Jeff Woods gives voice to the faceless Democratic insider who continues to play the state’s progressive blogosphere like a master organist.

Blogs are fueling the controversy and making matters much worse for Freeman. Actually, you could say blogs and their commenters have created Freeman’s troubles. “In a normal world without the Internet, I wouldn’t know any of this was even happening,” one insider says. “There might have been some muttering or something. But damn, now I’m getting emails from somebody in Knoxville who’s gotten an email from somebody in Memphis who’s been reading it on the Scene’s website, and all of a sudden there’s all this trash out there. There’s just reams of. I don’t think Freeman or Forrester ever expected that this would blow up.”

Freeman insists he won’t quit. “I have no intention of doing that,” he tells us. In fact, he says he’s already been dialing for dollars for the party, and “we’ve had a tremendous first few days. I’m optimistic I’m going to continue doing this.”

Southern Beale:

Hey Mr. Freeman, at the same time you were throwing away your spare $10G so junior could shake hands with a man I’d only want to meet if I could tell him to go fuck himself, I was busting my ass for the Tennessee Democratic Party every single weekend to elect John Kerry. I went door to door in some of Nashville’s roughest housing projects, registering voters and talking about the Democratic ticket. I set up voter registration tables every Saturday. I burned up my cell phone minutes phone banking. Why? Because I’m a Democrat and when you see your country being destroyed by a party who treats the Constitution like toilet paper, you don’t sit back on the sidelines. You get involved.

Sean Braisted:

So say what you will about having a TNDP Treasurer who gave money to Republicans, Southern Beale has a not so welcoming message to Mr. Freeman…but if you are gonna come, come correct son.

Newscoma:

The blogosphere is what it is. And they are going to be critical at times and praise at times. Anyone on any side of the political bench needs to know that we live in a world filled with social media, blog posts about the here and now and an email system where people are talking nonstop about their passions. In this case, it’s progressive politics. There are two ways to go here. Embrace it and see it as a way for communicating to the folks who are going to be working with you. Or alienate them.

vibinc:

There are some fences to be mended here. I’m not particularly pissed, but other people are, and they have influence over a larger sphere of people and just like giving can go viral, so can “not giving”. I hope in the future the party will give more consideration to the rational and emotional sides of their decision-making. This means being a little bit more savvy and looking outside the Exec Com for input.

No one said this would be easy, or that everyone would come willingly, but if we want to win, we have to do everything we can to keep our people happy and keep the invitation open for as many people as possible. The idea is white, clean, and neat. The execution is sausage making. The trick is to not expand your sphere to spite your base.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Blogs, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.