I hope Blue Oregon readers will go back and read what Reps Greenlick and Nolan said back when Novick first started smearing Merkley on this.

The cold hard reality is that Reps Greenlick and Nolan simply spoke the truth.

This is what desperation looks like.

Democratic Reps Greenlick and Nolan:

"Instead of taking aim at Gordon Smith and his failed leadership, Novick used these occasions to smear one of Oregon's true progressive leaders. It is a crass attempt to turn Democrats against one another, an effort that serves only his selfish personal agenda. And what's worse, he based his entire attack on talking points sent out by the Oregon Republican Party."

Steve Novick alone:

* set the negative tone in this race

* introduced the first Wedge Issue in the race with his HR2 smear.

* demonstrated an utter unwillingness to "speak truth to power" by carefully avoiding any criticism of Wyden, DeFazio, et al.

Can we rewind what was actually said?

"Novick: I wasn't aware that they voted for a resolution praising the courage of George Bush, and if they did, I wish they hadn't."

Did they vote for a resolution praising the courage of George Bush? No.

Not only is "I wish they hadn't" not a smackdown, it wasn't even to have been said, because the resolutions in the US bodies did not say that.

Having listened to the audio, the idea of being "caught off guard" is one I don't follow. Sounds like he had the answer pretty easily.

I think it's also important to mention that this strange attack--backed up by the embarassment that stands in for Merkley's "published pre war anti war paper" in February of 2003--is on Merkley's campaign website, continuing a string of nothing but negative attacks. I thought he was trying to get HIS name ID up, not Steve's?

The ridiculous degree of party orthodoxy coming from the Merkley campaign is so weird. The lame discussion over who was more anti war, when, has now been appropriated as "Novick attacks more Democrats." If Jeff does more of this stuff tomorrow instead of talking about his own vision, he's well and truly fucked, I'm telling you.

Posted by: hawthorne | Apr 26, 2008 6:31:57 PM Did I miss and "in the news" posting about the Oregonian's endorsement of Novick?

Hawth,

Could you please point us to the comments by Merkley supporters whining about no "in the news" piece about the Eugene Register Guard's endorsement of Merkley?

Thanks!

Not sure this'll molify Novickistas but I posted about Novick getting The O's endorsement over at my place.

I also included a brief history lesson on who The O and the Register Guard endorsed for Governor in 2006 - Saxton and Kulongoski, respectively.

Interestingly enough... I just did a quick Google search and the Medford Mail Tribune, which just endorsed Novick, also endorsed Saxton over Kulongoski in 2006. Guess I'll have to update my post.

"Could your anti-Steve, weepingly pro-Jeff posts get any more hyperbolic? "

ziiing.

Well, actually, the two brief mentions of the O endorsement are the first I heard of it on this sunny Saturday afternoon. It was posted online in advance, but it looks like it'll be in the Sunday paper. I'll be sure to ask one of our other editors to post it. (I'm clearly not the right person.)

Shame on the paid political consultants like Mr. Chisholm who think that manufactured issues and hyperbole are just what the public needs.

Well, it's not like I made it up out of whole cloth. The Willamette Week thought it was newsworthy.

And note that it was the Novick team that kept bringing up HR2 over and over and over... for months. Now that it looks like they've managed to acccidentally smack DeFazio, Wyden, and Blumenauer (none of whom have endorsed in this race yet) with the same paddle, well, now the Novick people want us to stop talking about the issue.

Hilarious!

Seems to me that the resolution in the US House was a little less egregious and over-the-top than HR2, but yeah, they shouldn't have voted for it, and I wish they hadn't.

SMACKDOWN!!!!!!!!

Thanks for saying that, James X. Around here it's often hard to tell when someone is being elliptical.

Pat Malach,

While I was pondering the wisdom, or lack thereof, of accepting your parsing of HR2 it occured to me that I've never answered your old question about whether my parents had named their Jewish son in such a way that my initials would add up to KKK.

Although, why you asked your friends in an email instead of just asking me upfront I'll never quite understand. But I suspect the explanation is the same as for all bigotry - it thrives in in the shadows.

Apparently it's almost always "Opposite Day" on BlueOregon.

