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More Blog Woes For John Edwards

Hard as they may try, the people trying to get John Edwards elected president just can't seem to get things right when it comes to the blogosphere.

The first mishap came earlier this year when Edwards' campaign, known for its embrace of and outreach to the blogosphere, hired two bloggers. Both of them quit within days after an uproar over harsh words they had written about Catholics.

This week, the Edwards team got another black-eye when a top aide slammed the netroots as a movement where "the only true tolerance they ever exhibit is for their own pseudo-intellectual arrogance." Predictably, the netroots are not happy about the criticism, as evidenced by retorts at Daily Kos, Eschaton and MyDD.

The aide in question, David (Mudcat) Saunders, later attempted to smooth relations with bloggers in a follow-up post at Time's Swampland. But Matt Stoller of MyDD would have none of his "fake apology."

"An apology requires a real self-examination, and understanding of what you did wrong, and a recognition and willingness to take the time and effort not to do it again," Stoller wrote. "If you think you didn't communicate your feelings clearly and that's the problem, you obviously have no idea why people are upset."

The controversy has blog watchers once again pondering what it all means for bloggers and campaigns. My own analysis squares nicely with the one voiced by Garance Franke-Ruta of Tapped.

"People who are working for presidential candidates ... are ill-served by engaging in anything but the most innocuous personal blogging efforts," she wrote. "They're likely to get their candidate in trouble if they speak freely but in a way that's off-message for the campaign, and then if they stop speaking freely to counter that, they come off looking like hacks or like they've been silenced."

Both Franke-Ruta and Adam Bonin of Daily Kos lamented that in today's Internet-driven campaign world, it is almost impossible for campaigns to say or do anything on their own time, including blogging, without it somehow being connected back to the campaign. But they hope that might change.

"This is a new world in which we're living, where folks associated with campaigns can self-publish to the world and are not only heard from when the media quotes them on a matter relevant to the campaign work," Bonin said. "We still have the power to shape these rules, and allow folks associated with campaigns to have some ability to speak on their own behalf, or to decide that they're always "on the clock" when it comes to anything they say publicly. Up to you."

Posted by Danny | 01:14 PM

Comments

And this blog is not helping either by only being fascinated by personalities, mistakes, and little focus on candidates' plans, such as more details from the Edwards campaign about how to obtain UHC with progress.

http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/6/14/15027/2807

Guess the publication would prefer readers to go to the National Journal in print or pay online, which is why news such as the link posted in this comment, isn't making it at the top of the list. No wonder.

Benny | 06.14.07 06:45 PM

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