Lieberman Website Wrap-up
Okay, Lieberman has lost, roughly 52%-48%, and immediately announced his bid as an independent, as promised. Not enough time yet to gauge the reaction of the Democratic establishment, but if they do right, they should back Lamont and drop Lieberman–that’s what the people want, and they serve the people, right?
About the website thing: what a mess. It appears that the Lieberman campaign used to use a host called 2 Dog Media, but three months ago switched to an account at MyHostCamp. That web host’s site continues to be down, just as Lieberman’s page is down. I tried looking at the site via Google’s cache, but not much can be gleaned from it that way. However, it should be noted that MyHostCamp is not really a web host. The web host named The Planet rents out a single server to the guy running MyHostCamp, who then in turn rents out individual accounts to users, like the Lieberman campaign. This is called “reseller hosting.”
While Kos claims that the Lieberman campaign paid only $15/mo. for their hosting and got just 10 GB bandwidth (that’s the total amount of in-and-out traffic allowed before the site shuts down), the guy who runs Lieberman’s site said that they paid “a bit more” than that. The people who run the web hosting service for Lieberman’s site claim that they pay around $150 a month and that they were allotted 400 GB of bandwidth. That does seem more reasonable–I don’t think that 10 GB of bandwidth would last them more than just a few days–but even 400 GB is a bit sparse for a web site in a race like this. This blog uses an account which gets exactly 400 GB of bandwidth, though I usually use only a bit over 30 GB. If Lieberman’s site only gets ten times more traffic than my dinky blog, then maybe that helps explain why he lost the race.
Still, we’re talking about a shared hosting account on reseller web host. As I explained here, shared hosting is the lowest tier of web site existence; you pay a small amount, and get a space on a single server (network computer) along with dozens to hundreds of other web sites (in Lieberman’s case, apparently, 73), all which share the same resources of that computer. That it was a reseller makes it even worse.
The highest usual tier is dedicated hosting, where you can get a whole server computer all to yourself. Here’s a page showing example plans, from my own web host. As you can see, they start from about $100 a month up.
But despite paying $150 a month, Lieberman was on a shared account on a reseller; his people might have made a special deal with the web host, asking for the amount of traffic they figured they would need, and getting a special quote. And this may have been their undoing. Their campaign had a $10-12 million budget. And yet they bargained with a low-end web host? Idiots. They should at least have gone to a more expensive and reliable service, and shelled out a few thousand bucks a month for a dedicated server with appropriate backups. Anything less, and you’re going to suffer for it–which seems like exactly what happened to them.
Discussion by people who know about this stuff (here and elsewhere) seem agreed that what happened was not a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, and it was not a hacker attack–both claims made by Lieberman’s camp, despite their incompatible nature. The consensus seems to be that the site was using a weak hosting plan on a weak server, and was simply overwhelmed by traffic and shut down. All evidence seems to point to that so far. Since the firewall was also apparently disabled, then it certainly could have been some kind of attack, but with a site that weak, all that would be needed would be a good, stiff wind, and down it goes.
One interesting point: the Lieberman campaign, early on, displayed an email from their web host that claimed it was a DoS attack, which now it seems fairly clear it was not. Was that a sign of the host’s incompetence, or did the web host simply write that because the Lieberman campaign told them to?
An even more mysterious question: why is Lieberman’s site still down? Even if it was a hacker or a DoS attack, it should have been back up in a matter of hours–not a day and a half or more. But if it was simple bandwidth excess, it should have been back up even faster. The page that is displayed when you access the site has changed several times, once even including a message from the Lieberman campaign about the site being “attacked.” This means that they do have control over what appears there. So why is it still “down”?
There are only two possible answers that I can see: (1) their web host is unbelievably incompetent–an answer which is not satisfactory to me, because you would have to be a huge honking moron to let it go on like this for this long, and no one like that could run a web hosting business for more than a week being that stupid.
