"Edwards Adviser Joe Trippi Slams Iraq Compromise Strategies As "Baloney""

Greg Sargent (TPM):

Joe Trippi -- the former Howard Dean Web guru and now top Web adviser to John Edwards -- doesn't think much of the things Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are doing in the Senate to end the war -- he calls those efforts "baloney, and everybody knows it."

Nor does Trippi think much of Hillary's proposal to deauthorize the war. "Like we didn't do that in Vietnam?" he says scathingly. "I mean, come on."

Trippi made the comments in a long interview I did with him yesterday. When I asked him if it was really fair to say that Edwards was more antiwar than his Presidential rivals, Trippi unloaded:

"Not by a long shot. It's not even a close call. I mean, they are sitting around wondering how they're going to find sixteen Republican Senators to override the President's veto. That's baloney and everyone knows it. But that's what they're working to do. You have deauthorization of the war. Like we didn't do that in Vietnam? I mean, come on."

"There's only one candidate who's saying, `Send the President the same bill again and again, he's the one who's not funding the troops," Trippi continued, in a reference to Edwards. "That's a far, far cry from, `Hey, let's go find sixteen phantom Republican Senators,' or `Hey, let's deauthorize the war.' Sixteen words got us into this war, and sixteen phantom Republican Senators aren't going to get us out."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed Trippi's broadside: "Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the very start, back in 2002 when it wasn't popular to be against this war," Burton said. "And he introduced a plan in January that would have begun withdrawing our combat forces on May 1st and would have brought them home by March 31st, while forcing the Iraqi government to meet its obligations." The Clinton camp declined comment.

Much more from Trippi's interview with me on a bunch of topics, including the new netroots landscape, after the jump.

From our interview with Trippi:

ELECTION CENTRAL: What is the single greatest challenge facing Edwards in building his online profile?

JOE TRIPPI: Look, it's the same for everybody -- building your own unique community. The mistake a lot of campaigns make is trying to make an already existing community their own.

EC: Edwards has made some very credible efforts to position himself as the netroots candidate -- but how do you account for the fact that Obama and Hillary both outraised him online, Obama by a large amount?

TRIPPI: It's the massive amount of press converage that both of them get. All CNN will talk about is the Obama-Clinton thing. The problem is also that on some level, a lot of people aren't paying as much attention right now, and the mainstream media is driving people to [Hillary and Obama's] sites. It's easy to build an online community when the mainstream media is helping.

The netroots needs to look at [MSM coverage of Hillary and Obama] and say, "What the hell's going on here? Are we really going to mimic that or is there a way we can go around it?" It's the same thing that happened with Dean in 2003. In the early days, when no one was really paying attention, the netroots made a huge difference and helped form a candidacy that would have gone by the wayside as far as the mainstream media was concerned. It's a similar kind of situation now.

EC: But the difference this time is that the netroots were united behind Dean, while now they aren't united behind anybody -- there is no real netroots candidate this time. Doesn't this fact -- combined with the media attention for Clinton and Obama -- create serious problems for Edwards?

TRIPPI: Look, let's face reality. In 2003 there was only one campaign that was out there trying to organize online. the rest of the campaigns were literally laughing their asses off at the Dean campaign. Guess what -- no one's laughing now. So no one is gonna have the internet to themselves. There's never going to be a netroots candidate in that sense anymore. Ever, I don't think.

[Given that fact], we feel we did an incredible job in the first quarter, both offline and online. Look at Dean in 2003. He came in dead last in the first quarter. I know. I was there.

My point is, any other candidate that’s run for president can look at us and see that we have the candidate, and we have the message. We’re leading in Iowa, and we have arguably one of the two or three best web campaigns going on; they would gladly trade places with us.

EC: Edwards voted for the war, and his posture was precisely what you and Dean's campaign built a movement in reaction to. How can you justify working for him now? And why should netroots people take his sincerity at face value?

TRIPPI: I really was convinced that the Dean campaign would be my last. But I sat there looking at where the war was going, and wondered, "How the hell can I sit on the sidelines? I'm still relatively young, although I'm an old fart, and I should make one more run at it."

Yes, Edwards supported the war. But he owned up to it and said it was a mistake. He opposes it. He's got a real timetable for how we should get out. When you look at the real issues facing this country right now, I don't think [the choice between the candidates is a close call.

EC: But the other candidates are working to end the war in Congress in a whole bunch of ways. Is it really fair to claim that Edwards is somehow more antiwar than they are?

TRIPPI: It's not even a close call. I mean, they are sitting around wondering how they're going to find sixteen Republican Senators to override the President's veto? That's baloney and everyone knows it. But that's what they're working to do. Or you have deauthorization of the war. Like we didn't do that in Vietnam? I mean, come on. The Congress has funding authority and they need to use it.

There's only one candidate who's saying, "Send the President the same bill again and again, he's the one who's not funding the troops." That's a far, far cry from, "Hey, let's go find sixteen phantom Republican Senators," or "Hey, let's deauthorize the war." Sixteen words got us into this war, and sixteen phantom Republican Senators aren't going to get us out. Any compromise that would get 16 votes isn’t a compromise worth making.

EC: But just the other day Edwards said that the only way to end the war is to defund it. Why, then, is he demanding that Congress send this bill back to the President when it does fund the troops? Isn't that a clear contradiction?

TRIPPI: What we know is that this is the bill that got through both the House and the Senate. Edwads has his plan that would immediately withdraw 40,000-50,000 troops and bring the rest home in an orderly fashion in about a year. But [the current bill] already got the votes in the House and Senate. It's a reasonable plan that does what the American people wanted to have done. Right now the thing to do is not to get softer, to compromise. It's not to cave to this guy. It's to send this one back. That's what the American people want.

EC: Can you give us a preview of your future Web plans for Edwards?

TRIPPI: We're trying to look at You Tube in a different way. we're really happy with the success of our "We the People" ad. I've only been around a couple of weeks, and the web team hasn't gotten sick of me yet. I have thrown some furniture around...

EC: But what about the future?

TRIPPI: You'll have to wait and see. We are not going to be that transparent at this moment. Although we are for transparency, I will not be transparent right now.