A top progressive blogger has resigned from John Edwards’ campaign. And despite the controversy and point/counterpoint that continues to rage over her previous writings , one thing appears clear:
The resignation will likely usher in a new era in which bloggers from all sides who want to work for political campaigns must now have to take care in re-examining their previous posts and comments for writings deemed too offensive, fiery, and/or prone to exploitation by a candidate’s political enemies. They can become part of a political campaign in ways they had not intended.
Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte ran this announcement:
I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track)….
Read the entire post but here’s another prime point:
Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.
There is good news. The main good news is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on. The other good news is that the blogosphere has risen as one and protested, loudly, the influence a handful of well-financed right wing shills have on the public discourse.
Here are two different viewpoints on this latest twist:
Amanda Marcotte resigned from the Edwards campaign. It was her decision. Amanda feels encumbered by the campaign and unable to effectively defend herself from the right-wing. As such, it’s the correct decision to make because a Presidential campaign is the wrong place to be if you want to hit back at the right on your own behalf. Aspiring bloggers for campaigns should take note of the restrictions placed on your freedom when you go to work for a campaign. The personal cost can be quite high.
That doesn’t just go for bloggers. Anyone who works for a campaign could be subject to intense scrutiny if they work in an outreach or public relations-type position.
It’s highly unlikely Edwards’ campaign would have significantly suffered if she had not quit. The main reason: the people going after her for her previous writings are not people who would likely vote for Edwards anyway. And voters who would vote against a candidate because someone doing blog outreach and coordination had written some things they hated were probably “squishy” voters who could not be counted on.
But Stoller is correct in another sense: no matter how it played out, waging a side war would have been a bit of a distraction for the Edwards camp.
But as I wrote HERE it raises an issue about whether campaigns who hire bloggers — and when people read most blog posts they don’t think they’re reading CSPAN — could find the bloggers become targets in 21st century political warfare where the overall goal of opponents is not so much debating X candidate on X stand on X issue but to find ways to drive up a foe’s negatives. And the most common way is to go into attack mode.
Frankly, yours truly was just WAITING for Australia’s Prime Minister to chime in, too….
Another view of this comes from conservative blogger Ed Morrissey who writes, in part:
I’m actually surprised that she quit, and at this point rather than last week when it might have meant something. As Daniel Glover and I discussed on CQ Radio last week, the story was just about over. It seemed unlikely that anyone would find more insulting language on Marcotte’s blog than already produced, and the decision by John Edwards appeared to tamp down the topic.
And let’s face it — this story would not have had much more momentum in any case. Democrats were unlikely to anger the netroots by openly using it against Edwards, for two reasons. One, the eventual nominee will need these activists after the primaries, and secondly, Edwards is no threat to either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama anyway. By next week, no one would have bothered following the Edwards’ campaign blog to check for signs of a meltdown.
Read both posts in full.
So get ready Blogtopia (a word coined by skippy). Any blogger hired by a conservative or Republican campaign better be ready for every word, comment, and post they’ve ever done to be examined — because it stands to reason that they will now be held to the same standard…which is going to raise an issue of whether political campaigns that need to win over people can afford to hire those cyberspace word grapplers known as bloggers. Or they’ll just have to hire bloggers who have seldom written anything controversial.
UPDATE: The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz gives his take on this blog-politics-flap. Parts of it 4 U:
Days after Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards decided against firing two liberal bloggers with a history of inflammatory writing, one resigned last night with a blast at “right wing shills” for driving her out of the campaign.
He has some of the same quotes we used above then adds:
Marcotte charged that Donohoe had been running a “scorched earth campaign” against her and that he “made no bones about the fact that his intent is to ‘silence’ me. . . . It was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. . . . Bill Donohue doesn’t speak for Catholics, he speaks for the right wing noise machine.”
After days of indecision, Edwards said in a statement last week that he was “personally offended” by the writing of Marcotte and a second blogger, Melissa McEwan, but that he was keeping them on in the interest of giving everyone “a fair shake.” The statement was coupled with carefully worded apologies from the two women toward anyone who may have been offended.
The former North Carolina senator was caught between conflicting pressures. On one hand, Marcotte and McEwan, like many writers in the freewheeling blogosphere, had written profane and offensive attacks on their detractors, using language that no presidential candidate would be comfortable defending. On the other, liberal bloggers were embracing their cause, depicting them as victims of an orchestrated conservative campaign to discredit them.
The key, again, is the nature of blogging as it has EVOLVED, not as many predicted it would be or wish it to be.
Many blogs are less “citizen journalist” sites with original reporting and interviews than lively (sometimes addicting) extended op-ed pages.
They’re less ventures in literary or journalistic prose; if anything, they increasingly resemble talk radio or informal talk among friends (because many readers will only read blogs they already totally agree with).
People used to newspaper and magazines can be shocked when they visit some blogs due to the bluntness of language. But that is how the blogworld is evolving: less (for now) towards a citizen journalist model, and more towards a kind of intricate (you can say more in print than on the air) cyberspace talk radio model. . Except some ideas and language on some blogs would be bleeped out on talk radio (which is why blogs are increasingly appealing to many, particularly to younger people). MORE FROM KURTZ:
Every major presidential candidate has hired one or more bloggers as a way to tap into the network of online activists who can generate considerable buzz, and donations, in a campaign. But many of these bloggers have a long cybertrail that leaves them vulnerable to criticism in the more buttoned-down environment of national politics.
He then quotes some of her more controversial writings.
But Kurtz’s most delicious line is his last one:”Donohoe and the Edwards campaign did not return calls seeking comment last night.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.