Written in light of the Amanda Marcotte episode with the John Edwards campaign Lindsay Beyerstein tells her story at Salon and does a good job of summing up many of my own thoughts about blogging and elections.

This has been a VERY SLOW news week, especially campaign related news. Since so many Web sites are springing up around the 2008 election I thought I would use the lull to spotlight some of them.

techPresident is a site devoted to, you guessed it, technology and the presidential election. How campaigns are using tech and how tech is using the campaigns.

The site tracks the candidates myspace friends like the stock market, charts the mentions of each candidate on technorati, keeps an up to date blog of related news, articles etc., scours Flickr for new election related photos, watches YouTube and keeps you punched into campaign RSS feeds. It really is an informative and interesting resource that should be in your bookmarks. All that and they are just getting started.

As blogged yesterday John Edwards choice for blog master, Amanda Marcotte, has been under some fire recently. Here is some of the latest. Michelle Malkin vlogs and rips into Marcotte using her own profanity laden words against her.

Meanwhile upon feeling the heat over her past posts it appears Marcotte began cleaning up her past posts which is chronicled in stunning detail at OverLawyered, The Locker Room and if you want to see what other bloggers are saying about the issue checkout The Beltway Blogroll.

And YouTube has it. Now anyone going on television prepping for the appearance isn’t exactly new, interesting or exciting. Unless of course it is on the Internets and is being done by a candidate for president.

Is this the new media revolution at its best or worse? You decide.

From Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine:

Interesting read from the L.A. Times.

Here is some video to follow it up.

After Web video pitted John Kerry against John Kerry in 2004 (which the Kerry campaign in my opinion and almost every other thinking persons opinion, did a horrendous job of responding too) I have to say that McCain and others (look at how Mitt Romney is being bombarded with his own words) need to get out there and put together a comprehensive message on the Web and do it fast. In 2004 John Kerry was his own worst enemy and thanks to the endless hours of C-Span footage Senate candidates face a rough road ahead as their words are not just in the public record, they are in striking video and available for all.

I have always hated how 24/7 and broadcast news have endless hours of video of candidates much of which shows them saying the complete opposite of what they have to share at the current moment. Most of that video just stays in the vault allowing anyone to say virtually anything without every being checked by their own reality.

The Web (and comedy programs like The Daily Show) is changing that and candidates are going to have to quickly adjust. I like Senator McCain a lot so I hate seeing it done to him BUT it is still nice to see technology used this way.

Reporting for ABC News former Rocketboomer Amanda Congdon gives some thoughts about the move online for candidates. What to know, what to be aware of