so where is jeff merkley on this and other instances of smith trying to assume democratic clothing? is he even contesting this race?

"Gordon Smith's problem is that he rarely breaks away from George Bush and the Republican agenda that I think has done this country great damage."

Thank you for posting the knowledge of our glorious leader Barak Obama -- may God illumine him forever.

Seriously Kari, you're on quite the Gordon Smith kick lately, have you chosen Smith as your "beat"?

A previous poster asked, "where is jeff merkley"? I don't think it matters, who needs jeff merkley when we have Kari?

"He just makes it too easy..."

Yep. Give GS enough time and lots of rope, he'll eventually hang himself. If GS keeps this up, Jeff won't need any ads.

you mean my measly donation will allow merkley to provide a response to the steady stream of half-truths that gordon smith keeps trotting out? i'd bet that several enterprising reporters would be more than happy to stick a mike in front of his face and allow him a bit of face time if he gave a snappy retort to the things smith is putting out. free media is out there. as a voter, what i get is smith spewing out ridiculous stuff, and merkely nowhere to be found in response.
and if democrats think that smith will simply fall by the weight of his own lies, then they haven't been paying attention. low information voters - as most voters are - will lap this stuff up and before dems know it, smith will have solidified what probably was a shaky position months ago. what i see is smith driving the agenda of this campaign and merkley somewhere, someplace in the background. he's blowing it, and by allowing smith to take center stage, he's digging himself a hole he may never dig out of.

in case you haven't noticed, the media will never provide the kind of scrutiny on smith that should be provided. it hasn't happened since he's been in office. waiting on the media to provide the kind of honest, careful scrutiny of republican lies is simply not a wise move. merkley needs to establish a presence. he is running to be the senator from the state of oregon. the incumbent senator is dominating the media with a strong presence on television. if the challenger is going to beat the incumbent, he's going to have to actually beat the incumbent, and that will mean taking an aggressive posture towards smith. it will require that he establish and maintain a presence that is at least as strong as the one that smith has established. so far, merkley hasn't been capable of doing that. at least to the eyes of this voter.

FYI, the ad just showed up here - this is a national debate, now, Mr. Smith.

(The link is to the Viral Video Chart, which tracks videos posted on blogs all over the world. Smith's ad is a hot-button item right now, but in a few hours, it will probably no longer be one of the Top 20. The fact it was there at all is a pretty big deal.)

Hi Kari,

"I've been beating on Gordon Smith for four years. Where have you been?"

I'm sorry, I meant in the sense of a "news beat". I guess I've just noticed the last few days it's been some story smacking up Gordon Smith tied to your name (Smith BTW, from a conservative troll and a progressive snob point of view, totally deserves it -- I only wish you guys hadn't nominated someone so extremely radical to run against him), I was only asking a meta question.

I appreciate your letting trolls like me contribute, I would go to OregonCatalyst but, sadly, what fun is an echo chamber?

With kind regards,

GeoffLudt

Smith is Oregon's only statewide Republican officeholder, now running for reelection with polls showing he is vulnerable. If Kari seems obsessed, it should not be too difficult to understand why.

the ads and smith's response to criticism follows a clear republican strategy: put out dubious information, backtrack as much as necessary, but still get the benefit of the falsehood, because lots of voters will either still believe the lie or simply not be aware of the slight backtrack. smith will continue to do this throughout the entire campaign. he will lie, backtrack a bit, and still confuse the voters sufficiently to benefit signgicantly. merkley's response is sorely deficient. the only way to adequately respond to this strategy is to let the voters know that only a politician of a certain low character would engage in this type of campaigning. his campaign will have to go after smith himself - for having engaged in serial lying - or else smith continues to be the nice guy who just keeps making innocent mistakes. it is not an easy thing to do, without appearing to be overly negative, but it has to be done. if he doesn't make smith pay for lying in this fashion, smith will do it, over and over and over again.

follows a clear republican strategy: put out dubious information, backtrack as much as necessary, but still get the benefit of the falsehood, because lots of voters will either still believe the lie or simply not be aware of the slight backtrack.

