Saturday, February 17, 2007
A short note on the Edwards blogger kerfuffle
I'm late -- very late -- to the party on the controversy surround Amanda Marcotte's brief fling with the Edwards campaign. (On the micro-chance that TigerHawk is the only blog you read -- that means you, Mom -- a very bland summary of the controversy is here, much less bland here.) I do, however, have two tiny observations to contribute, neither of which are probably original to me.
First, somebody needs to explain to me the value of an "official" campaign blogger. It seems to me that such a person will be at best worthless and more likely a liability.
Virtually all bloggers with an audience get that way by developing an original voice that attracts a self-selected audience that is -- let's face it -- pretty narrow in its political leanings. If you're good, you gain a lot of readers who more or less agree on the subjects that you write about (this is largely true, I think, even of the big-traffic "linkers" of the left and right). If you're lucky and enforce a tolerant atmosphere in the comments, you also get a few people who enliven the discussion by taking positions that are "unpopular" among the blog's dominant audience (a big thank you to our regular center-left commenters, by the way). Either way, it is a grave mistake for any blogger to assume that his or her audience is anything other than a narrow sliver of the American voter base, both in fact and in its political preferences.
So, if you hire an "official" blogger with a pre-existing audience -- Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon being a perfect example -- you are not only saddled with all her prior writings, most of which will have been crafted to appeal to an atypical audience (as hers obviously are). You have also recruited into your campaign somebody who is expert at developing a segmented audience. This seems to me to be quite opposite from the mission of a presidential campaign, which is to promulgate a message that appeals in one fashion or another to as large a proportion of the American public as possible.
Now, I appreciate that the "post-Rove" conventional wisdom is that it is more important to energize a candidate's base than to broaden the message to pick off centrist voters, especially during the primary campaign. Perhaps, perhaps not (George W. Bush has certainly sacrificed a lot of issues that are important to his base, presumably in a (failed) attempt to hold the center). One does not need an official campaign blogger to do that, though. Amanda Marcotte and other heavyweight lefty bloggers would have been out there energizing the base whether the Edwards campaign hired them or not. In fact, the real strength of the lefty blogosphere (compared to the right) is that it has self-organized into an influential force to drive its agenda. The lefty blogs make a lot of great things happen for their candidates -- press coverage, fundraising, off-the-wall attacks on conservatives -- at a deniable distance. Why the Edwards campaign wanted to accept responsibility for all of that is beyond me.
Second, I think this episode will turn out to have been good for the Edwards campaign. While it looms large in the blogosphere and got a fleeting bit of coverage in the mainstream media, all will be forgotten well before the Iowa caucuses. The Edwards campaign, however, has undoubtedly learned an early vital lesson about message control, one that it obviously had not absorbed before this. Unless Edwards and his crew are complete blockheads, the blogger kerfuffle will turn out to have been a blessing in disguise.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds (for the Gerstein link).
9 Comments:
By 
Lanky_Bastard, at
Sat Feb 17, 01:31:00 PM:
The blogosphere is increasingly important for primaries (especially for Dems). Of course people are going to try to buy blogger influence. On paper it's not much different than lobbyists hiring former Congressmen. (Though an easier way is to send bloggers money via ads.)
I see your point that focus on the blogosphere's narrow interests can damage general elections (see Lieberman/Lamont). However, it's still a tool to be used. Lots of things politicians do to win primaries damage general elections (promises to special interests, internecine primary fights, etc...). In this case, the fallout is largely contained to blogosphere echo-chambers, (where general election votes aren't really in play anyway). So the risk/benefit of gaining primary votes to losing general election ones was actually pretty good.
This pretty much turned out as bad for Edwards as it could, and as you say, it might still be a net positive.
By 
, at
Sat Feb 17, 02:11:00 PM:
Tiger and LB,
Respectfully disagreeing. This has been a disaster for the Edwards campaign. They may have learned a lesson, but at too great a cost.
By , at
Sat Feb 17, 08:39:00 PM:
John -- imagine any election where Edwards is a candidate.
Now imagine an ad showcasing Marcotte's words, and Edwards flip-flop.
In a primary, it won't happen. In the general, it will.
Edwards cannot be an effective candidate in any general election with Marcotte's words attached to him because it will turn off all Christians. Excuse me "Christofacist godbags" etc.
By Dr Zen, at
Sun Feb 18, 02:45:00 AM:
The only negative for Edwards is that he has exposed himself as a coward with no principle, who was bullied by a loudmouthed bigoted demagogue and the rightist attack dogs who echochamber antiliberal sentiment regardless of the source into not supporting an employee who had done nothing at all wrong. But frankly, anyone who gives a shit wouldn't be voting for Edwards anyway.
By , at
Sun Feb 18, 06:16:00 AM:
Quoting George Will:
"But a prospective president being so pliable under pressure and so capable of smarmy insincerity -- what does he think were the women's intentions? -- is very important."
Edwards never really had a chance. I wonder what the line on him looks like from Vegas currently.
By Angevin13, at
Sun Feb 18, 06:30:00 PM:
I think this incident further exposed Edwards as a lightweight. First off, there's obviously no vetting process in his campaign, otherwise the actions of these bloggers would have been discovered ahead of time.
This raises the point of the purpose of having bloggers on a campaign. Presumbaly you'd want to know where your blogger stand on your issues; what they've said previously. In short, if the Edwards campaign cared, they would have checked; if they would have checked, they would have caught what was said.
The conclusion that can been drawn is that the campaign didn't care, they only wanted people to disingenuously blog on Edwards behalf. The campaign gets what it wants, and the bloggers get to tout work for a presidential campaign.
Another great post, but I disagree - I think it's a negative for Edwards. It's a disgrace the incident did not get more coverage, but it further showed Edwards as the lightweight that he is. He never was a serious candidate, either in 2004 or now, and this incident has only made that clearer. I think his campaign was treading water already, and when things get in full swing I think he's going to be eclipsed by lesser recognized, though more experienced, Democrats, such as Richardson...
By , at
Sun Feb 18, 08:48:00 PM:
If there really was a vast rightwing conspiracy they would have held their fire, hoping Edwards became the Democratic Candidate, and then let fire during the actual election.
As it is, they've scored a major hit that won't be noticed during the final election.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Mon Feb 19, 02:47:00 PM:
an excellent point, doctorpat. Of course we could be an incompetent VRWC.
By , at
Mon Feb 19, 08:50:00 PM:
D'oh!
It's the old problem. The vast conspiracy can subvert the media, control the voters, assassinate JFK, and hide all evidence of alien visitors, but at the same time is too stupid to fake an Iraqi nuke program, crash the Daily Kos web site or release damaging information at the right time.
When will we learn!
