Those of you who have been with me since the dawn of time know that I basically sat out the 2004 primaries and didn't officially take a stand on who the candidate should be. More than that I did my best to not let my discussion of the primary coverage be influenced by my personal preferences. I'm not claiming that I was perfect on that last part, or that I even tried to be (and lacking the Mullet of Objectivity possessed by our Tabloid Press Corps I lack the skills), but still it was something I sorta aimed for.
At the time the reasons were fairly simple. First, I didn't think that the all important Eschaton Endorsement was really going to make a damn bit of difference anyway, so why bother. Second, I didn't want to alienate readers (not because I was worried about traffic for business reasons, at that time the blog was providing beer money if that). Third, I didn't want to spend months fighting with other bloggers. Fourth, while I certainly had my personal preferences about who I'd prefer for president I didn't have any strong sense of who would make the best candidate.
Overall the lefty blogosphere managed to get through 2003 and early 2004 without too much rancor. I think I cried when The Editors got mad at me about something I said about Wes Clark because I was as big an Editors fanboy as he was a Clark fanboy, but aside from that it seemed blogland got through.
Still I worry that it's going to get a wee bit nasty this time. People are going to be understandably passionate about these things and there are certainly those out there who think it's unfair that the "big bloggers" have undue influence. I'm sure I'll be "on the take" of 5 different campaigns (I wish!) as will plenty of others. I'm sure various big bloggers will end up supporting different candidate, so we'll probably end up fighting with each other too. The various blog factions - wonks, netroots - will imagine the other faction is working out of ignorance and bad faith. And on and on.
So, do I pick a team?
