Please note that this post, and its opinions, are wholly those of the author of this post, and were not written at the request of, nor as the result of any interview with, either of the bloggers about which it was written  ee

I don’t even need to delve into my (limited) coding skills to link to all of the posts and features written about our beloved Bloggrrll Melissa McEwan (a/k/a Shakespeare’s Sister) and Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon. There has been so much written about the “bloggers leaving the Edwards campaign” that it is easy to find a link via any search engine.

As I emailed to Pam the other night: I have so much to say but don’t know where to begin.

I will begin now, with this: these two women were hired by the Edwards campaign. They were deemed of value in the respective roles for which they were hired.

Head to There’s Moresville (below the fold), please, to continue…They agreed to work and support the campaign of a single (one of SO MANY now) presidential candidate, and gave that support very early into said candidacy. Amanda, taking a full-time position for the campaign, was literally in the process of moving her entire life from Texas to North Carolina. Melissa, whilst part time and working from home, had already made many provisions for her incredible network of co-bloggers to keep up her burgeoning-in-popularity weblog in order to devote her time to the more technical aspects of Edwards’ netroots campaign.

Both of these women gave their 100%+, but when a far-right extremist twisted comments and made a small stink, all of the sudden Edwards was “offended” by their remarks. His remarks stating that he was “giving a second chance” to Melissa and Amanda were effete, in my opinion, because by not chastising also the radical that is Donohue, he implicitly added his support to the message that everything Donohue says/said is correct, whilst his OWN EMPLOYEES were “offensive” to him.

However, what happened then is unimaginable. Amanda and Melissa became deluged – not with bible verses or other scripture – but with death threats, rape threats, and other forms of torture or bodily harm. Minutes before a telephone conversation I had with Melissa, someone had driven up to her own home and pounded threateningly on her door, leaving after many, many fear-filled minutes. This young lady lives in a home with a loving husband, and beloved pets. Her home has been violated, her well-being has been threatened, and …where the F were Edwards or his campaign manager(s)? [That sound you hear is the group of crickets, chirping in the otherwise-silence of the room].

These two intelligent women resigned because of threats to their lives, their families, and their homes.

The Edwards campaign quietly accepted their resignations, and MADE NOT ANOTHER STATEMENT, which can only serve the violent, vitriolic spawn of the Donohue philosophy.

What youngsters like Edwards DO NOT GET is that no matter how many people he throws under the bus, he will never, as a Democrat, get the fringe vote of the Christofacists (oops, there’s that durn term again, but I say if the shoe fits…). Once again, a democrat-aligned candidate will not EVER get said votes. Their votes will never go to a “D” no matter how many gays s/he discriminates against, or how many times s/he denies a raped girl access to the morning after pill.

Now, he has lost the support, the respect, the money, and the votes of the reality-based community which, as he will likely find out this time around, are increasing in number, whilst the radical fringe who throw death threats, whose vote he is obviously courting here, will diminish, or crawl back into the holes from whence they came.

ee

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Crossposted at The Educated Eclectic