Blogging -- And Feeding -- The Horserace

Intriguing Howie Kurtz piece in yesterday's WaPo about how blogs in mainstream news outlets are affecting the presidential campaign. Here's the thesis:

The mushrooming number of political blogs on newspaper and magazine Web sites has altered the terrain of the 2008 election. Campaign officials have learned to feed the bottomless pit of these constantly updated compilations, leaking favorable tidbits -- a new poll result or television ad -- and quickly disputing negative items.

In short, journalists and political strategists find themselves sparring more and more over smaller and smaller items on shorter and shorter deadlines.

At times I've expressed the pitiably naive hope that blogs and other Web 2.o contraptions could move us beyond horserace politics. That instead, the proliferation of outlets would encourage citizens to debate issues, problems, solutions -- in short, policy.

I've moved on from that hope. Certainly that exists for people willing to take the time to seek it out. But usually blogs engage in a binary conversation in which every issue is divided into a left position and a right position and each new development is slotted according to which position it supports. Partly this is because many bloggers are partisans of one wing or another. Part of it also is that covering the horserace or slotting issues into left or right is just easier. Hell, I have three posts on my wish list right now; this is the one that doesn't require any additional research.

Now that MSM outlets are jumping on the blogwagon, the blogosphere's service to horserace politics is a fait accompli. Because of blogs , things are different. Not better. Just different.

By the way, Kurtz notes that of all the campaigns, Hillary Clinton deals with blogs the most aggressively. Another reason she's pulling ahead by several furlongs.