Corzine’s Matt Stoller Calls NJ Dem Politicians Liars and Thugs, Supporters Suckers

Here’s Jon Corzine’s former “professional blogger” Matt Stoller on Democrat/progressive politics in New Jersey. (Stroller’s My DD buddy Scott Shields is now the paid blogger for Bob Menendez.)

But there's no way to say this nicely, New Jersey professional field operatives are basically thugs who have learned that it's easier to make money using Excel and Powerpoint. When I worked in New Jersey, I never saw it directly, but there were a lot of rumors of walking around money and payoffs to black church leaders on both the Republican [sic] and Democratic side.

There was a sense that reverence for the machine was more important than anything else, and this leads to treating voters with a sense of nasty condescension and open dishonesty. In New Jersey, voters know politicians are lying to them as they lie, and politicians know that voters know they are lying. It's corrosive to the staff, and corrosive throughout the machine and the state.

Field campaigns in New Jersey are built on cash and cynicism. Volunteers do not exist, and if they do, they are mostly considered suckers. Lots of field people, idealist young folks usually, told me that the central managers had no idea what was going on and were demanding number counts that were just sort of dumb. The field managers were brutish and charismatic bullies, and new consultants tend to appear constantly for every micro-constituency group. Does this work in New Jersey? It's hard to tell. It's always hard to tell, actually, and that's kind of how these people stay in business.

Now, my sense is that turnout in New Jersey didn't actually rely on these expert field operatives, even though these operatives got paid lots of money. Turnout actually relied on local machines getting their people out. It was locally done, and the New Jersey field experts were basically superfluous, or to the extent they were not, knew who and how to pay the right people off. How does this apply to Connecticut? Well, asshole field bullies may find that New Jerseyans are willing to put up with their nonsense, but that doesn't fly in Connecticut, where local towns and civility is more the norm.

The Blue Jersey crew takes offense. We warned you guys last year about Stoller, you just knew he’d be the kiss and tell type.