Polite "I wish they hadn't," statement qualifies as a "smack down."

And pointing out disagreements, "[y]ou would not have found me saying that the war in Iraq is a reflection of the courage of President George W Bush," is a "smear."

Glad I've got that down now. Thanks.

"This is not about being pro-Merkley, it is about whether Steve Novick is responsible for the words and actions of Steve Novick. Or do those who think Novick is the second coming of Wayne Morse believe no good Democrat has the right to question the great and powerful Novick?"

Somewhat the reverse, really--why do you think Novick has no right to question ANYONE, up to and including the great Wayne Morse?

I will exercise an independence of judgement based on the evidence of each issue. I will weigh the views of my consitituents and party but cast my vote free of political pressure and unmoved by threats of loss of political support". Sorry folks, but I have not heard Steve Novick say anything comparable either before or after he announced for US Senate.

hmmmm... what about this? I mean, Morse was speaking hypothetically. Novick is offering a concrete example:

I realize that I disagree with many Oregon voters on this issue, and that taking this position just might cost me the election. But I cannot accept the state telling a loving, committed same-sex couple, “you have no right to get married.” The Declaration of Independence says that we all have the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” I believe that to be true to that principle, we need marriage equality.

And LT, I guess I'd like you to offer me a pointer to a speech or public utterance in which Jeff Merkley offers anything approaching that kind of courage. Because I've been paying a little bit of attention to this campaign, and I haven't seen anything like that.

Of course I can do my own research, but do you have anything you can cite about that division in those days? That's very interesting information, and I think it exposes some of the myth of courtliness in times of crisis, which we are in on many levels.

John Myers:

I know what you mean. If you were to take people's comments about Wu's vote on the bankruptcy bill, Wyden's on habeas corpus, the vote listed above by Wyden, Blumenauer, DeFazio, etc., I think you'll find that many of us have "smacked down" fellow Dmeocrats. And I can assure you that comments made by people at local Dem events that I went to were much harsher than anything that Steve's said thus far.

I think one of the things that make Democrats better than Republicans is that we're willing to be critical of votes and stances fellow Dems make. We don't just accept everything they do as being fine just because they're members of our Party. We hold them to the same high standard that any elected official should be held to, and when they make a stupid vote or comment, we call them on it.

Back in 1998, I was working in Congressman Nick Lampson's district office (at the time the Democrat was representing Texas' 9th District). Should the Democrats in the district just accepted his vote to impeach President Bill Clinton? Should they have just kept their mouths shut and not flooded our office with calls, letters, e-mails, faxes, etc.? Not flooded the newspapers with letters to the editor? He was in the middle of an election, after all. And believe me, their comments were WAY worse than anything Novick has ever said.

"does anybody dislike Steve for a policy perspective that he has shared? "

I am not a fan of his death penalty stance, although it's probably the most widely held one in Oregon: make sure you get it right, but people like Ward Weaver shouldn't be cried over. I also think he's a bit too pro-Israel for my tastes, but what politician isn't in this country?

That's the great thing about Steve. Only I will be my perfect candidate. I want broad agreement, but I want something more, and I think I'm getting it. Jeff's in a pickle though; there's nothing he's to the left of Steve on. Which is why you see the personal stuff (although that's also because he's losing).

and by the way Kevin, please do whatever you can to remind people about "The Greenlick/Nolan letter,", because it remains to this day the ugliest thing ever produced by the two campaigns or their surrogates. The repeated personal smears against another Democrat--not policy attacks, not even questions of fitness, but pure attacks on perceived negative traits of him as a person--were shameful and entirely unbecoming of our elected Representatives. I think after this is over they should apologize to Mr. Novick.

Keep bringing it up. What was it Merkley says? "Attacking problems, not people?"

There have been plenty of serious issues on the front of Steve's web site. Right now the top three things are all major news from the campaign that definitely deserve up front time - the new commercial, his closing comments at the debate that have received so much praise, and the KATU poll that shows him in the front.

That's how a dynamic campaign site works - things are changed out, with newer items, items that need attention right away, etc. going on the front. And as I've been telling campaigns the past few months, you need a dynamic site if you're going to encourage people to become repeat site visitors.

