Jerome Armstrong

David Weigel | August 4, 2007

On the way out of Hillary's speech I talked to Jerome Armstrong (co-author, with Markos Moulitsas, of the book I reviewed here). He worked for Mark Warner's pre-campaign and has been a free agent since that expired, but he's critiquied Obama's campaign on MyDD.

How did Hillary do? "It was impressive, but I'm one of those people who thinks Hillary is inevitable."

Why so tough on Obama? "It's nothing personal against Obama, he's just not running a winning campaign. Edwards is running a great campaign but there're problems in the environment around him."

Could Obama win if he and Edwards traded campaigns? "I think so... if he'd gotten the netroots behind him in January, February, he'd be storming Hillary right now. But Hillary's campaign actually has a better understanding of the blogs, better outreach than he does."

Comments

|8.4.07 @ 9:22PM|#

"I think so... if he'd gotten the netroots behind him in January, February, he'd be storming Hillary right now. But Hillary's campaign actually has a better understanding of the blogs, better outreach than he does."

Like Howard Dean! Now THAT guy understood the netroots, and just look at him now! President of the United States!

|8.5.07 @ 8:20AM|#

Like Howard Dean! Now THAT guy understood the netroots, and just look at him now! President of the United States!

Actually as Chairman of the DNC he has accomplished a turnaround on Dem vs. Rep contributions, and is frankly kicking the Republicans butts in running candidates in all districts. Prior to Dean, the DNC was concentrated on running the "correct" candidates in the "right" districts, but Dean concentrated in recruiting candidates in as many districts as possible (I think they only missed a dozen or so.) Much of the 2006 Dem retaking of the House is directly attributable to Dean.

He was also right on Iraq.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Dean fan and wouldn't necessarily want him to be President, but he definitely was an architect of the 2006 Dem gains.

|8.7.07 @ 12:48PM|#

Edwards is running a great campaign but there're problems in the environment around him."

Is this a polite way of saying "Edwards is a fundamentally weak person who can never be elected President"?