I think Steve Gilliard nails what this is all about:

If you think it stops with two bloggers, you're a fucking idiot. They want to make it impossible for Dem candidates to get help from the blogs.

Great post.

http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/51288aa7- 930b-4ea4-af58-575d060214ed

Its fracking almost 6 pm EST, and they have said nothing.  meanwhile, its not just hte blogs that are all a flutter, the tv talk shows are now covering it.  This is ridiculous.

Chris,

Any word on WHY its taking so long?

what he was doing in "hiring" people to "blog for him".  I doubt he (or more correctly his campaign staff) knew the work of the two bloggers. I think Edwards was just trying to "hip" by saying he hired some bloggers.

Frankly it's a bit unclear what hiring someone to "blog for" them means.

The public will, correctly, assume that two Edwards "campaign employees" made some provocative statements.  

Bloggers want to have accredited media status but you would not hear about reporters being hired by political campaigns and continuing to be reporters.

So the bloggers and Edwards are caught by a self created overlap.

This has been handled badly. It reflects poorly on the Edwards campaign whatever they do. I have to agree with Josh Marshall that they must surely have seen this sort of thing coming when they recruited these two and should have had a plan in place. If not, why not?

While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired

i'm with you on this one.

and if edwards strongly supports amanda and melissa - it will suggest to me that his walk back on iran probably wasn't just pandering.

stand strong when you've done right and walk back when you've done wrong.  that has my support.

If you hire a partisan blogger you will have some passionate posts from that person.  Heated exchanges are common, and using the f-word conveys a strong distaste, which is especially appropriate for dealing with Bush, Cheney and Co.  Didn't Cheney himself once utter "Go F- yourself" on the Senate floor?

Now, having said that, the brouhaha surrounding this issue shows that Edwards was not aware of what can and routinely does go on in the blogosphere.  They seem shocked somehow.  

Come out with a statement immediately that this is a silly "controversy" and that the passionate bloggers, while a bit "rough around the edges" are exactly the infusion of online talent modern campaigns need nowadays.    

If the bloggers are fired, I'm going look for Edwards to cut back dramatically on outreach to the blogs.  This is a power struggle within the campaign, a Beltway versus progressive fight in miniature.

One thing that HowardPark's post makes clear is that campaigns are used to being able to fire staffers when they not the candidate make news.  Normally a junior level comms staffer would have the boot meet them in the rear if they had Blitzer and Hannity quoting them.  BUT...

This is the blogosphere and the Edwards campaign does not have an easy out.  It is a difficult thing for them to keep the bloggers on board.  However, they will face consequences if they release them from all of us.  They need us behind them and they know they will lose a lot of support if they fire them.  That said, this has dragged on much longer than it should be and as Matt says, does not reflect well on the competency of the campaign.
 

Let Amanda write the response.

How hard is that to figure out.

Another effect of this is to splinter the people who are more anti-war in order to make it easier for a candidate to win with around 40% or so and be considered an unstoppable frontrunner.

Some candidates definately win if support from around here is splintered into three or four camps.

It's worth it to consider the possibilities and which candidate is going to be best for the party to be President for four or eight years.

The Party is coming off of a malaise that lasted from the 1980s until the mid-2000s. Including a recession in influence after a two-term Presidency.

A candidate who would be able to help the party grow beats someone who would go back to the same old methods that screwed things up before.

John Edwards has essentially been under a siege from the media for weeks, about the house, about the war, about this issue. And that benefits a candidate in our party.

I'd like to make the most of 2008, and pick someone who can make the party grow. Instead of someone who'll triangulate his or herself back into the mess that we were in a decade ago.

"While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired"

This seems crazy to me.  This is going to be your make-or-break issue?  This?  Not Iraq, Iran, health care?  Nothing that could happen over the next 12 months could change your mind?

I agree if he fires them it reflects poorly, but if I support someone else, it isn't going to be because of this.

Similarly, if he keeps them on, there's no way that means enough to me to overcome the question of who would be the best.  It's one data point, sure, but I think that should be all it is.

And one other thought: if this had all happened quickly and innocuously this morning: the Right complains, Edwards says "They won't say things like that on my campaign, but I'm not going to punish them for speaking their mind before they were hired," and that's it.  In that situation, would you really choose to support him solely on this issue?

And if not, why should you make that choice after hours of prevarication and waffling, an inability to resolve minor, simple disputes quickly and painlessly, and a demonstration that he may have serious doubts about association with bloggers?

