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The Moral of the Tale of Marcotte and McEwan

Back on Friday, I read an article at Politico.com claiming liberal bloggers are “impudent, impotent, unreflective and unaccountable.” Not surprising if coming from a Republican, but in case you haven’t heard about this article, it’s coming from Dan Gerstein.

Gerstein calls lefty blogs onto the carpet for hypocrisy and a failure to address the real issues in the recent John Edwards/Marcotte/Whatshername fiasco. Let’s start with the obvious fact that the rightosphere was going to go nuts over these hires. The question isn’t whether or not these bloggers would be attacked – the question is how political allies should to respond to it. This is where Gerstein notes that the ball was dropped.

[Left-wing bloggers] have decided that the best way to fight the “right-wing smear machine” that they so despise is to create an even more venomous, boundary-less, and destructive counterpart and fight ire with more ire.

As Gerstein writes, these tactics are fine if a blogger’s objective is to engage in hate/counterhate with their ideological counterparts, or to drive an echo-chamber and the mutual-visit traffic so many sites enjoy. But neither arguments nor elections are won on the outer fringe. It is important for the serious blogger to read and engage people of opposing views in a serious manner. People simply aren’t persuaded or turned on by mud slinging or flamespraying, and neither party can win without the support of The Middle. You know, The Middle? That part of the electorate that generally claims to vote for the lesser of two evils? Some of those who defended Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte might not give a rip about The Middle. But John Edwards does, and his supporters have to as well – even his bloggers.

I am not saying that Marcotte and McEwan are less than capable writers. And I’m not even bothering to belabor the point that they weren’t well vetted – that’s obvious. I am simply saying that while it’s fine to defend their right to publish the hateful anti-Christian diatribes that sparked all of the controversy, it’s a different matter to defend the content of their writing, or to suggest that the only reason the two were attacked is because they "speak truth to power".

Too many (nearly all) on the e-Left missed the point and tried to defend these writers simply because they were being attacked by the Right. And the Edwards campaign has suffered an early embarrassment. For a candidate who currently makes the “Oh, and him” list after Senators Clinton and Obama, that’s serious.

The main lesson that serious political bloggers might take from all of this mess is that the enemy of your opponent is not necessarily your friend.