Last week, the Chris Dodd for President campaign used the networking site of Gather.com to republish an article critical of Michael Mukasey. The idea, I guess, is to spread Chris Dodd’s words around, to give more people an idea that he’s a serious thinker who’s sharply critical of the right wing Republican attack on liberty in America.

That’s a nice idea, but when I came upon the article, I had just checked with the Library of Congress, and saw that when Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General of the United States came up for a vote in the Senate, Chris Dodd didn’t even bother to show up to cast a vote against Mukasey.

I wanted to know why, so I left a comment at the article, asking for an explanation. Two days later, I see that no one has bothered to even try to explain why Dodd didn’t show up to vote against Mukasey.

That’s a great example of how a political campaign should not use a networking site. If you’re going to publish an article, and someone offers a criticism of the ideas in the article, there ought to be someone at the campaign who takes note and provides the candidate’s explanation on that criticism.

If the campaign isn’t able to do that, then they’re not really using the networking capacity of the site. They’re just broadcasting, and would do better to stay off the networking site altogether.

As it is, the impression created by Chris Dodd’s activity on Gather.com is of someone who makes a pretense of reaching out to voters, but doesn’t actually care enough about what voters think to set up mechanisms for his campaign to listen and respond to them.

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