No, the only remaining explanation that makes sense is: (2) the Lieberman campaign wants the web site to stay down. Like a soccer player who gets slightly nicked by another player and collapses in feigned extreme agony, it looks to me like the Lieberman campaign, having made such a big noise about hacks and attacks, needs the site to stay down for publicity’s sake. With the primary now ended, they need a working web site far, far less than they need a good PR point to play on. With the web site down, they can point to that as the only reason they lost by 4 percentage points.
Of course, they can’t make too big a noise to that effect; with the FBI investigating, if they find that it wasn’t an attack at all, Lieberman is going to look pretty silly–especially if it was all caused by the campaign getting web hosting on the cheap.
This speaks for it self and is why all Americans must unite together to elect “True Progressive Democrats” Now is the time not next year or next month. We must stand together and demand real change. We must be strong, bold and not be afraid to speak up. Say what is on your mind don’t go along with others just because it is the right thing to say politically.
When Americans look back they will see that B$SH was the worst “President” ever elected in our countries history. We can say one thing in defense though and that is we the people did not elect this corrupt, lying, miss leading criminal that we have to call President. He stole the election, which is why he is stealing our future, our children’s future and their children’s future.
NOW is the time to unite, stand proud, speak up, and vote. Vote for “True Progressive Candidates” support all the candidates any way you can. Money is not the only way to support candidates who will fight for us and take back our country. We can encourage our family, friends and coworkers to make sure they vote in the primaries as well as the general election. We can make phone calls, email, and nock on doors or simply send $20 to help support our candidates who will truly represent the people.
Carl Sheeler is such a candidate from RI http://www.carlsheeler.com He has the vision, passion, integrity, and is not afraid to speak up for the people. Carl will defend our constitution and fight for all Americans.
If you have a candidate like Carl please send me their link so I may add it to my blogging for “True Progressive Candidates” william172@cox.net
Anyone who hadn’t already caught on to Lieberman’s “it’s all about me” attitude should certainly have seen the light after that unbelievable “concession” speech — which essentially amounted to “I’m disappointed the voters were so stupid”.
Alot of that 48% Lieberman got last night was institutional and inertial, basically the reason incumbents are so difficult to dislodge. Much of that is from union, interest groups and party backing. And in two weeks, it will be all gone. In fact, most of the leading party lights, who stuck with Joe through yesterday, have unequivocally came out for Lamont today. (Rahm Emmanuel described him as Bush’s love child)
Which leaves Joe with the option of mostly going for GOP support. And if he doesn’t want to avoid losing what’s left of his Democratic backing, he has to be verrrrry careful. George Stephanopoulos is reporting, via “a Lieberman staffer”, that Karl Rove has been in touch, saying “the boss wants to help”. That someone on Lieberman’s staff let such a report out to the mainstream press indicates at least some of the people who worked for him are appalled by this indie run and want to squelch it.
But Joe is in it for Joe alone. I’m not sure even the prospect of humiliation is enough to drive him out. Someone at another site said Joe took the wrong lesson from the 2000 election: he needs to understand, the loser only gets the prize when the Supreme Court’s in his pocket.
Here’s what the website says now:
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UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: “For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman’s website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State’s Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review.”
“We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy.”
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This is absolutely ridiculous. Ned Lamont denied any involvement from the start (and indeed, the only cause is obviously their host’s incompetence and their choice of a third-rate provider), and called on anyone responsible to stop, and his staff offered to help get the Lieberman site back up (and obviously was rebuffed). To continue blaming their broken website on “political opponents” and Lamont in particular after losing the primary is just disgusting.