Take a look at Merkley's site right now - the items "above the fold" (to use a phrase from the newspaper business) are about Merkley's endorsements and a rotating graphic on several topics. Right now those are the items the campaign considers to be the newest, most important, etc.

But, you'll notice that both sites have links right there that are easy to find that take you to the important "guts" of the site - to the bio pages, issue pages, etc. They're very important pages, but they're unlikely to get much detailed "front page time" unless something new has come out on that topic.

Since this is on the topic of web sites, I'll post my disclaimer - I created the Novick for U.S. Senate web site, but haven't worked on it since last year. I only speak for myself and not the campaign.

I've got another one.

I'm a big believer in secret ballots, so I am not an advocate of the Employee Free Choice Act -- which is something Steve ardently supports. I can certainly understand why he would hold that view, and although we have never discussed it, I'm quite sure he can understand why I hold mine.

He also supports abolishing the designated hitter, which I completely oppose. %^>

But when all is said and done, I support Steve because his values are so well aligned with my own, and -- yes -- I love his style.

Taylor M or anyone else interested - email me at (vard at well dot com) and I will send you the PDF of the full article, if you want it.

Kari, this is another one of your massively misleading headlines. Steve didn't "smack" anyone. His comment among other things was conditional, not assuming that Jeff's claim about Wyden and DeFazio actually is true, and I haven't seen any evidence yet that it is true.

I have never liked the HR 2 issue for Steve, and am not convinced by my fellow Novick supporters who have thought it meaningful. That's partly because Steve wasn't there.

But actually it's more because I don't think just casting a "no" vote was nearly enough, which is all the opposition that seems to have happened, and all I've heard Steve claim he would have done. Neither Jeff Merkley nor the "no" voters like Mitch Greenlick seem to have tried organize any sort of effort to call out the Republican leadership for their gross cynicism and disrespect for U.S. troops in playing politics with expressions of support for them in this way. The whole thing was a sorry episode all the way around.

But for the same reason, I have begun to see a different issue since Jeff started claiming to have been strongly against the war from the beginning.

Jeff's speech on HR 2 was not an anti-war speech. It was a "this war is debatable but let's debate it another time" speech.

Saying the war was of debatable wisdom was not being anti-war in early 2003. Being anti-war was what 20,000 and more of us did in Portland on January 18 2003, and 30,000 or so of us did on March 15, 2003, and 4000 of us did on April 12, 2003. It was saying, Don't Attack Iraq, and This War is Wrong and an act of aggression in violation of international law, and Bush is Lying about WMD, which was known and knowable to anyone willing to look at the evidence.

Jeff has also claimed to have written an anti-war column before the war. Harry Esteve filling in for Jeff Mapes has finally tracked down this column, which was written in a World Affairs Council newsletter in February 2003, when Merkley was "director" there according to Esteve. (This has me a little puzzled because of the longtime role as E.D. there of the late Michael Carnahan, but I'm sure it's a minor confusion one way or another).

The concluding & summary paragraph goes thus:

My unsolicited advice to the President is this: Make certain Iraq truly presents an extraordinary risk to the world; provide the evidence of substantial and active chemical, biological or nuclear programs to back up that assessment and to win support from our allies; and before dropping bombs, drop in George Mitchell.

This is advice about how to make war the "right" way, not opposition to the war. Since material for a February newsletter quite likely was composed in January, this may well have been penned before Colin Powell's meretricious February 5 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, which was widely though wrongly hailed as providing the evidence Jeff Merkley calls for in his column -- and also vigorously criticized by people who were ignored and marginalized as nobodies because they didn't agree with what "everybody knows" -- except their "knowledge" was wrong.

Now, both Jeff's formulation in the column, and that in his speech at the time of HR 2:

I have not been and am not today persuaded that Iraq was a significant threat to the United States or that the war we fight today is the best strategy to fight terrorism or the wisest application of our superpower resources.

show clearly that he had not drunk Bush's kool-aid. He was not convinced there actually was a serious threat from Iraq.

