Matt Stoller

Lefty bloggers sell the Democrat's Iraq policy—but not his candidacy—in a new web video.  read more »

Eliot Spitzer, who recently started blogging on Daily Kos and other liberal web sites, will soon host his on-line conversation with readers, complete with live video streaming.

The move was supposed to start late last month and was originally conceived of as a way for Spitzer to communicate with directly with his constituents without a media filter, but was delayed after the Bruno affair exploded into the news. The goal of reestablishing direct contact with New Yorkers, given the current state of Spitzer's relationship with the press, seems more relevant than ever.

“I don't know if this was specifically correlated with the recent Joe Bruno stuff,” said Matt Stoller of OpenLeft.com.  “Just generically, if you pick a fight alongside someone, that tends to create a good coalition.”

He added, “You know the coalition - we’re just waiting for him to lead on our issues and we want to follow him.”

Phil Anderson, founder of the Kos-like blog, The Albany Project, said he has been working on this project with Spitzer’s aides for months.

“We were set to have the governor blog on our site later in the week, the week that Cuomo released his report. We were actually testing the video, a live video stream, the Monday morning that Cuomo released his report. He was actually going to be on our site, live via video, and interacting through his computer the Thursday after the Monday the report was released.”

Jack Downey, a marketing officer in Spitzer’s office, said the governor still plans to host some type of online discussion, but downplayed the notion it was in any way connected with coverage of the state trooper stuff. Some issues, like health insurance, “transcend state boundaries.” And right now, blogs like Daily Kos and Huffington Post have the large audiences politicians are trying to reach.

“It’s like giving a speech to thousands of people rather than a conversation in a coffee shop. It’s kind of both things at once,” he said.

On August 6, Spitzer wrote on the Daily Kos, congratulating them on the annual convention they had just held.

“I would also urge you to be aware of some of the important developments that are occurring in statehouses across the country,” Spitzer wrote. He got 420 comments.

The next day, Spitzer posted his “humility” speech on two other major liberal web sites: Huffington Post, (87 comments) and Think Progress (126 comments).

On August 29, Spitzer posted his second blog item on Huffington Post, where he reiterated his threat to sue the White House over health insurance changes.

“Eliot Spitzer was the biggest, most well known, and I think most genuine progressive elected anywhere in the country today,” said Anderson.  “It’s been a topic of discussion with people engaged in such communities for quite some time. When is Eliot going to come around and engage?”

Eliot Spitzer formally signaled his support today for building a casino in the Catskills.

Senator Al D'Amato may push for online poker.

The late John Lavelle's Assembly seat may go to his son.

Dan Gerstein agrees with Matt Stoller about the netroots.

Mitt Romney has an explanation for a 1992 vote that angered conservatives.

Can anybody say Senator Bill Clinton? If you missed it, Politico wraps up the Sunday morning talk shows.

And pictured above are most of the candidates in tomorrow's special election for the City Council seat in Brooklyn.

-- Azi Paybarah

Some interesting back-and-forth in the blogosphere today after Matt Stoller at MyDD spotted this item by the online campaign director of Bush-Cheney '04, about how the party killed the notion of allowing supporters to write on its blog when it became clear they wouldn't stay on message.

"The plans for the launch of GOP.com last spring included two things that have never made it to the light of day - a viral fundraising component, and a 'MyGOP' functionality that would have let activists build a MySpace-like site on GOP.com. Practical reality set in, however, and killed both. The trouble with the MyGOP concept was the conflict it created with incredibly tight internal controls on message.

"When we were forced to pull a Social Security Testimonials tool off the site because someone dared to use the word 'private' instead of the more acceptable 'personal' accounts, it became apparent that our internal tolerance for self-expression would not allow that sort of openness. Arguments that restrictions of that nature are ridiculous and hamper our ability to be effective online were met with stony silence. In the end, MyGOP went nowhere."

Over at MyDD, former Corzine campaign blogger Matt Stoller sums up the reports of friction between Chuck and New Jersey Senator/Governor-elect Jon Corzine, including the blame emanating from Jersey on the subect of who leaked the Menendez announcement.

"No word yet on the next politician Schumer's going to piss off," writes Stoller at www.mydd.com.

Worth noting that I've never actually seen much evidence of Chuck-Jon animus, and Schumer's DSCC spokesman Phil Singer tells The Politicker that the two Senators "get along famously."

Also: "The report that we leaked [the Menendez story] has no basis in reality," he said.

If nothing else, though, the episode offers one more chance (just one more!) to reprint Corzine's line at a DC roast a while back:

"Sharing a media market with Chuck Schumer is like sharing a banana with a monkey.... Take a little bite out of it and he will throw his own feces at you."  read more »