Dave's response - it's the voters, stupid

Dave Winer responds (sort of) to my post:

I’ve been pinged and pecked by people working for specific candidates telling me how cool their guy is because he Gets weblogs. That’s not very interesting. More and more I wonder if people actually read what’s written on the Web. I think they just scan for key words, and immediately open up their emailer or browser and start writing their schpiel about the key words, not what the writer was saying.

Full disclosure: I e-mailed him a URL to my post. Sue me.

For the record, here’s what I read in Dave’s piece that made me think he was looking for information about the candidates, not the voters:

First step — clearly — go to NH myself and find some candidates. Luckily I’m speaking at Dartmouth on May 9. I’ll go looking for presidential hopefuls. With my camera and some questions. I’ll try to explain weblogs. (emphasis mine)

Now after re-reading the post it seems pretty clear that Dave’s use of “candidates” referred to the prior sentence where he talks about “citizen bloggers”. But how to explain the next sentence?

In other words, Dave’s frustrated that I (and others, presumably) didn’t read what he wrote. But did he?

In the interest of answering the question Dave thought he asked the first time, here are some links:

• The Scrum. Good site detailing the run-up to the 2004 election.


• Daily Kos. Political junkie after my own heart: a JD with a political addiction, scours the web and is often well ahead of the punditocracy in making salient observations about which candidate is saying what.


• Atrios’ Eschaton. Not focused on the primaries, but good focus on politics in general.


• Talking Points Memo. Lately more focused on the war on Iraq (who isn’t?) and the emerging Korean crisis, but one of the best left-leaning pundits out there (and a good friend of mine !).


• Best of the Web Today. I rarely agree with anything written here, but find Wall Street Journal’s Taranto to be a pretty savvy commentator and comprehensive in his coverage.


• Primary Monitor. More or less a blog (in concept, at least) focused exclusively on the NH primary.