Further Reading

For more information about blogging and politics, here are some resources:

"The Rise of Open Source Politics" - a bit old, but insightful discussion of new internet media and politics.

Wikipedia: Political Blogs - especially see the sections on the USA and the cited articles in the footnotes.

"Political Blogs: The New Iowa?" - an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, a very credible source.

Politics 2.0 - a feature that Mother Jones did about how the internet will influence the next election.

"Politics 2.008: how will the Internet influence the presidential election?" - another article.

Mainstream Blogs: Washington Post Blogs

Stumped and The Trail both cover the presidential campaign. The Trail is written by various journalists and includes plain news articles, whereas Stumped is written by one person.
The writer of Stumped appears to be very pro-Obama. He is Andres Martinez, a journalist from Southern California. This is different from the other blogs in that the entire blog consists of his answers to letters sent in to him. There is also a commenting system, so readers can discuss political issues.
The Trail has few opinion pieces, but there does seem to be a heavy Democratic bias. For example, one article reads: "If you're a McCain you call that a smashing victory and sweep up tons of delegates, but Democrats don't work that way, because of their fetish for "fairness" and all that."

Mainstream Blog: Political Punch

Political Punch from ABC News is written by ABC News Correspondent Jake Tapper. Because it is from an individual, it is more biased than the others, using satirical phrases such as "Clinton'$ Ca$h Woe$" to show his opinion. Tapper has written books critical of Bush, but he also openly criticizes candidates such as Romney and Clinton in his blog, so it is hard to see where his bias lies.

Mainstream Blog: CNN Political Ticker

CNN's Political Ticker described itself as having the "latest political news from CNN's Best Political Team, with campaign coverage, 24-7." Like many other mainstream blogs, this is not really a blog; it is simply a news aggregator with no analysis, blogger-reader interaction, or interaction with other blogs. However, it seems fairly objective, or as objective as CNN is in general.

Mainstream Blog: RealClearPolitics

RealClearPolitics is a blog that is part of a larger website. Although it claims to be independent, a simple google search reveals that it is partially owned by Forbes Media, and it is syndicated on Time Magazine's website. There are only a couple of different bloggers, and there is no commenting system here either. The posts mainly link to and analyze other news stories or blog posts. It seems to be pretty objective because it is a team effort.

Mainstream Blog: National Review Blog

Though it is called a "blog," this is missing some of the important qualities that define a blog. There is no commenting system, so blogger/reader interaction is heavily impaired. This also means that readers cannot discuss their opinions on a specific blog post very easily. Also, the authors are all anonymous, and the blog doesn't link to other blogs as independent ones always do. Despite the fact that National Review is known for being a conservative publication, this blog doesn't seem too biased, mainly because it's more of a syndication for their news articles than an actual blog.
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Mainstream Blog: Fox News Blog

The Fox News Campaign Blog is predictably conservative in both the comments posted by readers and their analysis of democratic candidates. There are MANY comments as well. Most of the news is fact-oriented (I suspect they post their regular news stories here as well as analyses) and the bloggers are anonymous journalists. There was no interaction between bloggers and commenters that I saw here.