MoveOn.org generated a quarter of a million signatures, and 3000 phone calls. John Edwards vowed to boycott the televised debate. But Nevada Democratic leaders stood firm against pressure from their own party members to drop Fox News as a sponsor of the presidential debate from Nevada in August. It took a disparaging allusion to the Oh!Bama wunderkind from Fox News chairman Roger Ailes at an awards banquet (these people never stop awarding themselves something) to finally prompt cancelling Democratic Party participation in the debate. The reason for the cancellation cited by Majority Leader Henry Reid and Nevada Chairman, Tom Collins in a letter to a Fox executive producer was Ailes' joke about Obama "being on the move" and the President asking, "why can't we catch this guy?".
Reid must have felt the intramural heat because he had to publicly disown the choice of Fox News to sponsor the debate in a conference call with bloggers. Reid said, "I don't like Fox" but "I don't control the state party". Previously, Reid pronounced himself "happy" that Fox was to co-sponsor the August debate when the sponsorship was announced in February. The party hired DC based Future Communications, Inc., a media consulting firm, which approached Fox News about participating. Fox has a local affiliate in Las Vegas , KVVU. State Chair Tom Collins approved the decision. What the imbroglio demonstrates is how ensconced corporate interests are in the Democratic Party. It has a long way to go before it truly becomes a 'party of the people'. Most of the credit for the reversal goes to the Fox chairman's bad taste.
As long as we are on the subject of who runs the Democratic Party. We should not overlook the "Blue Dogs" as those Democratic representatives from conservative districts are now called. Or should they be called "idiots" for continuing to give the Idiot in Chief more rope with which to hang America? Only a man without a clue would have the unmitigated gall to ask for yet more men to be wasted on the pyre of Iraq.