But just as clearly his stance was "I'm not yet convinced." It certainly was not "I'm convinced that this is the wrong thing to do and I oppose it," which is what "strongly opposed" at minimum must mean.

Jeff's was an explicable position in the context of the pressures to conform to the administration view in order to be treated as a "serious person" within establishment foreign policy & mass media discourse. But it is not a courageous or strongly anti-war position. That would have been the position taken by Representative John Lewis when he addressed those 30,000 of us in Portland on March 15, 2003.

At the same time that the Merkley campaign is grossly exaggerating the strength of Jeff's anti-war stance "from the beginning," one of his strong supporters, Kevin Kamberg is arguing that Steve Novick waited until public opinion had begun to sour on the war, which he dates to August 2003, before opposing it.

It is not clear to me whether this is just Kevin or if it as more widely circulating campaign talking point.

Against this, Steve, who in 2003 had no public or organizational position that would lead him to take a public stance on the war in speech or writing, has said that he took part in an anti-war demonstration prior to the war. At the same link above, Esteve reports that the person Steve was with at the rally was unsure whether it was in March or April, i.e. before or after the war began.

Now, this should be easy enough to figure out. The March 15 rally had 30,000 people, stretched far up the South Park blocks, and was addressed by John Lewis among others. The April 12 rally was much smaller, with 4000 people, and no John Lewis.

But in any case it doesn't matter if Steve was at the March 15 rally or the April 12 rally. If he was at the March 15 rally, he was strongly opposing the war before it began, albeit as one individual citizen among many of us. If he was at the April 12 rally, he was strongly opposing the war at the height of U.S. triumphalism in the march to Baghdad, before it had been definitively concluded by the administration's man David Kay that no Ws of MD were being found because there were none to be found, among a much smaller number of his fellow citizens, arguably a tougher anti-war position to take.

It is my suspicion that he was at the March 15 rally, because it was in the January and March rallies that people hoped they might bring popular pressure to prevent the war, and there were so many more people at them. But either way he was expressing genuinely strong opposition, far stronger than Jeff Merkley's thoughtful but open to pro-war persuasion doubts, from the beginning, i.e. doing truly what Jeff is exaggeratedly claiming in retrospect.

Given the pressures to kowtow to the conventional wisdom and join the stampede to war, I have a certain amount of respect for a public official who resisted being stampeded even in the way Jeff did. It was not enough. It would have been better if he had actually been opposing it in the way he now claim to have been, and been with us at that rally as well, joining John Lewis. But not joining the stampede was not nothing, either. It is not something that will prevent me from working for Jeff if he is the nominee, though it won't be because of his anti-war cred.

But I have no respect for claiming retrospectively to have expressed publicly a strong opposition he did not actually express.

I have even less respect for the aspersions Kevin K. has cast on Steve Novick. I hope Kevin will retract them in light of the testimony Esteve cites from Steve's friend who was at that rally with him and my argument here.

Taylor M, you're in luck. Steve is 100% opposed to interleague play (happily, this is an issue where he and I agree).

Chris Lowe: Neither Jeff Merkley nor the "no" voters like Mitch Greenlick seem to have tried organize any sort of effort to call out the Republican leadership for their gross cynicism and disrespect for U.S. troops in playing politics with expressions of support for them in this way.

You forgot to mention another "no" voter - Minority Leader Deborah Kafoury, who has endorsed Steve Novick. Did Kafoury attempt to organize a pushback? Not that I can find. So why lay the onus of responsibility on the rank and file Dems (who have all endorsed Merkley) and give Kafoury (who has endorsed Novick) a pass?

Chris Lowe: Against this, Steve, who in 2003 had no public or organizational position that would lead him to take a public stance on the war in speech or writing

That's where you are wrong, Chris. Steve Novick was certainly known by Willamette Week reporters. It took me about 4 minutes to find these examples:

1999 - http://wweek.com/___ALL_OLD_HTML/newsbuzz010500.html

2001 - http://wweek.com/editorial/2749/2035/

Again in 2001 - http://wweek.com/editorial/2801/2137/

2002 - http://wweek.com/editorial/2815/2449/

thanks taylor--part two of the "non-political" side of Steve should be at LO on Tuesday.

kevin, can you point me to where Deb kafoury has been aggressively claiming shewas aggressively against the war, while Steve wasn't? Has Deb said Steve was MIA, while relying on statements so embarrassingly NOT "anti war" that he had to do a Friday dump of it while attacking Novick to distract the press?

