Richardson Campaign Gets Bloggers on Board

Today, Bill Richardson’s campaign is launching a television ad in New Hampshire about removing residual troops in a Iraq, a position on which he diverges from the leading Democratic candidates. And bloggers on are board!

The ad is being cut from a YouTube video into a 30-second spot featuring three leading progressive bloggers: Christina Siun O'Connell of Firedoglake.com, and Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers of OpenLeft (who wrote about the ad yesterday).

They don't endorse the New Mexico governor in the ad, but their appearance in it nevertheless underscores the leverage many bloggers are perceived to have gained in framing the issues.

Last week, The Observer reported on how the role of bloggers is changing in the presidential campaign, spreading campaign messages with a viral power inaccessible to traditional newspaper reporters and without the constraint of journalistic "objectivity" that characterizes the mainstream-media ethos. Bloggers serve as trusted sources of information for thousands of online activists—both right and left, and so now they're getting the juice--in the form of a precious trickle of leaks during the contentious primary season that once was sucked dry by the big guys. Now, they get to give back.