Bob Cesca is one of my favorite bloggers. The “Morning Awesome” series of posts is alway an awesome way to start my morning. Cesca’s very pro-Obama, as I’ve noticed a few other people are too. However, following John Edwards’ exit from the presidential race yesterday, Cesca offers up an unrestrained call for endorsements in a post titled, “Bloggers Must Choose, Too.” (UPDATE: I retooled this sentence on further reflection. Cesca’s not jumping the shark, he’s just providing a case for bloggers to endorse Obama that I think is unconvincing.)

I was thinking… It’s also time for the major bloggers to get behind one of the remaining candidates. I know the unspoken strategy has been to avoid pissing off a reader-base which may have taken many years to build, but this is only the future of the party we’re talking about here.

I don’t know that the major bloggers have avoided endorsing a candidate out of fears of losing readership. Quite the opposite. Many people have written about the experience of regularly being accused of shilling for one candidate, then the other (a sign of a pissed off reader-base) specifically because they have not made an endorsement. Digby shut down her comments section, things got so bad. Others, like eRiposte at The Left Coaster, have found solace in making an endorsement, clarifying their position for readers who know what to expect going in. Cesca is advancing a theory of traffic-related reasons for avoiding endorsements that has been trafficked in by a lot of people who wish the major bloggers were endorsing their candidate (which Cesca gets to later). However, no major blogger I’ve seen has ever written or said that they’re not endorsing because of traffic. Cesca’s preface of “unspoken” is a fig leaf in his argument.

Moreover, I have no clue how a blogger endorsing or not endorsing one of the Democratic candidates has any bearing on the future of the party. Cesca doesn’t explain and I think he’d be hard-pressed to tie even the most influential Democratic blogger’s personal candidate preference to having any structural role in the future of the Democratic Party.

Again, either candidate will make history, so the choice comes down to a new paradigm — “change” — versus more of the same DLC style leadership we’ve been discontented with for so many years. Honestly, this is Joe Lieberman versus Ned Lamont.

No, it’s not. Clinton is not Joe Lieberman. Obama is not Ned Lamont. They have similar issue positions and voting records. No one has suggested Clinton be expelled from the Democratic Party, nor that Obama is a political outsider tapping into a strong anti-war sentiment.

Yes, Clinton is of the DLC. Yes, we’re discontent with that. But there’s no comparing the Obama paradigm of “change” – a vacuous and completely meaningless branding – with the actual, factual connections of Hillary Clinton to a brand of Democratic politics that I know I have major ideological differences. “Change” is so vacuous, Clinton is even using it herself. She has been labeled an “agent of change for 35 years,” whatever that means

Does it sound like I’m agreeing with Cesca on change vs. DLC? Sure, but only to the extent that I think the DLC brand of politics needs to be exiled from our party.* But I don’t know if “change” means “not the DLC” or “progressive, fighting Democrat.” It doesn’t – “change” means nothing. More importantly, what does Obama stand for? Is he more progressive than Clinton? Is he opposed to bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship? Will he fight for us? Nothing in the “change” brand tells me these things.

Worse, Obama has had a recent string of highly objectionable comments that suggest, like Clinton, a drift towards centrism and bipartisanship that runs counter to what the Democratic Party needs now. Praising Reagan, calling the GOP the “party of ideas,” and insinuating that his (independent and Republican) supporters won’t necessarily vote for Hillary Clinton if she were to win the nomination are all things that suggest Obama isn’t offering a new paradigm, let alone one that’s so substantially different from what Clinton offers as to be a foregone conclusion for progressive bloggers on the order of Lieberman v. Lamont.

Cesca concludes his post:

So it’s time to pick a side here, bloggers. Start off with, “While I will support the eventual nominee…” or, “While I admire [or respect] both candidates…” And go from there. We’ll all make nice after there’s an official nominee. Until then, it’s time to take a stand on this thing.

No, it’s not time to pick sides. Why in the world would bloggers eschew an endorsement when there was a diverse field with populist and progressive voices, but rush to endorse once it’s down to two choices? Speaking broadly, the two most progressive candidates (Edwards and Dodd) are out; the most adamant voices for ending the war (Richardson and Kucinich) are out; the most experienced candidate (Biden) is out. Given a choice between the two least experienced candidates with some of the most centrist rhetoric and records, why would progressive bloggers leap into this binary?

Both candidates have upsides for me in some areas, downsides in others. Both have serious unknowns that trouble me. In an email, Eli from Multi Medium captured the large narrative concerns about Clinton and Obama in a way that works well for me.

My biggest worry about Obama is that he will compromise rather than fight; my biggest worry about Hillary is that she will fight for the wrong things.

Given that dynamic, why would I** or any other blogger jump in with an endorsement?
I spent a lot of time on the Dodd campaign watching how bloggers were or were not endorsing. There was one thing in common – they endorsed when they whole-heartedly believed in the person they were endorsing, never a second before. Go read this list of endorsement posts and try to find one person who made their decision public because someone said, “You have to pick”. You won’t be able to (and I’ll note, we had some major bloggers endorse on that list).

People endorse because they believe in a candidate. Hell, go read Cesca’s passionate and thoughtful endorsement of Obama on Huffington Post. He didn’t write that post because someone told him to pick, finally. It’s disappointing that he is forcing a different standard on other big name bloggers.