Otherwise, WTF with Deb Kafoury, keV.

Kevin, you're either being misleading or intentionally obtuse.

Chris Lowe said this: Against this, Steve, who in 2003 had no public or organizational position that would lead him to take a public stance on the war in speech or writing, has said that he took part in an anti-war demonstration prior to the war.

It's not that he wasn't "known by Willamette Week reporters," it's that it's highly unlikely that ANYONE would ask a legislative liaison for the Oregon Department of Education for their personal position on the invasion of Iraq. (I've pointed that out to you in the two discussion on OregonLive, btw.) Steve has said he was marching in an anti-war demonstration, and I believe him.

It's not that he wasn't "known by Willamette Week reporters," it's that it's highly unlikely that ANYONE would ask a legislative liaison for the Oregon Department of Education for their personal position on the invasion of Iraq.

He wasn't working for the ODE when most of those pre-2003 stories were written - thus your assertion is a StrawMan fallacy.

Steve Novick was clearly on WWeek's radar screen and had been on it for several years. Had he wanted to make a public stand prior to August of 2003, when public support for the War had dropped dramatically, he could have. He chose not to.

Steve Novick had a Letter-to-the-Editor published a month before he finally spoke out against the War - demonstrating that he knew how to get himself on record and speak to Oregonians without having to be approached by a reporter. Again, he chose not to.

Kevin,

I am happy to add Deborah Kafoury to my criticism about lack of pushback. Look at what I wrote. I said that I don't thing HR 2 is a good issue for Steve, and I said that the only thing he's said he'd have done different, vote no, was not enough and not what the situation called for.

My leaving Kafoury out was exactly because this is not a distinction or difference that matters to me personally, so I have not paid detailed attention to who voted for or against. I forgot her, if I ever new, but add her to my criticism.

Taking that further, you have a point that insofar as Steve was a person of moderate influence in some places and a capacity to get public attention, it would have been better if he had used that to oppose the war in other ways than going to a demo. But going to a demo does count in my book, and is a clearer and stronger anti-war statement than either Jeff's very public speech or his semi-public writing in a not-widely-read newsletter (I've given presentations for the WAC and I don't get it).

The quotes from Merkley are equivocal, literally. He says the war is "debatable." He says in effect "the case is not yet proven." All of his words are very calculated not to place himself out of the mainstream. They are not words of leadership against the war, which is what he is now claiming. Those claims just are not true.

He did not publicly oppose the war -- he publicly said he was unsure about endorsing it. Not the same thing at all. He did not exercise any sort of leadership against the war. He should stop saying he did, and put much more emphasis on what he will do now. In particular, will he he publicly oppose Democratic leaders who continue to fund it, or a Democratic president who is not moving as quickly and unconditionally as possible to get us out of Iraq?

I have the same questions for Steve Novick.

But I was then and am now critical of the Democratic Party as a whole, particularly its leadership and also most of our elected officials, for not doing more to prevent this disaster and for timidity and allowing themselves to be rolled on the issue by the Rs.

Kevin, believe me, on the occupation of Iraq, for me the Senate primary is distinctly secondary, and if you try to read what I write as primarily coming from a Novick partisan position, you will misread again and again.

My support for Steve is not primarily based on the war issue. But my regard for Jeff has declined as a result of his falsely claiming a degree of opposition that just wasn't there. He should stop claiming credit he doesn't deserve and focus more on advocating what needs to be done now.

I wonder if Masterpiece and I are living on the same planet sometimes.

Merkley's opposition was highly public at a time when the popularity for the war was at its apex. To claim that it wasn't good enough or strong enough while supporting Novick (whose own claim appears dubious) is downright silly. To debase Jeff for having the guts to stand up to something that was incredibly popular (and incredibly wrong) should be lauded, not debased.

