Well, guess we lost the Wingnut vote... ;-)

I read the salon article on dems who show up on FOX and do a shitty job. I too agree with Stoller who was asked for a comment in that article by Alex Koppelman. There is nothing wrong with a Democrat going on FOX as long as he or she is prepared to not take crap from the network and has the ability to be a quick thinker and say something good before getting your mic shut down by Hannity or O Reilly or GIbson or Cavuto.  The only problem with the article was that he lumped in Rangel with the scary lefties who appear on FOX. Rangel comes across pretty articulately on O Reilly and even O Reilly has a problem trying to be rude to Rangel. So Alex Koppelman is full of shit when he lumps Rangel. Hell, Even Sharpton who he cites actually comes across pretty articulate and level headed on FOX. i rarely see FOX hosts able to get angry at him. So he is in control of his conversations. That is all we ask of dems who appear on FOX.

Our objection to FOX dems is not that they are on FOX, but it's the way they take a lot of crap without offering enough resistance. Kristen Powers is still living off her glory moment of putting Coulter in her place. Other than that, she has been USELESS on that channel.

This is why I loved Wes Clark's and Barney Frank's appearances where they do not take stuff from the FOX hosts passively. Clark has the extra ability of disagreeing without looking disagreeable.

Susan Estrich is disgusting to listen to and it's not just her voice .

As far as the debate, people like Maher miss the point. Letting Fox host does not give the Dems any real advantage in reaching out to Fox viewers. Most of them supported Bush in bigger numbers than the Repub party. Good lucking trying to get crossover vote from them. So there is no strategic advantage.
Second. barring FOX has the effect of stripping away any pretense that it is a neutral network when all the access it has is of Republicans. At some point, it will get boring for FOX viewers to bash the Democrats through recorded footage than have a live punching bag in front of them.

And just as REpubllican bullying has intimidated the MSM into giving false balance,. bullying FOX by freezing them out might force FOX into a TINY smidgen of balance. I already see Chris Wallace, who has gotten sarcastic and accusatory responses from Dems like Clinton , trying to ask slightly tougher questions of some republicans. He is not doing it out of principle. He knows that if he goes the Hume route, he will be reduced to talking to only like minded people and I think Wallace has bigger career goals than that.

People like Bill Maher should realize that people asking to boycott FOX for the debates are more interested in removing the pretence of legitimacy of FOX who have no honest interest in conducting the debates than actually being afraid to debate with FOX. Maher should know Democratic candiates wont have a chance to debate with FOX hosts when they will start piling on them in post debate spin.

...the "so what?" aspect of the DNC sanction.  If Obama, Edwards, Kucenich, and whoever show up, is the DNC going to "disavow" their remarks or positions?  In short, why should a candidate care if it's sanctioned or not?

Hopefully the six DNC debates will be well-publicized and covered by the media.

Trying to cut off Fox from spreading lies about Democrats isn't a tenable long term strategy; in the long run, we need to make sure that the truth about Democrats is accessible and common enough that Fox's lies become irrelevant.

In the context of this Fox debate thing, this means that a healthy "real" debate schedule like this one is the best news we could get. If pressure from progressives or bloggers or whoever shut down the Fox CBC debate, Fox could just find some other proxy group to host a debate with; we could find ourselves just playing whack-a-mole. Trying to dissuade the candidates or CBC from holding the Fox debate is still worth the trouble, of course, but it's not going to be as effective as it would be to just get these alternate, DNC-sponsored debates out there and in the public eye, until it drowns out the Fox coverage to the point where it doesn't matter how badly the Fox debate is rigged. Meanwhile, candidates might actually be more amenable to the idea of boycotting the Fox debate if the DNC debates provided sufficient media exposure by themselves that the Fox debate starts to seem unnecessary.

Of course, this all assumes that the "real" DNC are all going to get at least as much coverage as the Fox debate would have. Is this going to happen? Will the 6 DNC debates be on TV? Will the DNC debates actually be interesting or just a bunch of boring speeches? And how can we best go about getting the public to take notice of the 6 DNC debates in the absence of the Fox publicity machine?

im glad the dnc has the balls to stand up for what they believe in.

We all know fox news was going to equate Hillary, Obama, and Edwards to Rosie.

I wonder what Rick Santorum thinks of Rudi's position regarding the use of public finances to fund abortions.

Businesses: mind where your standing when that old pendulum swings.

Yeah, I'm glad the DNC is shutting out Faux News.