Just an interesting tidbit from the national blogs today: Chris Bowers at OpenLeft and Todd Beeton at MyDD have picked up this weekend's brewing story. In his Willamette Week endorsement interview, Steve Novick gave less-than-compelling answers to questions about the usefulness of the blogosphere and whom he'd support if he weren't running.

In short, his answers were: fun waste-of-time and John Frohnmeyer over Jeff Merkley. There's a post at BlueOregon that covers the details and here's video of the exchange.

But it seems the story has picked up some national legs. Todd Beeton at MyDD had this to say:

As a political consultant himself, you'd think Novick would have a stronger sense of what a jerk he comes off as here and as someone who has blogged extensively on the local Oregon blogs you'd think Novick would have something smarter to say about bloggers and realize that the camera in the room probably meant his words would end up on a blog at some point. His arrogance might be fueled by a recent SUSA poll that had him up with a plurality in a crowded field but all his appearance in this interview does is remind voters of the upside of the more staid conventional style of Merkley: sometimes there's comfort in investing in a known quantity.

At the same time, Chris Bowers at OpenLeft says this:

From the way I understand it, in the highly competitive Oregon Seante primary, Steve Novick has more online and general progressive grtassroots support than Jeff Merkley. If I am wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments. And yet, recent comments by Novick might reveal that while he has online support, it isn't exactly a constiuency that he takes very seriously. This following is written by a Merkley supporter, but Noick's comments are hard to defend...

Thanks for dismissing a new medium, profession, and political power source as a "waste of time." While he did apologize, it is a pretty dismissive attitude to hold toward one of your largest bases of support in the primary. And slips like these can be demonstrative of real feelings that slipping out due to fatigue or lack of preparation.

It's great that Novick did apologize for the blogger comments. I think Chris Bowers' comments are spot-on here.

But I am still waiting to hear about the John Frohnmeyer comments, with a hat tip to Jeff Mapes at the Oregonian. For what it's worth, here's the video of the comment. If anything, we'll need party unity to beat Smith in November. The potential for divisiveness that stems from the Frohnmeyer support is worrisome. Although Steve did relent eventually and agree to support the Democratic nominee...