Cynical Nation

Amanda Marcotte "resigned" as blogger for the Edwards campaign before the ink had even dried on her W-4. She's alleging persecution at the hands of the vast, right-wing conspiracy, of course, and in particular a guy named Bill Donohue, who committed the terrible and heinous crime of pointing out Marcotte's own words, which she herself knowingly and willingly published for the world to see. (What can I say? The VRWC ain't what it used to be.)

And why not? Marcotte is understandably reluctant to assign the blame where it belongs -- the Edwards campaign. I've never been a fan of her writing, but as far as I know, she's never tried to present herself as anything she wasn't. All it takes is reading Pandagon casually for 5 minutes to know exactly what kind of blogger Marcotte is. Why didn't Edwards? And if he did know, why was he so daft that he couldn't see what was coming?

His misstep has cost Marcotte her job, but it's going to cost his campaign as well. Even with Marcotte gone, he's already taken whatever hit he's going to take from hiring her in the first place. That's probably survivable, but sacking Marcotte now is almost guaranteed to alienate the nutroots, without which Edwards doesn't have a prayer (he doesn't have much of one even with them on board, but nevermind.) They're the closest thing to a base that Edwards has, and my guess is he'll try to placate them by keeping Melissa McEwan on board.

Melissa will probably stand to benefit from this move, although I'm sure she's not happy about it. Perhaps now she won't be compared to and lumped together with Marcotte every time one or the other in mentioned. To my mind at least, there is a qualitative difference between the two. Meanwhile? It'll be interesting to monitor Edwards' standing in the Kos tracking poll.