First of all, I have not seen any record of any actual opposition to the war on Merkley's part, back in the spring of 2003. There is a record of skepticism, perhaps even doubt, but no opposition to the war at that time. And of course he didn't "oppose" the war enough to vote no on HR2. His record from that time period is equivocal at best.

In the meanwhile, we have corroboration that Steve Novick was marching in antiwar demonstrations in the early spring of 2003. Although Steve did not enjoy the same level of media attention that Merkley did at the time, and did not have the opportunity to create a legislative record on the subject, he voted with his feet in a way that Jeff Merkley never did until Merkley was a US Senate candidate.

So ... Jeff's equivocation and doubt did receive a certain amount of publicity, while Steve was merely one of the anonymous thousands who marched in the streets. But there's an old proverb that says that character is defined by what you do when no one is looking. Even when no one was looking, Steve wasn't equivocating. He was marching in the streets! THAT's opposition.

hey Masterpiece --

Show me what you've got in the way of Jeff Merkley's opposition to the war in the early spring of 2003.

"I am not now persuaded" is not the same as "this war is wrong."

A no vote on HR2 would be great! Oh wait -- I forgot -- he voted yes.

Show me some corroboration that he was in an antiwar demonstration, or showed some actual opposition. We have corroboration that Steve was marching in the streets in March or April 2003. After Jeff Merkley got his thumb out of his butt, when exactly did he start marching?

Masterpiece,

You can say Jeff opposed the war in early 2003 until you're blue in the face, it just isn't true.

Public opposition among the populace up until the actual attack was quite large, though not the media, who were literally mongering the war. The "fever pitch" in late March and April was nothing at all like early 1991 -- I was opposed to that war too at the time, and believe me it was different. The anti-war movement then had something like 15% support and there were times when I felt at genuine risk of being physically assaulted (in New Haven, CT). That was never true in 2003.

I agree with Kevin that it seems possible Steve Novick could have been more public via letters to the editor, op-eds or working media connections, though actually I don't have any evidence that he didn't try. The media climate ginning up the war was not all that receptive to the message. But the same point applies to Jeff, who as an actual elected official probably had even better likelihood of getting something of his printed.

His speech in after the war began was not anti-war. He said he "was not convinced" about the war, but that it should be "debated" another time. So he wasn't pro-war, but he wasn't anti-war, he was "not convinced." And when did he actually return to the debate?

In any case where people stood at the beginning is a distraction at this point compared to where they are now. I have disagreed with other Novick supporters about making HR 2 an issue (you can check the comments on these threads going back), but I think Jeff held his own on that issue and essentially put it to bed. But now he is raising the 5 year old distraction off his own bat, and misrepresenting what he did to boot.

Harry,

Nobody in the U.S. has clean hands, not even those who support a Nader or a Kucininch. Your willingness to support Kucinich (a.k.a. member of a capitalist party) will win you anathemas from all sorts of sectarian parties with which I've crossed paths. Your willingness to participate in elections that lend legitimacy to the corrupt bourgeois state will get boos from some of them. It will get you "sharply criticized" as well by some "anti-authoritarian" or anarchist youth of my acquaintance, who if you push the right button will rip you a good one about wasting your time here while the U.S. is committing or causing mass murder in Iraq, you bourgeois hypocrite.

We can continue right down the line to folks who want so badly to claim the pure stance that they define the U.S. working class as an exploitative labor aristocracy -- refusal to only be in solidarity with third world peasants and workers and condemn every person in the U.S. makes you a hypocrite. Members of their salvific vanguard with the correct consciousness get the moral get-out-jail-free card, I guess, though on whose authority I'm not sure (in the 1990s there was a splinter of a splinter of an old SDS splinter, RYM II perhaps, who published a paper with that line around Boston, they probably were three people and a trust fund).

At the end of the day all these people still eat food and drank water and wore clothes and drove cars or rode mass transit that depended on those relationships. Just like me. Just like you. And the U.S. government does what it does in their name and yours whether you like it or not, most likely in part with money you pay them, unless you avoid paying all taxes ("war tax" non-payment is partial, since money is fungible).

You are compromised like the rest of us. You don't have clean hands either.