Now, now, lets not launch partisan generalizations. Your accusation is aimed at Republicans when the story and the alleged behavior is clearly Senator Smith's.

geoffludt

lol!!!!! well, despite his best efforts to obscure the fact, last time i checked, smith was a republican. and until he saw the results of the 2006 election, smith was more than proud and happy to identify as a republican, happily supporting the policies and strategies of the republicans. i don't think it is unfair to ascribe certain republican traits to such a republican.

I was just reading www.electoral-vote.com, which had a summary of possible GOP VP candidates. As they ran through the senators, they got to Oregon:

"Gordon Smith (R-OR) is fighting to hold his seat in the Senate. If he were on the ticket, Jeff Merkley (D) would be the new senator from Oregon. Even without Smith on the ticket, Merkley may be the new senator, though. Smith has a reputation for being indecisive. He is sometimes called "Five minutes to midnight Smith." He waits until the last minute to see if a bill is going to pass and then joins the majority."

Five minutes to midnight - hmmm - maybe he's calling it for Obama early!

unfortunately, i think that merkley is going to do exactly what has been suggested and that is a losing strategy. merkley has to do everything he can to define smith, for exactly what he is, not merely talk about how merkley will better represent oregonians on the "issues". if the election remains an academic examination of who best represents oregonians on the "issues" then smith will be re-elected. because smith will be able to, as he is doing so far, throw enough confusion out there about where he stands on the issues, if he continues to be seen as a nice, amiable, honest guy, he will be able to withstand attacks based solely on comparing stances on the "issues". merkley has to start the process of re-defining smith for the voters before smith continues to do such a good job of re-defining himself. and yes, ad money and ad buys will help, but in the absence of ads, merkley needs to do as much as he can to get free media and drive home his message about smith and i see a sad lack of that kind of initiative.
smith has gone from someone who should be hanging on by his fingernails to being someone who is firming up a positive image in the eyes of oregon voters.

Frankie D,

Could you either put an empty line between your sentences/points or else capitalize the first word in your sentences? It's really difficult to read your posts and I assume you want them read or you wouldn't be posting. Thank you!

Furse has endorsed Gordon Smith before. Ever since she became a lobbyist.

wrong! why do you think that smith is on the air right now? he understands that if he can solidify his "brand" - independent, moderate, sensible - now, he can immunize himself from any attempt by merkley to paint him as something else later on in the race. if it wasn't important smith would not be spending the time and money doing what he is doing right now. if merkley loses - and he is setting himself up for a loss right now - his supporters will look back on this time period and bemoan the fact that merkley sat back and allowed smith to define himself and set the agenda for the campaign and while putting himself in a hole that he was unable to dig out of. it's the same dynamic that john kerry dealt with in '04, as he sat back waiting, imagining that he would have the time later on to push back against the scurrilous swiftboat ads. while kerry allowed himself to be defined by the other campaign, merkley is letting smith define himself, with very little pushback. smith has had almost two 6 year terms to define his candidacy; merkley will need every day from here til election day to fight back against that. the fact that he doesn't see the urgency of doing so, as smith is fully engaged, is exactly the fear this voter had about him in the primary.

Jenni is right---there is a segment of the voting public which doesn't watch TV, much less commercials.

If you don't believe that, next time you see a busy non-political friend, ask "Did you see that Smith commercial where...?". My experience has been that some very busy people (career and kids, for instance) will respond, "Haven't have time to watch TV all week, so I wouldn't have seen it".

Such people are more likely to respond to a friend who met a candidate.

Of course, political consultants don't like that message, as they make money on ads.

To answer your question Frankie D, Kari has promised to carry Merkley's water as long as Merkley continues to wear flannel and smile in 100(-1, Troutdale) towns across Oregon*.

*As long as those towns are on or within 10 minutes of I-5.

sorry, but that does not make sense. so the odds are more favorable that someone will have a friend who actually met a candidate and is willing to advocate for that candidate? (and both those people are insulated from television and commercials and discussions about the same?) and the odds are against someone seeing or hearing a commercial or a news report about that commercial and therefore making an independent judgment about the issue raised by the commercial? that does not make sense. i am as against the insidious influence of these media-dominated campaigns as anyone, but to deny their effectiveness is to put one's head in the sand. and if, in fact, your logic is correct, then why put on any television commercials at all?
why not just use the money for the type of meet and greet sessions merkley is doing right now? of course, no serious senatorial candidate would ever do such a thing. to argue that merkley does not really need to do any tv advertising, or that tv advertising cannot be effective runs counter to everything that has happened, electorally in this country in the last 40 years.

