Amanda Marcotte on leaving the Edwards campaign: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/16/marcotte/index.html

The fact the presidential candidates are now hiring bloggers as part of their campaign speaks to the importance of the blogs. Unfortuantely, the state of American politics has degraded so much that we now dismiss viable candidates as unelectable because of personal issues. We hold our politicians to be so perfect and forget that they are only human. Why did Howard Dean's infamous over-caffeinated scream end his campaign? Why was it such a big deal that Clinton smoked some pot while in college? To pretend that any adult has never made a bad decision or done something stupid is delusional. I think part of what makes someone a great leader is to have learned from bad experiences. Also, as election day approaches, candidates tend to move more torward the middle in order to not offend anyone. To be considered electable you need to try very hard to not have any opinions, lest someone be offended by them.

And now, not only do the candidates themselves have to be perfect, but also every member of the campaign team. God forbid someone on a political campaign have an opinion about anything.

(Wow, this must be long winded rant day!)

VT, not just perfect, but palatable to the boringest, squarest, lamest voters out there.

I, for one, think there's nothing about swearing, or being offensive, or being fucking HONEST, or, hell, even smoking pot, that's BAD. I don't think any of these things take someone from "perfect" to "not-perfect" (of course, I do start out from the assumption that no human being in the history of history, except maybe Jesus, has ever been "perfect").

I LOVE the end of Courtney's article -- she's exactly right: people CLAIM they want honesty from candidates (including, for simplicity and presumption, staffers too), and the second they get it, someone yells "I'm offended!" and the whole charade collapses.

The public is just as guilty as the government for the bullshit that goes on behind the scenes. Amanda and Shakes should go all Jack Nicholson on Creepy O'Donahue (yeah, I went there. It's okay, because I'm Irish ;)) and scream "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!"

Marcotte's resignation also demonstrates the weakness of political parties. Because political parties really represent a confederation of interests, the diverse political and philosophical interests of a party's members and supporters will inevitably diverge at times.

This divergence is as true on the left and the right. For years, the Republican party has always expected and counted on the small "l" libertarian vote. These pro-choice Republicans have been leaving the Republican party in droves, much of it driven by the libertarian blogosphere.

I've been fighting both the religious right and post-modern left for some time. The wonderful part about the blogs is that political action is not relegated solely to the 2 party system, but has really been given an intellectual foundation throughout the blogosphere.

If you want to see a real knock-down drag-out fight, it will be very interesting to see how the libertarian, neo-con and religious factions of the Republican Party battle it out in the blogs over the next couple of election cycles.

Another interesting point is that traditionally both political parties have valued seniority as a means of advancement. Paying dues at all the appropriate functions to worm your way up through the party ranks. The blogs represent a real means of exercising political pressure for many younger voters who reject the traditional party structure.

All of this represents a threat to the traditional political model, which values absolute control of the message.