Karen Thurman and Kenneth Quinnell: Losers of the Week

Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times has declared Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman one of Florida's political losers of the week. In a galaxy far far away, Kenneth Quinnell writes that Thurman deserves credit for helping Barack Obama win Florida.

What about 2008? Obama won Florida. And I know the Thurman-haters will automatically say that OFA did that and she had nothing to do with it, but I've not actually heard that argument made by any actual OFA insiders, so until I do, I'm going to count that as a victory for Thurman (as well as a victory for OFA).

Steve Schale ran Obama's Florida campaign and worked on Alex Sink's gubernatorial campaign. Schale and Sink had such a lack of confidence in Thurman's GOTV efforts that they started their own GOTV campaign. University of Florida political science professor Danial Smith tweeted me the detail. It slightly edited the tweet to make it more readable.

Word is Florida Democratic Party's coordination campaign was a GOTV disaster, but Sink and Steve Schale worked independent and performed better.

Democrats picked only one seat in the Florida legislature in 2008. I would hardly call one seat a cause for Florida Democrats to be giving each other high fives. If Thurman was so good getting out the vote why was she so unsuccessful getting her state candidates elected in 2008?

Quinnell is doing push back for the Florida Democratic establishment. That is Quinnell's shtick. This is the same blogger who wrote I was "jumping to conclusions" that the White House was willing to let Kendrick Meek dropout was "complete speculation based on no concrete evidence." The Miami Herald confirmed the White House was well aware of the talks between Clinton, Meek and Crist.

A White House official said the administration did not initiate talks between Meek and Clinton but was "aware" and "in a position to let it play out" out of concerns of Rubio winning.

Atlantic Monthly political reporter Marco Ambinder tweeted this message.

Worst kept secret in Florida politics is that WH tried to get Clinton to nudge Meek aside a while ago. Clinton told the WH to shove off then

The White House was so behind Meek that the DSCC and DNC let the candidate's campaign go broke. All this information was available when Quinnell wrote his push back post on me.

Quinnell has no credibility. He is doing push back for Thurman. Quinnell cares about one thing and that is being part of the Florida Democratic establishment. Don't believe me? Quinnell wrote a post on why Meek lost the election. Quinnell lists activists and bloggers as one of the reasons. Quinnell then goes on to "give a shout out" to members of a terrible campaign. Quinnell doesn't actually blame any Meek staffers whom were involved in a campaign that got smoked at the polls. The reason is Quinnell doesn't want to burn his bridges with the Florida Democratic establishment.