Are Blogs the New Iowa?

David D. Perlmutter and Emily Metzgar pose this interesting question in an editorial from The Christian Science Monitor. It's worth a read. Blogs had an effect on the 2004 campaign, and they'll have an even larger effect on the 2006 mid-terms. 2008? I think Perlmutter and Metzgar are correct in their belief that the next group of presidential candidates will have to work the blogosphere the old-fashioned way - one blog at a time. The Harriet Miers controversy proved right sided blogs won't always fall into into lock step with one another. A candidate won't be able to interview with, say, Glenn Reynolds and like an instalanche, expect hundreds of other blogs to blindly endorse them. It just won't work that way, and that's a good thing.

Candidates will need to learn how to knock on doors again, blog by blog, in order to earn a bloggers trust and ultimately, an endorsement, proving once again that all politics is local, even in the blogosphere.