I’m late blogging this story because my Blogger interface wouldn’t cooperate yesterday. But better late than never…. Now that he’s no longer working for Richmond city hall and his talk radio show is on hold, Paul Goldman has resumed e-mailing his famous GoldmanGrams.
In the latest, Goldman wonders if the Democratic camp of the blogging community has shot itself in the foot by aggressively attacking Harris Miller and favoring Jim Webb for the Democratic party nomination for U.S. Senate. In effect, Goldman suggests, by positioning Miller as the victim early in the campaign, those attacks have inoculated him against charges of negativity in the late phases of the campaign. Says Goldman:
Without the bloggers’ over-the-top attacks on Miller, would this be a different campaign right now? We will never know. But we do know that in the new two weeks, Miller will be free to make an almost exclusive negative against Webb because the bloggers created the climate to do it.
From what I’ve seen personally, the “negative” campaigning has consisted mainly of mass-mailed material in which Miller questions Webb’s Democratic Party credentials. That’s pretty mild. If I were a Democrat, I would consider it a legitimate issue. But Bob Gibson with the Charlottesville Daily Progress cites details of aggressive robocall messages here.
You can read the text of the GoldmanGram here.
Read Slantblog’s take on the GoldmanGram here. And Conaway Haskins at South of the James.