Today's stupid politicians file

Today's edition, primarily because it will annoy Brendan.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions. I can think of two, neither of which cast St. Joe in a particularly elegant light.

Comments

[Brendan]

Heh. I was going to post about this at some point.

My interpretation of how things probably transpired is this: the server host told Team Joementum that it was a DoS attack, because that's the easy way for server hosts to deflect blame when their systems fail. (I have experience with this.) Team Joementum took this statement at face value, publicly broadcast it (which probably caused the server host techie who said it was a DoS attack to say, "oh...shit"), and foolishly blamed Lamont supporters for it with no evidence to back up that claim. (I.e., even if it had been a DoS attack, it wasn't necessarily politically motivated.) So basically, Team Joementum made two severe errors in judgment, or perhaps three (#2 is debatable) -- 1) using a crappy, low-cost server host for something as important as their campaign website; 2) taking their explanation of the problem at face value; and 3) publicly jumping to the conclusion that the supposed DoS attack was a "dirty trick" and the fault of Lamont supporters.

#3 is the symptom of a very common phenomenon in heated campaigns, which we've seen recently between Hillary's people and Obama's people: the tendency, in the heat of the campaign, to assume the absolute worst possible thing you can about the other side. I have no doubt that, if Lamont's site has gone down, and they'd been told it was a DoS attack, many of his supporters and campaign staff would have made the same assumption in reverse, and at the very least, there would have been many anti-Joementum diaries on Kos lamenting the latest Fascist Dirty Trick from the Evil One's campaign. However, perhaps the Lamont campaign would have had the good sense to not come out and make a public statement turning that back-room rumbling into the official campaign position. That is where Lieberman's people really screwed up.

Of course, folks like Kos who, on that fateful Election Day, jumped to the conclusion that Lieberman's people simply "hadn't paid their bills," were also saying things without factual support. But that doesn't excuse Lieberman's people for their own errors in judgment (or me for being a little too credulous at the time).

[Sandy Underpants]

That's a lot of excuses lacking any foundation. The FBI investigated and told the Lieberman campaign it wasn't sabotoge, but the Lieberman campaign continued to blame Lamont for their web troubles. It's tough to make innocent excuses after that.

[dcl]

Not knowing the particulars of Joe's web hosting situation leading up to the primary nothing can be said for certain on the subject. However, the situation basically boils down to either incompetence or dirty tricks from Joe's side. Even if we give the benefit of the doubt and say it is incompetence, that's not particularly good. Unlike the "rogue" Hillary supporters that seem to have registered a domain name that looks like it would be an Obama site. Cloned the website and then defaced it -- in an effort to create the illusion of incompetence.

[David K.]

Sandy, in all fairness to Lieberman the failure occured in August, the investigation e-mail came in October, so unless the page blaming Lamont was still up in October after the investigation then no, it wasn't as dirty as you claim. I still agree it was stupid on the part of Lieberman's campaign although I also am willing to believely that they really did believe it was a Lamont attack and didn't just accuse him for politcal reasons.

I mean sure, Lieberman may be more Republican than Democrat these days, he may have a backwards view when it goes to video games and entertainment in general, he may support a pointless war, but he's not THAT slimey.

[Ken]

David...it wasn't just a "page" blaming Lamont, rather it was comment after comment to the media by Lieberman operatives blaming Lamont. And while I have tried to do a search to see if the Lieberman campaign every acknowlededged the error after the October email, I have found nothing on the web to indicate that it ever happened and in fact can recall no such acknowledgement. The problem as I see it is not that there was an error at the time in August, but rather that in October, when the fall campaign was very active, the Lieberman folks apparently decided it was best to cover-up their mistake and hope than no one found out about it before the election. And, of course they were successful in doing so.

Now of course it is a little late for them to offer an apology for the error and the cover-up...but I suspect that this is Lieberman's last term as Senator anyway. Either he will get a cabinet post in a McCain presidency or he will retire at the end of his term as I doubt he would be successful in another run for the Senate given all that has gone on since the 2006 election.

[Sandy Underpants]

The investigation e-mail came in October 2006, and Lieberman's people were still blaming Lamont in December 2006 after the campaign and after the investigation revealed it was their own fault. And this information would have never been known to the public if a newspaper, The Stamford Advocate hadn't requested access to the info via the Freedom of Information Act, and it only took them a year to get that information. I don't think the slander tipped the election one way or the other, but it's worth mentioning as it shows a real lack of character and class, which is all Joe had left going for him after his continued support of the war has revealed a lack of intelligence.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localnews/ci_8859029