First while there were certainly deplorable excesses riding on the Senator's coattails, what I've heard is that the historical record seems to indicate that he was correct in his specific allegations.   I've not followed this in any detail, only in broad outline so feel free to disagree, I simply point out that that seems to be the prevailing wisdom.

Now in this specific case, the entire structure of the thread under Jeff's top level post was controlled and architected and kept off topic by matesrates.  Likewise I noted the repeated replies and with similarly ambiguous challanges in various differing subthreads to keep the topic going.  Off topic given the top level comment and article purpose.  

It's structure and development is amazingly similar to the way scatboy incites repeated off topic replies in other places.

The final tipoff for me was the way that PR posts would pop up immediately following matesrates posts.  The timing and subthread location was extremely suspicious.

My tentative hypothesis is that matesrates is the under cover nom de guerre of one of our pet PR's if not scatboy himself.  It's also possible that he has his own purposes and agenda of trolling.  I however find it unprofitable to expend effort to distinguish trolls.

Note that no one needs my favor or cooperation to make positive contributions here.  One can do that totally independent of my thoughts and opinions.  But it is a definite disadvantage to a hostile for someone to call troll to let others know that they are being played.

If I am wrong he can make positive topical contributions, moving off topic threads to an appropriate article or diary when he feels he needs to continue off topic discussions, and in a month or two I will know that I was wrong.  I predict that that will not happen.

So my purpose in calling troll on matesrates.  To let others understand that they are being led around and kicked to give out a moo and drop another pile of dung in our little barn rather than help clean it up.