I suppose, given the significance of this story here and elsewhere, I can’t very well let this go without commenting. I’m just not sure what I think about it.
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.
Amanda Marcotte, whose writings were assailed as anti-Catholic, wrote yesterday on her blog that the Edwards camp had accepted her resignation. She blamed her most vocal critic, Bill Donohoe, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, writing that he “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,” which Marcotte described as being “anti-theocracy.”
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.”
The decision appeared to be motivated, in part, by a Pandagon post from Amanda wrote over the weekend — she continued to blog on her own site while working for the Edwards campaign — which touched on additional religious issues.
Amanda’s decision strikes me as the honorable thing to do. The Edwards campaign had decided, after some deliberation, to keep her in her position, but Amanda came to believe that she might become a distraction. Donohue and his allies weren’t going to let this go, so she put her campaign’s interests above her own.
I’ve been mulling over, however, how I’d divvy up the wins and losses here. It’s not altogether clear.
* Did Donohue win? I guess so. He wanted to take Amanda down, and sure enough, she’s not a part of the Edwards team anymore. Donohue clearly preferred to have her fired, but the end result seems to be the same.
* Did Edwards win? I’m pretty sure he didn’t. On the one hand, he stood by his bloggers and rebuffed the far-right demands. It took him a little while, but he made the right call. On the other hand, the Edwards campaign comes out of this looking disorganized, having hired bloggers without vetting them, and failing to prepare for the inevitable criticism. What’s more, Donohue & Co. won’t credit Edwards for dropping Amanda, even with her gone, because she wasn’t fired.
* Did the blogosphere win? I’m not sure. Progressive blogs rallied behind Amanda (and Melissa), and Edwards kept them on staff. That was good. Other campaigns (on both sides) have been watching the episode closely and may be hesitant to hire bloggers in the future. That’s bad. That said, as Kevin noted the other day, campaigns still want (need) help with the blogosphere, and the long-term outlook may be favorable: “[A]s more bloggers get hired by campaigns, the blogosphere will have less invested in each one. So sure, bloggers will get fired occasionally, just like other campaign staffers, but it won’t be that big a deal when there are dozens working for various campaigns instead of just two or three.”
Before we leave the story entirely, I should add one last thing: Amanda’s resignation has not satisfied Donohue at all. This morning he issued yet another press release, demanding that Edwards fire Melissa, and calling Amanda’s resignation “not enough.”
‘Round and ’round we go….