Font Rants on Many Subjects

MTP/Russert review today. Russert spent the first half-hour on the irrelevant Kerry. One week before the Iowa caucus they put on Kerry; a guy who isn't in contention and who's dropping in the polls like a stone. Thank God for TiVo so I could skip ahead. No wonder his roundtable spends 15 minutes bashing bloggers.

Other highlights:
1. David Broder comments that Dean supporters as a bunch of women, little guys and gays. While Gephardt men are big beefy 6'3" lunks. This makes for nice soundbites; but is a bunch of crap designed to make Dean look soft; ahh the old Liberal = Pinko . Lets start with Mr. Al Gore; 6' tall and 190lbs. Then move of to Mr. Bill Bradley (NBA hall of famer Dollar Bill Bradley) at 6'3" and 200lbs. And I'm sure these less well known gentlemen love the fact that David Broder finds them so dainty.

2. Next there is a long discussion about the political impact of Blogs. Some of it actually insightful. The bottom line is that the MTP gang appears very nervous about the Blogsphere. The emergence of an independant group of pundits not tied to fancy TV appearance who can command audiences as large as the Sunday talk shows (which is really only a few million); must be quite alarming ot them.

3. There is a comment about how Dean's momentum has slowed in the last few months. How growth in Meetups was exponential over the summer; but has slowed recently. Also a comment about how the famous fundraising bats have slowed; and they aren't meeting their goals as quickly. I've noticed this as well. Still I've been tracking the Dean BAT vs. the Clark Train and if Clark is the one with the momentum; how come that train ain't moving very fast. I suspect this slowdown is the calm before the storm. Keep in mind the primary voters represent a small part of the overall voters in the general election campaign. Of those voters how many have seriously committed to a candidate; vs how many are committed enough to give money; vs how many may give money when the nominee is chosen; or looks more likely. The facts they don't talk too much about are that Dean has quickly built a huge small donor network. Once he wins the nomination he will be able to leverage so called 527; and the traditional $2000 Democratic donor lists to leverage millions; hopefully enough to catch Bush and take on: The Clearchannel Talk Radio Monopoly, Bushes huge campaign warchest; Fox News and all the rest of the conservative cable channels.