Lynn Sweet writes a column in today's The Hill that analyzes the role Mayor Daley's criticism had in the whole Durbin affair:
The mayor did not understand that his comments gave the right-wing Internet websites, radio and cable shows the opening they were looking for and undermined Durbin. It also did not help Durbin that the criticism came from one of the nation’s leading Democrats who happened to be the mayor of the largest city in Durbin’s state.That any Democratic politician or pundit in 2005 does not understand how the right wing media machine operates is beyond me, but it happens over and over.
David Sirota wrote a column yesterday about how Democrats fall in to this trap all the time. The right-wingers love it when someone in the Democratic party establishment criticizes one of their own. They use those words against us all -- very, very effectively. Joe Biden and John Edwards attacking Howard Dean is a classic example.
Probably the reason the Dems. don't get it, is because there is nothing comparable on our side. Well, there is, mainly the liberal blogs, but they don't all want to work with us...and we can't do it alone. It requires an echo chamber. But, bloggers are probably too political. You know how too many Democrats and progressive groups in DC are -- they do policy, not politics.
Wrong. Until you figure out how to win at politics -- and how NOT to play in to the hands of the right wingers -- you're not doing any good policy.
So learn from the Daley experience...and don't do the right wing's work for them.
