Hank Shaw of the Modesto Bee Stockton Record stopped by and left a comment on my post about his column. Here it is, since I love a good dialogue between bloggers and journalists.

Yeah, I know you are from Sacramento and Howie is from Los Angeles. An odd conundrum of covering the Blogosphere is that, as a member of the MSM, I almost *never* quote anonymous sources (some of my colleagues do, but I don’t, for the most part) And most of the bloggers who *are* in the Bay Area go by pseudonyms, such as Babaloo. I asked for his real name, but he declined. So I chose not to quote him. Puts me in a bind, because many of the anon bloggers are saying interesting things…

Hank

Something to keep in mind. It reinforces my decision to switch my screenname on Calitics from juls to Julia Rosen.

And I am quoted… Hank Shaw’s lede is that Bay Area activists got Jerry elected and are now frustraited by his remarks on Iraq. That is true, however, let me point out that the two bloggers he quoted are not from the Bay. I am in Sacto and Howie is in LA.

This faint praise for President Bush’s “surge” sent the activists into orbit. Hundreds of blog posts began pouring into cyberspace crying betrayal. Hundreds more postings emerged after House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, cited McNerney as among the Democrats who supposedly supported the surge. (Boehner’s spokesman is Brian Kennedy, who worked for Pombo last year.)

“Oh Jerry McNerney. What is to be done with you?” blogger Julia Rosen wrote on Calitics. “Frankly, I am saddened about this whole thing. It has been clear that all of our work to create communications channels about your Iraq positioning was for naught.”

Blogger Howie Klein at Firedoglake said he’s become “exasperated” with McNerney.

“Jerry was the one who wanted to end the occupation of Iraq,” Klein wrote. “I don’t really have any doubt that he still does. But he’s given lots of other people plenty of reasons to wonder, including many of his earliest and most devoted backers.”

An anti-war group is planning to picket McNerney’s Stockton office next week, reading out the names of the dead.

This particular article may serve to further depress McNerney’s activist base, but it may help him out in the district. While the majority of the district is in favor of withdrawal, I have a hard time believing that they would get upset over any praise of Bush or talk of cooperation with the Republicans. The article ends pretty stongly for him.

McNerney said maybe he could have telegraphed his position to his electronic supporters beforehand, but he said it’s not his job to be dogmatic.

“I’m a scientist, a problem solver,” said McNerney, who was a wind-energy engineer and a mathematician before winning his seat in Congress. “I want to use all the evidence I have at hand to make my decision.

“It’d be a lot easier for me to go with, ‘Let’s get out in three months,’ but that’s not going to fly,” he said. “All Americans want the same thing. It’s how we get there.”

Jerry McNerney is about to wade into a mine field.  He is going to live chat at Fire Dog Lake and stake out a position that is at odds with the blogosphere.  He believes that he can pull some Republican legislators into a discussion about timelines to end the war in Iraq.  Jerry believes that it will be more effective than continuing to hold a tough line and peel away Republicans.  The main strategy of the left is to make a poisonous atmosphere for support of the Iraq War.  Having Democrats play nice and placate the Republicans undermines that strategy, at least in my opinion.  I also believe that many of the Republicans talking about pulling the troops out are not particularly serious.  Case in point, Mark Warner, who made waves yesterday calling for a pullout.  It turns out he is only talking about 5,000 troops.  It is simply symbolic and ineffective to boot.

This difference of opinion is more of a policy dispute than the judgement call issue that is also a part of the current dispute.  It is my contention that the decision to talk to the Washington Post about his Iraq War stance was an extremely poor one.  Talking to the Washington Post and bashing the leadership is a bad thing.  Doing it to that particular reporter who was seeking a story about Democrats wavering on Iraq was a worse one.  Deciding to do it on the day that you issued a strong statement on the war in order to repair your relationship with the Netroots was a terrible one.  I feel confident that the policy dispute will be addressed.  I hope to be able to formulate a question that helps us understand the strategy of talking to Weisman.

I really do want McNerney to be able to weather this.  He is a good man and an experience politician.  I hope we all learn from this incident.  I am glad that he has decided to continue the dialogue and hopefully it is a productive one.