The Ickes Factor

Ben Smith has an interesting profile in Politico about Harold Ickes and his work for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps even more so than Clinton's record on Iraq, the fact that her team's liberal counterweight to Mark Penn is a guy who's been involved in a vicious years-long feud with Howard Dean explains Clinton's comically low levels of support in netroots polls. Unfortunately, I've never really been able to understand the ins-and-outs of the Catalist controversy, but most of the trustworthy people I know who have strong feelings about it don't come away favorably disposed to Ickes.