John Edwards's upcoming trip to Columbus, Kentucky signals the emergence of a whole new trend in American politics: “candidate relationship management.” Think of it as the flip side of CRM, constituent or consumer relationship management, where organizations use software tools to communicate with and keep track of their base. Instead, in a variety of ways, voters are using new Web-based platforms to act collectively to foster candidates and actions that they desire.

Blog this and blog that
Blog it all and blog a blogging brat
We don’t want a campaign that looks just like that
I don’t want a campaign that looks just like that

I am not a self-hating blogger, though I am a fan of Captain Kirk and the Sex Pistols. Personally, I think blogs are swell. I know bloggers. Bloggers are friends of mine. But online campaigns are not just about bloggers. However, after reading so much mainstream press coverage about Politics 2.0 lately (for example, in Mother Jones this month), one might conclude that the sun rises and sets only on blogs and the bloggers that write them. There is so much more to online campaigning that we do ourselves a great disservice when we narrow our focus too much on blogs.