Most of the presidential campaigns, on both sides of the aisle, have engaged in some fairly aggressive blog outreach lately, including having hired some high-profile bloggers as part of the campaign team. John Edwards hired two — Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare’s Sister’s Melissa McEwan. (As far as disclosure is concerned, I’ve talked to Melissa several times, but I don’t know Amanda.)
It was a great move for the Edwards campaign. Here are two bright and clever writers, with sizable audiences, who agreed to help improve Edwards’ online presence dramatically, not to mention offering the campaign some serious netroots street cred.
But there’s a catch. Amanda and Melissa have been blogging daily for quite a while, and some on the right decided to undermine Edwards’ campaign by highlighting some of the bloggers’ less temperate comments. Today, the New York Times made the complaints a legitimate news story.
Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.
The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions….
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”
At this point, the Team Edwards has not publicly announced their support for Amanda and Melissa. The NYT reported that Jennifer Palmieri, Edwards’s spokesperson, said last night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.
That’s not quite what I’d hoped to hear.
For one thing, there’s no reason on earth to take Bill Donohue seriously. The man’s public comments reflect an activist who is not only unhinged, but filled with hate for anyone who dares to disagree with him. Donohue, not too long ago, told a national television audience, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” To take his “vulgar” whining seriously is a mistake.
But even more importantly, Edwards and every other presidential candidate have to realize that everyone who blogs is going to end up offending someone at some point. It’s inevitable. Candidates want to garner support and credibility among blog writers and readers; they want the valuable assistance talented writers like Amanda and Melissa offer; and in turn they have to be prepared to stand by those bloggers when scrutiny comes.
If the Edwards campaign caves on this, and they fire Amanda and/or Melissa, the political consequences will be far reaching. First, Edwards, who enjoys fairly significant online support, will suffer considerably for the rest of the campaign. Second, progressive bloggers will inevitably respond to the right’ attacks by targeting conservative bloggers who have teamed up with GOP candidates.
And third, the result will, in all likelihood, create a chilling effect in which presidential campaigns stop hiring bloggers altogether. Candidates will do some outreach, buy some ads, and attempt some fundraising, but the cooperative efforts will end.
This should be an easy one — Edwards’ campaign should stand by Amanda and Melissa. The campaign should tell reporters that everything Edwards has said or written is fair game, but what individual staffers wrote long before they joined the campaign team is irrelevant.
Stay tuned.