My willingness to vote for people I disagree with on various things is not hypocrisy, it is the inevitable condition of trade-offs. Choosing not to vote or to limit my votes to non-capitalist parties just chooses a different trade-off. You want to debate and argue that I ought to make support for justice in Palestine a higher priority than I do, relative say to who will control the U.S. Supreme Court? I'd listen to the arguments. But calling me a hypocrite just makes me shrug.

You want me to not vote Democratic and vote something else? I'll listen to the arguments, have done since my first involvements in politics ca. age 11 or 12 around 1970. But unless you can show me that you have a strategy that will make that vote any less meaningless than voting D or abstaining, on those issues where I have broad disagreements with the Ds, it's not apt to convince me.

And actually no, I don't blame other people for my complicity in the crimes of our nation in the world. It seems however that you may try to do so for your own complicity, e.g. people like us wrong-headed liberal or in your terms not-really-progressive Democrats.

Mostly I just try to keep from paralyzing me my awareness of my personal failures in the larger failures of the U.S. left to challenge or prevent those crimes. If you can show me a persuasive strategy for changing that marginalization, I'll be all ears. But I'm not holding my breath. The sort of hectoring in which you engage around here is not a promising start.

So meanwhile I will continue to stumble along as best I can, trading off some degree of engagement with electoral politics with non-electoral social movement activism, my effectiveness at either further compromised by personality and character tics and flaws, and constrained by ethical obligations to family.

If it gives you some sort of psychological satisfaction to see yourself as superior to me as a result, have at it, I guess. But if you think that's building the forces of progressivism, you're self-deluding.

"I am not persuaded" is the same thing as saying that one is opposed.

No. It isn't. It is a way of saying that one is undecided. On the fence.

If anyone is doing any parsing on this subject, it is Jeff Merkley and his apologists.

Masterpiece,

The fact that interests me most now regarding Iraq is what either candidate will do to end U.S. involvement swiftly and fully, which in my view also entails knowing what they will do to challenge timid or wrong-headed Democratic leadership, including the inadequate positions of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the subject. Those questions interest me much more than positions in 2003.

But since we are talking about 2003, since Jeff Merkley is making a big and misleading deal about what he did then, the fact that interests me is, did the candidate unambiguously and actively try to stop the war from happening?

Pretty clearly the answer in both cases is "no", but in different ways.

With Jeff, if we parse his meanings we find that he was neither anti-war nor pro-war, but carefully doubtful, avoiding being swept away by war fever but not unambiguously opposing the war.

If we don't parse but look at facts in a cruder, brute force level, the unparsed fact is that Jeff did not oppose the war.

Jeff took one public position after the war started (House speech) and one semi-public position before hand (limited circulation newsletter of a private but open-to-the-public organization.

He did not publish a letter to the editor, or an op-ed piece, though probably somewhat better placed than Steve to do so. He did not go to an anti-war rally, nor address one.

The positions he took were not anti-war positions, nor pro-war positions. If that's parsing, it's to Jeff's advantage, because he was not pro-war when so many were. If you want me not to parse, fine: the unparsed fact is that Jeff did not oppose the war.

Steve apparently took an unambiguously anti-war position, attending an anti-war rally. But he did so anonymously, as part of a crowd with thousands of others (including me). He also did not publish a letter to the editor, or an op-ed piece. As with Merkley, this does not reflect much activity.

Publicly opposing the war was not a high priority for either of them at the time, it appears.

But only one of them today is falsely asserting that he opposed the war from the beginning with bold courage in public. Only one of them has an avid blogosphere supporter writing that he did so "by using whatever format was available to him" (Kevin at Mapes/Esteves' blog) despite the plain fact that he did not use several forums identified by Kevin himself.

That one is Jeff Merkley.

<h2>(On parsing: My actual view is that parsing, done properly, means exactly determining the facts of meaning. But perhaps that's a historian's tic, since we interpret evidence and distinctions matter. Because you want to treat it as an insult, I'll acquiesce to your desire for less factual precision. But in fact Jeff's language in both instances was carefully chosen with sophistication and nuance, such that to do it factual justice actually requires parsing.)</h2>