I’ve learned from a number of reliable sources that Joe Lieberman, whose online troubles became a major story a month ago, is launching a new-and-improved blog today. The point, as Atrios explained, isn’t to engage in online activism — it’s to make Lieberman’s critics look bad.
It’s basically going to be a trap to entice people to say mean things about the Last Honest Man so they can go whine to the press about how mean everyone is unlike Stay the Course Joe. I give it about 36 hours until they send out a press release along those lines. I don’t know why they’re obsessed with pointing out how nobody likes Joe, but it seems to be their campaign strategy for some reason.
Indeed, it does. The whole idea seems to be taking “Drum’s law” and adding a twist — instead of going through other people’s blogs looking for vitriol, Lieberman’s campaign seems to be setting up their own blog as a vitriol magnet. Apparently, they will then use rude comments as proof that Lieberman is a mild-mannered centrist, while his critics are angry and caustic.
As TBogg put it, the campaign is apparently “hoping for lots of ‘unhinged’ comments from deeply unserious terrorist-loving, cut-n-running purgeofascists because that kind of thing makes Joe sound as sensible as taking an umbrella on a cloudy day, at least when he’s not telling us that things in Iraq are swell.”
I have no idea how this’ll play out — I wouldn’t be surprised if Lieberman’s blog got a few acerbic comments, nor would I be surprised if the campaign tried to use them for some kind of political advantage — but what does it say about a campaign when one of their principal selling points is, “Let’s look at all the voters who don’t like our candidate”?
Is it me, or is that odd?