FYI 1) I believe this constitutes national coverage:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91891828

2) Wyden didn't win in Jan. 1996 simply by "defining his opponent". Matter of fact, the 100% positive campaign decision was Wyden listening to old friends and being himself rather than listening to out of staters saying "but no one has laid a finger on Gordon Smith".

To my mind the biggest "laying a finger" on anyone is defeating them in an election.

But that is just me, and I realize some at BO don't agree with that attitude.

Jenni -- It's good to know that Don Quixote is not the only resident hack around here.

Are you sure you're not just talking about Merkley's commercials?

'Hi, my name is Jeff Merkley and I'm a Democrat. I believe in everything Democrats do. Vote for me.'

lt,

My understanding is that Wyden was not running against an incumbent, in the '96 race you referenced in your earlier comment. Running against an incumbent is far different than running against someone who does not enjoy the power and prerogatives of a sitting Senator. Smith holds the office now. Merkley is the challenger, unlike Smith in '96. In order to convince voters to toss Smith overboard, Merkley will have to give voters a compelling reason to do so. He cannot simply say: I agree with the voters a bit more on the issues. If that is his argument, voters will probably stick with the known quantity: the sitting Senator. Merkley does have such a compelling case, I believe. He needs to start making it now, and more forcefully, before Smith skillfully and fraudulently "re-establishes" his phony credentials as a sensible moderate who crosses party lines to seek bipartisan solutions.

testing your defenses

kari,

The mere implication of your comment is insulting and presumptuous. I would hope that a more open-minded approach would come from a supposedly progressive community. My points should be taken and addressed on their merit and not denigrated because of some perceived illicit motive. And responding by tossing out handy labels like "concern troll" is really kind of lazy. The fact that I believed that I might elicit exactly that type of comment is exactly why I have not posted in the past, despite the fact that i stop by the blog fairly regularly. And just for the record, I've volunteered and worked on every presidential campaign since '72. Done everything from manning phone banks to leafletting to organizing meetups for Dean in '03. For every Democratic candidate since '72. (And for John Anderson in 1980, probably the worst political mistake I've made in my life.) I've worked on local and state and federal races in states from Rhode Island to Michigan to Wisconsin. I don't take a back seat to anyone, in terms of putting my time and energy into helping candidates, if I believe in their candicacy.
I'd compare my experience and knowledge to anyone's. I've lived in many different states, worked with and dealt with many diverse and different political establishments and environments and I know my stuff. And my past professional life and my past political volunteer work qualifies as far more than bitching on a blog. Frankly, I'm not convinced that Merkley has enough to convince me to work for him. A political leader is supposed to inspire people to flock to his campaign. I'm still waiting. I AM very concerned because I think that Smith is a lying snake and it galls me to think that he might wiggle free and get re-elected. But I'm waiting to see something from Merley that will motivate me to work for him. So far, I've been sorely disappointed. I may end up working for him out of antipathy for Smith. I'd much prefer to work FOR Merkley.

Chris, Anyone can perform the functions I noted, though it is obviously easier for the candidate himself to generate the kind of publicity that I think would be necessary to start to counter what Smith is doing now. The main point is that the campaign itself start to do those things. And asymmetrical warfare is exactly what I am talking about when I talk about doing whatever he needs to do to start to assume a more assertive posture. Certainly, the difference in resources necessitates different approaches. But I'm sure that Merkley is paying someone a lot of money to figure out how to come up with those approaches. But running the kind of cautious, by-the-numbers campaign I see him running so far is simply not going to cut it.

frankie d sounds a lot like my Dad.

My Dad is a D. However, he keeps telling anyone he sees that Jeff does not excite him and that "Just because he and I are both Democrats does not entitle him to my vote".

I am leaning towards Jeff myself. However, I am not excited over him either (In some issues, the Milqutoast label still stands - but that's another item for later). I understand the reasons for not responding to GS (and it's a very good one given the events of GS's statements recently in his ads) but will Jeff's silence backfire over time, given that some people like my Dad seem to be more visually oriented in their voting preferences than us here at BO who delve into more than the visual?

I hope that this won't make or break the election. And it won't if GS keeps giving himself more to hang himself with.