• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, February 14, 2007

To the surprise of no one, blogger Melissa McEwan has also left the John Edwards campaign.

"This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family's level of exposure," she wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare's Sister.

Her former colleague, blogger Amanda Marcotte, resigned Monday in the face of pressure from Catholic League president Bill Donohue.

The whole debacle seems to indicate that politicos like Edwards haven't quite figured out how to use online media in their campaigns. Yes, Edwards and other candidates have released videos on YouTube, bought ads on blogs, and have otherwise tried to garner support via the Internet. But whether they have a sophisticated enough understanding of the Web to use it to garner voters remains in doubt.

Consider, Hillary Clinton misfired with a blog ads buy a few weeks ago. She angered several voices in the blogosphere by purchasing ads on conservative blogs, like Powerline, HughHewitt.com, Wizbang.com, and Captain's Quarters. Then, after determining that the ad buy was a mistake, her campaign asked to pull the ads while continuing to pay for the space; in other words, she paid the blogs to not run ads for her.

Additionally, the candidates don't appear to be using paid search. Political consultant Michael Bassik writes on the new blog TechPresident.com that only five of 17 candidates currently are buying search ads on Yahoo and Google.

While a few candidates -- like Howard Dean or Ned Lamont -- have in the past been able to raise funds or awareness online, the current crop of presidential candidates so far aren't showing much Internet savvy.