Today's Richmond Times-Dispatch has an article entitled, "Politicians are casting the Net to catch votes." Some guy who blogs occasionally on RK is quoted as saying:
Now you have the rise of the netroots, the Internet, YouTube, the more democratized, flattened era of politics. We don't know yet how this will play out, but it does seem like we are at a tipping point...I'm getting approached now by candidates wanting to come on the blog. "They don't know the terminology necessarily. They know there's something going on here...This is the sort of grass-roots democracy now being enabled by the Internet. It's not just a top-down model.
Gee, I wonder who would have spewed b.s. like that. Ha. :)
Aside from the mystery RK blogger, Chap Petersen is quoted as well, saying that "For every person I meet, there's probably three or four people who look me up online." And Brian Moran's political director, Jesse Ferguson, has an excellent quote about politicians and the blogs, "It really comes down to whether you want to be a candidate of the past or a candidate of the future."
Norm Leahy, who is also quoted in the story, has his thoughts at Bearing Drift. Among other things, he says that "the GOP still doesn't get it."
Check out the entire article by Olympia Meola here.
P.S. I've got to give Shaun Kenney credit for the most pithy, quotable quote of the article, "Ignore the blogs at your own peril."