Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Amanda Marcotte resigns from Edwards Campaign

Since Pandagon is being hammered, here's what I was trying to post over there:

I'm sorry it came to this, Amanda. You'll be freer to speak now, and that's a good thing, but I know it's a loss and it has to hurt.

I meant everything I said, on the Edwards blog and when I commented on Atrios' blog yesterday. You would have brought Edwards something he badly needed, fire in his message. He's going to have to work extra hard now to erase his milquetoast liberal image, without your strong voice to lead the way. And his obvious cave to a bunch of religious nuts doesn't sit well with me as a secularist either. I don't care that he found your posts personally offensive; if he wants to be the President of all the people he's going to have to respect and defend those who feel strongly that organized religion intruding in people's private lives is inappropriate. I don't doubt that Edwards probably didn't know anything about you until his campaign manager told him he was going to fire you and was giving him a heads-up. The whole handling of this feels like D.C. consultant triangulation, not in keeping with my understanding of how Edwards operates at all.

I hope some day a candidate comes along that can have a blog where issues are openly and frankly discussed, instead of just being a watered-down lovefest over press releases. Apparently Edwards wasn't that candidate.