, but, usually if you recuse yourself from something, you tell people that you're doing it and why. The fact that there was a front-page diary on Jerome's blog that didn't mention the fact that Jerome's company had WVWV as a client is at least a bit odd. Also, I believe the PR campaign for WVWV has been misleading, so I guess to the extent he participated in that campaign, I am accusing Jerome as behaving unethically.

To recuse oneself doesn't mean you don't say anything about it. It would be beeter to make any connection known right at the outset, that way, anything you do say later, well, the readers can take into account that there's a connection.

good idea, I will!

"character assassination"

like Hill's guilt by association smears in the ABC debate on Hamas and farrakhan.

poor, poor Hillary, always the victim.

No, nobody says signing up people to vote is bad. It isn't; it's good. That's not what has people upset. It's that the calls that this group made was spouting misinformation (I like "lies" better, but I'll stick with "misinformation") about who could vote. It was meant to keep people from voting. That's what bothers me.
You want to sign up new voters? Great! Have at it! Sign up all you can. But if you're trying to keep people away from the voting booth, well, that's when a lot of us get unhappy.

Well, they've been involved in the PR strategy SINCE the controversy erupted. PageGardner posted a diary on Daily Kos in response to my there, putting up a couple of documents that demonstrated that they had contacted the NC press and the NC Department of Elections "in advance of the mailings". The guy who created the pdf version of the fax confirmation page to the DOE was Seth Oldmixon, who it turns out works for WebStrong. It just struck me as odd that Jerome wouldn't mention it at all. Clearly he's very aware of it, as his people are helping WVWV clear their name.

Sorry if I violated the rules. That's obviously up to the MyDD folks to decide. I will email Jerome separately.

I think it's reasonable enough. He isn't accusing him of anything, but he does want to know why Armstrong never said anything about this before.
It could well be that there's a perfectly good reason he never brought it up, but I think it's worth asking about.

yeah, tell more about those crybaby testicles.

Hey Al, you know that your new sig is repetitious, right?

There was no proof that the intent was to supress votes or purposely give the wrong info. Who even listens to a robo call the whole way through or even longer than a couple seconds.   They encouraged them to register for the fall, as I understand it.

yeah, it's true

I checked out Todd Webster's (the Web in WebStrong) Facebook page, and his lists his employment info:

Work Info
Employer:    
Webster Strategies, Webstrong
Position:    
Partner
Location:    
Alexandria, VA
Description:    
PR for Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, Baltimore Orioles.
Online for Tom Harkin, Mark Warner, AFSCME, WVWV.

I didn't know all that happened around a WVWV diary!  I honestly don't come around here much (am an Obama supporter - surprise surprise).

yeah, but Jerome's firm is still working on damage control.  One of his employees TODAY created a pdf document that Page Gardner posted on Daily Kos as part of her explanation for the timing of her communication with NC officials and media.

So it's not like this is a dead story for WebStrong, by any means.  Plus, WVWV is having an emergency board meeting tomorrow at which the board members will be asking numerous questions about what went down in NC (and hopefully elsewhere).

Plus, just Saturday the NC NAACP filed an official complaint with the state.  So no, it's not just a one-day story.

He never said or even implied that Armstrong had anything to do with the stuff that happened in North Carolina.
He IS asking, though, why Armstrong never said anything about his ties to the group when stories about the group have popped up here on this site now and again over the last week or so.
I think it's standard practice in any newspaper to say that the paper has any kind of ties to a person or group when that person or group shows up in a story in that paper.
Now, it is true that this is not a newspaper, so maybe some of the widely followed rules and practices of newspapers don't apply here; I don't know. But some people no doubt do get some of their news from here, so I think it would have been good for him to acknowledge his ties when the story broke.
It's his site, of course, and he has every right not to disclose anything he doesn't want to disclose, but I at least would have liked to know about this before.

There doesn't actually have to be an actual proven effect to repeat the method.  I know on a statewide campaign in California we used robocalls to target a lot of different demographics throughout the state.  It was a key piece of our communications strategy.  And despite the recent study that showed little actual effect from robocalls, I'm sure that my campaign manager thought they worked since we won.  I think the effect really depends on the position being sought.  And if you can't get an army of volunteers and have no money for television advertising, it is sometimes the only way to reach out to a segment of the electorate.

What we know is the WVWV's calls confused voters in NC which has been a tried and true method of voter suppression.  I hope it is merely incompetence.

 
I'm sorry.  I don't care what good deeds have been in their past.  I don't care if this whole thing was even an accident (even though that's HIGHLY unlikely after the same thing happening in numerous states).  The simple fact is that these robocalls have been driving down turnout and that is not acceptable

Even if this is a result of poor management, that is no excuse.  They are accomplishing the very opposite of what their supposed goal is- greater voter enfranchisement.  A truly responsible organization would immediately suspend their operations, conduct an internal investigation, and make sure the problems didn't happen again.  I haven't heard anything like that coming out of WVWV.  

Now, if this is a case of maliciousness among some or all actors in this organization to achieve particular political ends by driving down turnout, i hope they're all prosecuted.  Keeping people away from the polls is a REPUBLICAN dirty trick.  Democrats have always been about increasing enfranchisement.  If it turns out that this is a dirty tricks campaign, they should be behind bars, as far as i'm concerned...

Actually, all the WVWV supporters I've talked to (it's been a few) all agree that they messed up, and that there still needs to be a full accounting.  By no means has that happened yet.  Perhaps at Tuesday's emergency board meeting.

Also, there's an ongoing NC Attorney General investigation (Roy Cooper - he's a Dem).  And the official complaint filed by the NC NAACP.

Finally, there are some major questions about the letter they sent to the NC Department of Elections.  As you can see from this comment on BlueNC: http://bluenc.com/robocalling-wvwv-lied- to-nc-officials#comment-93643, the Department of Elections guy's first fax notification of WVWV's activities came on Monday, April 28 - not Thursday, April 25.

is not the same as after the primary.  Even WVWV admits that they sowed confusion in NC by their timing.  They claim that it was a mistake and that they meant to do it after the primary which is what they did in other states.

Are you claiming that they deliberately did it before the primary?

i find the aggressiveness of your comment to be inappropriate.  this guy is raising legitimate questions.  Also, i don't know who elected you as "voice of the people who have real lives", but honestly, i get they're at least as turned off by the name-calling and candidate-bashing than they are by any perceived "conspiracy theories"

as the idiot in question, I apologize to the Obama campaign for all the harm I've done him.

But as to what the "wrong doing that WVWV did", I would think that an attorney general's investigation and an official complaint from the NAACP might answer these questions a little better.  

I want to be clear: I have no evidence that this WVWV situation has ANYTHING to do with Hillary Clinton, nor do I have any proof that the confusing robocalls were intended to suppress black voters.  I do have evidence that WVWV has been involved in a disinformation campaign for over a week, and has a pattern of bad behavior dating back months.  There are likely very simple explanations for all this but instead of providing them, they've been making up press releases and planting stories in small-town Colorado newspapers.  That's what bothers me, personally.