"To Ruth Marcus's excellent, beyond the rhetoric column"

Beyond the rhetoric?

After Marcus claims that if lobbyist contributions were rejected, "the folks who would be most delighted with this outcome are lobbyists" ?!?

You're so full of shit in evaluating the candidates that it's kinda funny, Garance. You have all the intellectual honesty of Bill Kristol.

Are there any signs at the Obama headquarters about their state lobbyists?

What about their spouses, lawyers, or employees of federal lobbyists?

And their hedgefund employees?

Hmm. I didn't think so.

Why, because Marcus looked at the facts and concluded someone other than Edwards, the candidate you've been pumping on the blogs since the last cycle, was leading on this issue? Your deep bitterness that people of good faith can look at the facts and draw conclusions about Edwards different from your own has become really unattractive, as has your increasingly troll-like behavior toward me on this and other blogs. Edwards is doing quite well with his anti-lobbyist line on the stump in Iowa, as I reported on Monday. But Obama has a built-in advantage going forward in that he's still in the Senate, able to propose legislation, and a senator while his party is in the majority. Plus he had a political career before he entered the Senate, unlike Edwards. So much of this race is about personality already that I’d have thought you’d have welcomed an article that focused instead on people’s records and actions. What criteria would you have had Marcus use if not the candidate’s legislative records and personal disclosures?

That first reply was directed at Petey. And yes, to JoeCHI, I also find it amusing that the Obama signs have to specify, "federal lobbyists."

fwiw, obama is a co-sponsor of durbin's bill to publicly finance congressional campaigns.

"Why, because Marcus looked at the facts and concluded..."

No. Because Marcus writes that lobbyists would welcome the marginalization of lobbyists.

That's emblematic of the hackishness of the piece.

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"your increasingly troll-like behavior toward me"

I think the perception that you've a joke has become widespread throughout the progressive community of late, Garance.

I don't apologize in the least for my bluntness.

As I said, troll-like. I don't know who you are, but you have clearly become a troll.

"As I said, troll-like. I don't know who you are, but you have clearly become a troll."

I'll wear that as a badge of honor.

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Y'know, there are plenty of folks in left blogistan who support a candidate other than Edwards that I fully respect - take Matt Yglesias to throw out a name - since they seem to have some minimal level of interest in having intellectual honesty in how they write about the race.

As stated, I think the perception that you're a joke has become widespread throughout the progressive community of late, Garance.

You can blame me, or you can try honestly asking yourself why that might be.

Just to get back to the substantive issue, the following seems to be the clincher of the Marcus article:

Obama readily agreed to identify his bundlers. Unlike Clinton and Edwards, he has released his income tax returns. Perhaps most important, Obama has pledged to take public financing for the general election if he is the Democratic nominee and his Republican opponent will do the same.

But I don't see it clinching that much. If Obama takes public financing and becomes president off of that, no grand new changes to the system have taken place, and it doesn't smooth the path to anything especially exciting. Passing some kind of broad-based public financing system will be just as hard before that as after. And... making your tax returns public? How much does that do to clean up politics? We're still playing personal purity games here -- the big three are united in not having aggressive plans to change the entire system.

For all the 'new politics' spin of the Obama campaign, the biggest political reform move he's made is being one of seven co-sponsors of Dick Durbin's bill for public financing of Senate races. That's pretty mild stuff, compared to policy areas like health care where people have staked out their own clear and bold positions. (Edwards' campaign themes are the most directly tied to health care reform, and that's why we saw a comprehensive proposal from him as early as February.) For somebody who's making political reform as major a campaign issue as Obama is, there really isn't much substance here.

Well, it seems to me that there are several factors that led you down the path to unhinged trolldom. Mainly, though, I watched the tenor of your comments transform virtually overnight from one of mild criticism and friendly disagreement -- have you not been commenting on my stuff for more than three years? you think I failed to notice? -- to one of irrational hatred and continual florid insult at exactly the same time last spring I wrote that think piece with which you disagreed, about young women and exploitative pornographers.

It seemed to me that that piece, in addition to the fact that I have been critical of John Edwards -- on whose behalf you have been passionately advocating on blogs since Howard Dean was the Democratic frontrunner -- were the two main things that led you to waste so much of your workday on increasingly fantastical insults on this and other blogs.

Obama has, writes Marcus, "co-sponsored bills to overhaul the presidential public financing system and public financing of Senate campaigns."

Big whoop. Have any of them been enacted into law yet?

It's interesting how people point to legislation Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored as evidence that he's "doing something."

Unless a bill is passed and enacted, nobody benefits and nothing changes. He's not leading anything here.

If we hear anything more, it's going to be empty rhetoric.

"He helped pass a far-reaching ethics and campaign finance bill in the Illinois state Senate.... He co-authored the lobbying reform bill awaiting President Bush's signature."

Now the latter bill may never become law, but it's not Obama's fault that he can't turn 50 Democratic senators into 67. And if he co-wrote the bill, that might be an indication of the sort of thing he'd do as President, when he wouldn't have to worry about Bush's veto. (This goes for pretty much any bill proposed by any Democrat.)

"I watched the tenor of your comments transform virtually overnight from one of mild criticism and friendly disagreement..."

I'm sorry you see my current disagreement with you as unfriendly. I have friends who are Republicans, and I have friends who discuss politics in an intellectually dishonest manner. I can deplore what you've been up to without feeling unfriendly towards you.

"...that I have been critical of John Edwards..."

My problem is not that you have been "critical" of John Edwards, but instead your unseemly and depressingly predictable eagerness to latch onto any rightwing or clueless media attack on Edwards that comes by as if you'd been thrown a life preserver in the middle of the ocean.

If you have an agenda against Edwards, you'd do far better to be forthright about your biases than to hide them in the underhanded manner that has been your wont.

As stated above, there are plenty of figures in lefty blogostan who have embraced a candidate other than Edwards and are critical of him that don't resort to the rhetorical games you've been playing.

Cheers, and I hope you begin to take your perch of prominence a bit more responsibly.

PS Try saying one nice thing about Edwards for every seventeen unfair slams you take at him. At the very least, that'll disarm "trolls" like me without really disturbing your agenda in any significant fashion.

Was this blog about the Hopefund PAC?