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Politicians Catch on to Blogging
Jason Jardine wrote to mention a C|Net report on an increase in the use of blogs by politicians in the U.S. capitol. From the article: "Just a year ago, a DailyKos posting from someone like John Kerry would have been all but unheard of, and blogging of any kind by members of Congress was almost nonexistent. But now that dynamic is starting to change, and slowly, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are beginning to appreciate the value of blogs. 'When I reach out to the blog community, it gives me an opportunity to begin a dialogue with an extremely politically sophisticated and active community that I otherwise might not be able to reach,' Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com."
If you really believe that the pols themselves are actually writing, or even reading these, I've got a bridge in Manhattan I'll let you have very cheap. This is a staffer job.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
/dev/random
Modern electoral politics is all about leverging centralized media influence on people who are too lazy to find their own sources of info. Bloggin is just the opposite -- it allows people to seek the opinions of strangers rather than just passively receive them. It won't work for the mass-distribution of the lies whose sole intent is to empower corruption that has become modern political process.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
A John Kerry diary on DailyKos would obviously have been written by a staffer as would most "by" various Senators, but posts from House representatives and just about any candidate usually are written by the actual politician in question. My Congressman, Jim McDermott, even responds to comments to his posts.