Edwards Keeps Bloggers

Edwards Keeps Bloggers

Edwards passes the big test by keeping Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan on board. Loses a few style points for the "I was offended" statement and the presumably boss-ordered eat-shit posts from Amanda and Melissa. But the bottom line is Mr. Catholic Decency is still demanding their ouster, and they're still bloggin' for Edwards. Score one for our side.

Chris Bowers at MyDD:

The vast majority of established, beltway consultants would have told Edwards to fire Melissa and Amanda. By not doing so, it shows that he is capable of moving beyond tired, worn out advice. He is open to new ideas, including those coming from the netroots. We need more leaders like that.

It sets a precedent for all other Democratic campaigns this cycle when it comes to right-wing smear jobs and swiftboating. Unlike in the past, it shows that Democrats don't have to cave, and are not ready to cave. Any other campaign in a similar situation will now be judged by the yardstick Edwards has laid down. At this point, caving will make you look very bad.

Relative to the Republican Noise Machine dominated established news media, it increases the power of the netroots as a voice in the Democratic party. They listened to us, not to the establishment, and not to the right-wing.

Miss Laura at Kos has an interesting post on Elizabeth Edwards and her role in and interest in the blogosphere, speculating on her possible role in the decision to keep Marcotte and McEwan. I'm remembering Elizabeth's conversation with us bloggers a couple weks back, casually talking about peeking inder the hood at the sourcecode of a linkjacked site. Elizabeth also discusses the issue of blanging out blogs through excess control (or, perhaps, self-censorship)

There’s a process, they want to make certain everything is on message...They want to run it through this sieve and the sieve takes all the life out of it, all the life out, and it’s dreadful.

I wonder how much of this dustup was because Marcotte and MacEwan are young, strong-minded and opinionated women who on occasion use "unladylike" language. Profanity is by tradition supposed to be a male perogative, though we all know that tradition is honored only in the breach if at all.

Iowa Hawk has a mildly amusing post of mock Marcotte memos featuring excerpts of Amanda at Panda. I'm linking because I believe that when language is being discussed, the actual words need to be examined. I hate hate hate news stories that talk about "offensive" language in terms of f word this and n word that without giving us the option of deciding for ourselves.

Finally The Carpetbagger Report cautions Edwards' rivals:

If other Dems will go after Edwards for keeping Amanda and Melissa on his staff, the ferocity the netroots would have aimed at Edwards would immediately shift to whomever launched the first attack.

Agreed; any Dem who pulls a Tipper Gore by bashing Edwards over this is off my list. But I wonder how long it'll take Joe Lieberman? I don't know if aanyone in this year's field is as clueless as Joementum...

So my goal in my next post is to offend someone. Who knows, might get me a job.