John Edwards Keeps Renegade Bloggers

Great news for the Republican party - John Edwards has decided to keep Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan on the payroll for the time being. (Doesn't mean he won't quietly dump them before the campaign kicks into a higher gear, of course.) This will be hailed as a victory among the lefty netroots and will re-invigorate their devotion to Edwards.

If 2004 repeats itself, and Edwards is able to capitalize on online fundraising the way Howard Dean did, he will syphon a lot of money and primary voter allegiance away from the Obama and Clinton campaigns, while simultaneously ensuring that if he were to somehow get the Democratic nod (unlikely even with nutroots help) he would automatically be rejected by large swaths of non-insane Democratic voters.

Edwards looks like a tool for having so easily and carelessly gotten himself into this mess, so really it's win-win-win for Republicans.