Me:
Anyone who hadn’t already caught on to Lieberman’s “it’s all about me” attitude should certainly have seen the light after that unbelievable “concession” speech — which essentially amounted to “I’m disappointed the voters were so stupid”.Well, not to say “I told you so,” but I did say (more off the blog than on) that Lieberman was more interested in his career and hanging on to power than he was in following what Democratic voters decided. He’s not going to give up his career of 18 years just because of some stupid vote.Alot of that 48% Lieberman got last night was institutional and inertial, basically the reason incumbents are so difficult to dislodge. Much of that is from union, interest groups and party backing. And in two weeks, it will be all gone. The backing, yes, but not necessarily the votes. As I noted in the prior post, Lieberman will have a majority of Republican votes. In a poll I saw, the Republican candidate only had something like 9% of the total in a three-way race, meaning that even then, Lieberman had maybe as much as 70-80% of conservatives going for him; that number will only increase when Lieberman starts getting Republican backing. Even if a lot of Democrats turn to Lamont, Lieberman only needs a minority of Democrats and a fair number of independents to vote for him in order to win, and that’s far from inconceivable.Which leaves Joe with the option of mostly going for GOP support. And if he doesn’t want to avoid losing what’s left of his Democratic backing, he has to be verrrrry careful.Sure, he can’t out and out say he’s a Republican or heartily embrace the right, but he can still get their implicit support, their financial backing, and talk to the right in “code,” while still courting voters who have been with him for almost two decades; he will probably even hit on the riff of being a “universal” candidate, appealing to voters in both parties, being a bridge, finding a middle ground, yadda yadda yadda–so long as he stays away from “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”
Nathan:
That message, actually, was one crafted by the Lieberman campaign almost from the start, and had been one of their initial “account suspended” placeholder screens, before they themselves yanked it in favor of a generic screen that looked more like a hacker hit them. The fact that it has now been up for a full day shows that (a) they have full control over the domain now, and (b) they don’t WANT to have their regular web page up–all that aside from the ludicrous suggestion that Lamont is, was, or has been in any way, shape or form connected with the site outage.
George Stephanopoulos is reporting, via “a Lieberman staffer”, that Karl Rove has been in touch, saying “the boss wants to help”.More than that, according to Marshall, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman now refuses to back the GOP candidate!
You might take a look at my recent post on the Lieberman site issue – one thing I found interesting through the google cache – Lieberman’s site was using a PHP-based content management system which more than likely is the cause of the load problem. Especially with their comment regarding the fact that they had attacks coming at them (FTP, email and web) – what is interesting is that they have had the godaddy email service for their email (which the DNS TTL would have taken at least a day to propogate).
One other thing noted – they did have their FTP traffic directed at their server (ftp.joe2006.com resolves to joe2006.com) so I wonder what also might have happened. I look forward to seeing the logs of their old server show up.
Yes, Schlesinger has only 9%. But there was no primary, and he had no reason to be in the media. I wonder how many voters have even heard of him. Even in Connecticut, 20-25% will just automatically pull the lever for whoever is running on the Republican ticket. He was on Hardball two nights ago, and actually came across as well-spoken and pretty thoughtful for someone who gets very little respect. He said on the show that if the polls indicate he can get the support of one quarter of the populace, he may get another 10-15% because his name is adjacent to CT governor Rell’s (also Republican). With Lieberman being the spoiler, that could be enough to put him over.
As for Joe, even with his monstrous ego, the alacrity with which state and national Democrats have embraced Lamont must be a blow. I maintain there is nothing more off-putting than a sore loser, and his sanctimonious makes it worse. Add to this the rumor that Karl Rove called for offers of support, and only those carrying a permanent hard-on for him will stick by.
The largest group in Connecticut are Independents. But the independents are also anti-war, and just because some hack declared himself independent one evening doesn’t mean they will flock to him. Bush’s approval rating in Connecticut is the third-lowest in the nation (after Rhode Island and Massachusets). He can spin this all he wants, but Joe’s closeness to Bush is toxic in that state.
On the flip side, Lieberman’s fair-weather friend Sean Hannity previously declared that he would do anything within his power to help him out. Now he’s saying any Republican who would vote for him in the general election would be a fool, because during the primary Joe emphasized his liberal credentials. I don’t know if that will have any effect, but it’s amusing.