In the end, though, Cesca’s call won’t matter much. A lot of Edwards supporters online are shifting towards Obama. To the extent that they believe Obama to be a better candidate and a better Democrat than Clinton, some bloggers will surely endorse him. I doubt it will make much of a difference and I would certainly urge caution when it comes to comparing Clinton and Obama to Lieberman and Lamont, no matter who you line up where.

—

* I don’t think Democratic bloggers endorsing a presidential candidate has any impact on the status of the DLC or their level of regard in the Democratic Party.

**I don’t consider myself to be a major blogger, let alone the sort of blogger Cesca would be waiting expectantly to endorse Barack Obama.

I’ve recently had a number of conversations with Obama supporters – not fanboys, but smart, high-information voters – who think that one net positive for an Obama administration over a Clinton administration is that Obama can enter office without the yoke of 1992-2000’s animus towards Bill and Hillary Clinton. The argument goes that we can expect Hillary Clinton to be crippled by the constant replay of narratives and attacks written during Bill Clinton’s administration, brought back out by the Republicans to shut down what could otherwise be a productive Democratic administration. By contrast, Obama doesn’t carry this baggage and he will enter office on a platform of unity that will prime the pump for a better atmosphere conducive to work.

This tells me that these people are engaging in wishful thinking that goes right past optimism into Delusion Land.

At some level, those engaging in the Obama civility delusion are premising their analysis on the notion that the Republican efforts to shut down the first Clinton administration say more about Bill Clinton than who the Republicans are. In this logic, you can imagine the case being made that had Bob Kerrey or Tom Harkin or Jerry Brown been President instead of Bill Clinton, the GOP wouldn’t have aimed to destroy the Democrat in the White House. This is flat wrong.

The modern Republican Party defined their strategy and tactics during the Clinton administration. They recognized the value in throwing everything, no matter how absurd or unsupported, at the Democrat in the Oval Office. Though they never succeeded in making Bill Clinton an unpopular president, they did make him operate in a hostile media environment, which in turn made accomplishing his domestic agenda more challenging. This strategy worked on Bill Clinton and it has been replicated against the Democratic Party on whole since then, from rampant obstructionism in Congress to Rovian ad campaigns.

Most importantly, we should expect the GOP to continue their destructive attacks on whoever the next Democratic president is. No one gets a pass.

Paul Krugman’s column today makes a similar argument.

Has everyone forgotten what happened after the 1992 election?

Let’s review the sad tale, starting with the politics.

Whatever hopes people might have had that Mr. Clinton would usher in a new era of national unity were quickly dashed. Within just a few months the country was wracked by the bitter partisanship Mr. Obama has decried.

This bitter partisanship wasn’t the result of anything the Clintons did. Instead, from Day 1 they faced an all-out assault from conservatives determined to use any means at hand to discredit a Democratic president. …

First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).

The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.

I think Krugman is spot on. It wasn’t about Bill Clinton in 1992. It was about the Republican desire to destroy a the first Democratic administration in twelve years. As Krugman notes, Clinton had also run on unity, though with it somewhat less central to his candidacy than Obama.
I can concede that a Hillary Clinton presidency will start off with baggage from her husband’s administration, as far as GOP attack rhetoric goes. But it’s criminally naive to think that Obama would be immune from Republican attacks. And I’m sure the thought of “how will we shut down an Obama administration?” has already crossed the minds of top strategists at the RNC.

It gives me no pleasure in saying this, but the belief that Obama’s post-partisan unity language will insulate him from GOP attacks will likely be proved to be the Maginot Line of political prophylactics. People who think otherwise will be rudely awakened to that fact in early 2009, if Obama is elected President.

So while there are many good reasons to support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, immunity or at least a structural advantage when it comes to Republican attacks post-inauguration cannot be one of them.

Shorter Clinton campaign: “Ted, we can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself. Since you asked, we wouldn’t have had you endorse Barack Obama.”

Marc Ambinder has posted a video that he says is being circulated as oppo research. I think it’s a safe guess that it is Clinton campaign sending this video to reporters.

Here’s a daring idea. Ted Kennedy, one of the elder statesmen and liberal lions in the Democratic Party, can make up his own mind about who he supports. Questioning his judgment by dumping oppo that would presumably undercut his logic is petty and stupid. I hope the Clinton campaign cuts it out.

Today’s attack video by Clinton on Obama’s movement from supporting a single payer health care system to not supporting a single payer system (which is the position Clinton also holds) makes me wonder if we’re approaching a point where ads like the one above might be made in earnest.

Digby captured the zeitgeist well:

[The Democratic candidates] are nearly identical in terms of policy, all have political gifts and bring something to the table and I find none of the various electability arguments particularly persuasive. Indeed, I believe that the fact they are so similar in all the important ways is one of the reasons everyone is at each other’s throats on this — since there’s no daylight on policy everyone is having to argue their case based on their own emotional connection to the candidate or what the candidate symbolizes, which often devolves into ugly invective. It really does become personal under those circumstances. You can see the result of this in the candidates’ own debate last night. They weren’t really fighting over anything important because they don’t actually disagree about anything important. But they had to fight. It’s an election. Somebody’s got to win.

The attacks will become more petty, vicious, and stupid. How low can they go before this hits rock bottom?