Cotton Mouth Is Not Going To The Democratic Convention (And Why)

This year the Democratic National Convention has granted bloggers full access. In doing so they allotted one credential per state for a blogger. Mississippi's credential was granted Wednesday to The Natchez Blog

We at Cotton Mouth must disagree with the selection of The Natchez Blog to represent Mississippi's blogging community in Denver. We like and respect Casey Ann who in addition to writing there has posted on Cotton Mouth, but her blog should not have been selected over Cotton Mouth.

Cotton Mouth completed all required web forms and asked questions (which were answered) to make sure we did everything right.

Cotton Mouth has been the only progressive political blog covering Mississippi's politics at the federal, state and local levels since it started May of 2007.  It had more posts than any other progressive Mississippi political blog and had far more original content than any other Mississippi political blog.  That content included original reporting on events, analysis, aggregation, original video, exclusive candidate authored posts and a solid and consistent defense of the Democratic Party of Mississippi.

Here's an original post by new Representative Travis Childers MS-01.

More examples of all can be easily found.

We've had 33 posts so far THIS WEEK.  The Natchez blog has had 24 posts so far THIS YEAR.

We are the only Mississippi blog that is a member of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network and are considered the authority on Mississippi state politics by major blogs like MyDD, OpenLeft, and SwingStateProject.

We've been linked to by multiple newspaper blogs in Mississippi and by blogs around the country for our work.  Several prominent opinion writers have admitted that they check our blog regularly including Sid Salter who's the most syndicated in Mississippi.

Democrats or their staffs who have personally thanked Cotton Mouth in the past include Congressmen Thompson (MS-02) and Childers (MS-01), Attorney General Jim Hood, Ronnie Musgrove and most of the Democratic nominees from 2007 state elections.

As we move forward towards November I believe that it is important for the blog that best assists Travis Childers win re-election to the house and Ronnie Musgrove beat interim Senator Roger Wicker to be given the best platform among Democrats.

We've done extensive work to help both including helping to get their messages out and actively combating attacks on them.  We're the only Mississippi blog that has raised money for them.  We are THE ONLY voice consistently doing so and their success is at least partially reliant on having strong blog support.  The blog chosen for the pool has helped neither.

Here are the requirements as set out by the DNCC:

the applicant’s blog must have been in existence six months prior to requesting credentials and have at least 120 politically related blog posts. Bloggers must submit their daily audience and list their authority based on Technorati stats. Bloggers may also provide examples of posts that make their blog stand out as an effective online organizing tool and/or agent of change.

We believe it is clear that Cotton Mouth is the strongest candidate for the position on these requirements and merits and should have been an easy decision.

Again I would like to point out that we do not hold any ill will toward Casey Ann, but I think she'd agree that Cotton Mouth would be the choice on the merits.

We've been in contact with people who have told us that we were considered for the credential, but were vetoed by someone in Mississippi's Democratic Party. We are attempting to find out who that person is and why they felt we should not represent Mississippi. Any assistance in the matter would be greatly appreciated.

- John Leek