What is he does something weaselly like firing them as bloggers but keeping them on the campaign payroll as "researchers" or something lame like that?

I fear that this is where this thing is headed.

I think the Edwards campaign already looks incompetent. I think there should be some firings, but not the bloggers.

In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception

And I had to highlight the "Immaculate Conception" crack, because seriously, what's more typical of a misogynist than claiming that because the woman he's abusing isn't a virgin, she deserves all the suffering that can be heaped upon her? The intense belief that ejaculation is all it takes to make a father is evident in the behavior of the man who filed for custody while his wife was still in stitches after childbirth.

While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired.

What if they aren't fired and he says nothing?  That is, what if today's state of affairs remains, no attacks on Donahue et al.?

As a soft Edwards supporter and one who would look elsewhere if this does not resolve itself well, it may be that it is taking a long time because a) Edwards has been unavailable, e.g., back-to-back personal fundraising meetings, and wants to devote real time to making the decision and/or b) the campaign is preparing a defense that is actually an offense, a blistering attack on the attackers and that takes some time.  It took Obama an entire news cycle to hit back and hit back hard on the false madrassa story.

Well, at least one can hope, right?

While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired.

Hm. So you'd throw Edwards your weight just for... doing nothing in response to a right-wing blogger attack? Doesn't seem like you're asking for much here.

As I said in the other thread, I too am willing to change my views on Edwards noticeably depending on how he responds to this. But I think just shrugging and leaving the bloggers on staff, while the right thing to do, is not enough of an action to conclude anything greatly positive about Edwards. Not firing the bloggers might be a sign the Edwards campaign "gets it" and/or refused to back down from attacks. Not firing the bloggers also might mean that the Edwards campaign didn't even realize any of this was happening or viewed it as a tempest in a teacup not worth caring about, and Salon's mistaken belief they cared enough to fire the bloggers was just bad journalism.

If one changes their political allegiances every time a rumor printed by Salon turns out to be inaccurate, well, one may wind up changing their political allegiances often.

While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired.

That said, I wouldn't be in the camp that says that there's no way that Edwards would get my support in the primaries if those two bloggers are fired. It's one issue of many.

For whatever you're doing behind the scenes.  I dearly hope you're successful, and that this story ends with Melissa, Amanda, and you on our team.  

Look folks, I'm all over the 'net 24/7. Who the hell are these Amanda and Melissa???

Would somebody please tell me???

I think after all the "0s" I got for criticising Edwards, I know a bit about the SOB. He's a hell of alot better than Hillary! Consider:

Russ Feingold:

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/ind ex.cfm?mode=entry&entry=94B1DF00-E0C 3-F084-DB1D7A95BFCB3F77

After the election we had on November 7th and after polls have registered the public's deep anger at the President for trying to escalate the war, you would think Democrats would be pushing legislation with real teeth and not just non-binding nothingness, especially if the GOP was going to filibuster anyway. Well, you'd be wrong. In the audio excerpt, I asked Feingold if this is because of Ben Nelson-ism - that is, because of conservative Democrats who are willing to use a brinkmanship progressive senators rarely use. As you can hear, Feingold says it's even deeper - he says this is a battle between Democrats' Washington consultant class and the rest of the country - and he specifically targets the D.C. elites from the Clinton administration, who he accurately notes largely supported the war from the get-go.

...let the tempest settle down and let Amanda and Melissa keep working.  Refuse to comment on the issue -- or if you, say something like "you mean like John McCain's blogger, Patrick Hynes?  Or Terry Moran's brother the right-wing blogger?"

Holding a press conference just plays into Donohue's hands.

I'm a Clark supporter, so you know, but really, I don't think this would ever have gotten to the level of a controversy with Clark.  I think he's simply say that he stands behind his staff, right from the outset.  

Now I'm guessing here, but I'd think the next step after that would be to talk to the bloggers, ask them if they think there is stuff they've published that might come up and bite him, then ask the bloggers what they think would be best for the campaign, and stick with their choice. Firing would not really be on the table, though resigning would.

To be fair, Clark --- maybe because he's a bit of a science geek --- is undoubtedly far more aware of what bloggers do and would be unlikely to be caught unawares on something like this.

Donohue has always been a toxic jerk. I support anyone who opposes him and disdain anyone who caves in to him.

