By Neil the Ethical Werewolf Having spent much of the last year and a half trying to show liberal bloggers that John Edwards was their man, I spent the middle of this week being horrified that my work might be completely obliterated. (That I spent Tuesday night at Melissa's house, having ridden a bus from Ann Arbor to western Indiana to meet her for the first time and discuss internet strategy, was a gut-wrenching twist of fate.) But the campaign chose wisely, and now we've made lemonade from our lemons. The political case for keeping Melissa and Amanda on board was straightforward. There are only two groups who really care about the controversy surrounding them -- the netroots and the religious right. Only one of those groups votes in the Democratic primary, and the other can't ever be won over in a general election. And when the general election comes around, the early work of Edwards' top bloggers will be last year's news. The campaign needed to prove to liberal bloggers that it wouldn't be pushed around by right-wing pressure groups, and that's exactly what it did.
