Last night I saw a flurry of emails blanket my inbox with aq series of "unbelieavable", "still in shock" and the not so occasional "I'm angry".

I had spent most of the afternoon trying to sort out my thoughts fast enough for an Op/Ed, and I would always come back to the misgivings I've had since he took office a little over a year ago. That Eliot Spitzer's problem and weakness has always been his success because he never really needed anything other than a vote from you or me to get elected.

Eliot Spitzer didn't really need a million New Yorkers giving $5 or $10 donations to his campaign to get elected. He never needed to learn how to get people out on the streets to support his campaign to get him elected. He never needed to swallow his pride and shut up and take criticism from his own base in order to gain political influence. And he certainly never had to pound the pavement and get people out on election day to make sure people would get out of their homes and offices to cast a vote.

Metro newspaper just published Voices: Spitzer floated on air, but lack of roots did him in, my Op/Ed on the Spitzer debacle.

Here's the money quote :

For netroots activists like me, who have had the chance to take a peek at the mechanical beast, the New York State Democratic Party, Eliot Spitzer was nothing but a political insider’s rock star that only needed “The (little) People” to vote so the “politics as usual” could rock New York and roll into Albany. Yet there’s a reason why “politics as usual” is losing the fight in the Democratic Party’s presidential primary.

Eliot Spitzer’s weakness has been the lack of a true grassroots base. He never had his feet held to the fire by his own party base, by The People who ended up voting for him. The Republicans have known this all along, and it’s not a coincidence that they tried to scare him last year by astroturfing the Internet with fake attack blogs.

Removed by author, for re-evauation, on the advice of counsel

The Daily News published an editorial yesterday that begs to be commented. In "Full Cooperation, Please", they ask from the man at the center of the Eliot Mess, Eliot Spitzer's former communications director Darren Dopp, to full cooperate with the ethics committe investigating the hows and whys of his strategy to leak Bruno's improper use of state vehicles and money. "Darren Dopp must answer under oath every question posed by the commission and must turn over every document under subpoena", they say in the editorial. "Otherwise, Spitzer will have to boot Dopp from his $175,000-a-year job."

As the editorial rightly states, Bruno did break a number of ethics rules himself. Yet Dopp was way too unimaginative, a tad 'stoopid' and equally unethical to use state troopers to uncover the GOPers wrong doing.

Should Dopp have sought the 4th estate's help with this investigation? Maybe. Yet if he had no reason to trust mainstream media to cover Bruno, wouldn't it have been prudent to seek ... ah ... let me think, think, think ... maybe the help of the state's growing 5th estate? Shouldn't a man allegedly connected to the states grassroots gone to the blogs for this kind of oppossition research?

Ahhh ... but that's what so pathetic about Mr. Dopp. He can communicate 'change' and 'populism' and 'grassrootiness' but when it comes down to it, he wouldn't know what the grassroots looked like even if it collectively bit him in the ass.

That is what's so pathetic yet so eye-opening about the whole Eliot Mess.

Had Spitzer been truly the leader of a populist and grassroots base, he wouldn't have a communications director so ensconsend in statusquoism. If Dopp had been there thanks to the grassroots, he would have had the clarity of mind to develop a statewide infrastructure "by the people" and "for the people" to have the tools necessary for exposing the corrupt political machine we call Albany.

Which is why Darren "Dopey" Dopp and other democrats like him should be nominated for Demotards of the Year.

I can't picture Eliot Spitzer as a slacker or a hoodlum, but that's basically how he not only describes his student years at Harvard, but it's how he says some of his teachers described him as well.

It was an interesting moment given that, once you hear the punchline, it makes the reason for the story a bit lopsided. He was thanking the people in the room for coming to the meeting. As he was going to proceed with his speech he said something to the effect that, unless you were the kind of teenager he was on a beautiful day like that you wouldn't have shown up --and still be successful.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Much to ponder on an otherwise funny anecdote.
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Certain mainstream media writers remarked how odd it was for Spitzer to turn a reference of a potentially derogatory spoof into a speech about the future of New York.

I did too. The Producers is the 11th funniest movie in the American Film Institute's 100 Funniest Films of All Time. I mean, how can you take on images of a Ziegfiled's Follies swastika and a gayalicious Roger Debris Hitler calling himself the Etherl Merman of Germany? Somehow, Spitzer pulls it off.

The following is a clipping of the whole speech but it will give you great insight into Spitzer's oratiorial skills.

Once you get past the springtime cliches, you'll start to hear the prosecutor speaking, with a phrase like "we are winning because we are right and because we are making our case".

The video is right after the jump.

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... meeting the crew of Rochester Turning, shooting the shit with Azi, finally meeting hand-crusher Liz Benjamin and driving back to the city with Michael, Paul and Phillip.

Especially the driving with the guys. I laughed so hard I think I broke my Poughkeepsie.

As much as I like having access to events and people who make what we call the status quo, it takes me a while to take in all the people's faces, rants, raves, ticks and tocks; especially if I don't know them on or offline.

Let's say is my way of being polite I like to ponder all the newness in an attempt to ... believe it or not ... make no knee-jerked judgements.

But they're coming.

On the other hand, meeting my colleagues and finally putting a face to the words I have been reading for months and/or years is always an immediately welcomed treat.

With other bloggers and journalists, I do get to be judgemental right away, no filters, no holds bar. I get to unleash the bitch and the momma immediately and with no velvet rope to hold them back.