Jeff Jarvis, Dan Gillmor, and Ed Cone led a discussion about Weblogs in Presidential Politics.#

David Weinberger posts his synopsis.#

Jeff Jarvis is doing the Phil Donahue thing surprisingly effectively as moderator. He asks: Has Dean's success been due to his blog? Dan Gillmor says it's three things: A candidate who has a message that appeals to people. Second, the campaign's being run by Joe Trippi, a guy who "totally understands techhnology." Third, they had the "amazing insight" inside the campaign that they shouldn't try to control the Web activity they'd engendered.

Jeff asks if we want the candidate to be led by blogs. Room sentiment seems to be that we don't want blogs to be an ad hoc polling system that guides the candidate's policy. Eric Folley, the DNC blogger guy, says that we get from candidates' blogs turns of phrases, ways of putting ideas, etc.

Dan says that we should have blogs that really drill in on issues, telling us what all the campaigns are saying.