Remember Donohue's ridiculous attack a year ago on the White House Christmas card for not using the "C" word? Hilarious.

He's out of the mainstream:
http://www.catholicleague.org/07press_re leases/quarter_1/070207_barbarawalters.h tm

His press release says,
"Barbara Walters was once known as a pioneer in the broadcasting industry. She is now known as playing house mom to bigots."

This kind of vitriol is poison. You'd think that someone with a strong religious commitment would control himself and his organization a little better.

FWIW I think it's foolish to invite controversy by hiring bloggers as a fig leaf to pretend you are blog savvy. Why import baggage? It's better to have an unofficial cadre of bloggers in support of you than a big echo chamber onsite and under your umbrella. That was, I like to believe, the appeal of Dean Nation over the o-blog back during the Howard Dean campaign, but I digress... Condolences to Amanda, but really, wasn't this whole affair kind of predictable?

The Edwards campaign is not even handling the firing properly. Palmieri, who I came to seriously loathe during the 2004 campaign, sticks her foot further down her employer's throat:

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later."

Good grief. This is pandering to all and satisfying to none. Look - hiring a big name blogger for "outreach" is a transparent ploy for netroots support. Firing them in response to conservative blog outcry is craven. Pretending you aren't really firing them is just cowardly.

Edwards would do well to fire Jennifer Palmieri. She's bungled the PR of the whole affair from the outset.

In fact I think it wise to simply let Edwardds get away with whatever he does and chalk it up to experience. Even if he drops Marcotte, why again compound the errors by making it an issue? Unless you actually believe that hiring Marcotte had any real significance whatsoever, in which case I can see how one might see the firing (alleged) as a betrayal. But let's get real here. All they would have done was run the Edwards o-blog. Which at present is a scoop site full of user diaries of utter nonsense and trolls.

Outreach to the netroots is better done via actual interaction; have the candidate, not a staffer, actually post comments and have an Ask Me a Question thread. Submit to YouTubed video interviews. Create policy councils on various issues. Support BlogPac with a donation. Things that you know.. actually matter.

Whether Edwards dumps Marcotte or not, he deserves support on the merits of his position on the issues. Penalizing him for realizing that a blogger whose rhetoric is decidedly non-mainstream - and "the Republicans are worse" is not an excuse here - is really punishing ourselves.

All this stuff posted here about Edwards not knowing the blogosphere is such bunk.  The guy has hired a great staff (sure, it's not the guys that run MyDD, so they trash the staff, but ... whatever ... "incompetence" has been demonstrated all over the FP of MyDD today), he had bloggers on his Announcement plane, he has meet-and-greets with bloggers at almost every campaign stop he makes, Elizabeth blogs a ton and mentioned it in her book, JRE has been on DailyKos 3-4 times, etc, etc.

What we have is some internal debate within a young campaign about which direction to go.  It's natural that this is going to take  more than 12 hours to resolve itself, espcially since the candidate is on the other side of the country.

Perhaps too early for this, but here goes:

If Thelma & Louise are gone, either by resignation or firing, then was John Edwards' vote on Iraq an anomaly or SOP when faced with pressure from the right?

Discuss.

Over two provocative bloggers at the Edwards campaign.  We have a horrible war in which the Senate is doing nothing to stop, a ballooned budget to support a surge, 47 million are uninsured, 37 M live under the poverty line, and we are concerned about two bloggers.  This got more attention than the roll out of his health plan on Monday.  

Why is this so threatening to us?  Why are you allowing to take the Rovians' cheese into their mousetrap?  Edwards isn't.  He's out on the road and answering questions from voters today who have never heard of us and don't give a you-know-what either.  Those same voters would say, "get a life."

Well for the main bloggers at mydd, it is their livelihood.  But as Will Pitt said today, the most you post the more it gives the GOP (and their smear) more legs (he used the word legs, not me).  Pitt is right.

I don't buy that anyone really gives a damn about Amanda and Melissa, or for that matter, and the focus has been shifting away from commenting on what Media Matters had to say about Donohue.   We are supposed to be the 5th estate, calling the carpet on those who are trying to harm the American voter in general, and instead, MyDD and the Kos are asking like the gossipy MSM.    

I'm simply disgusted.  When are our candidates and elected officials going to stop letting the other side set the agenda?  Knee-jerk reactions to all these swift-boat tactics simply advertise weakness. It's a non-issue, and should be tre