(Originally posted at Greater Democracy)

The other day, I participated in a conference call put together by Mathew Gross for bloggers interested in the Erskine Bowles campaign. I was very interested in this because it was the first conference call I know of by a senatorial campaign aimed at the blogging community. It follows nicely on the blogging of political conventions.

There was a bit of talk about polls and strategy, but the conference call just didn’t get me excited. Bowles has a blog, which is pretty good. There are nearly sixties entries in the blog. Nearly half of them have no comments and only two had more then ten comments, one had 15 and one had 24. It is worth noting that the two entries that had the most comments were primarily about issues. The most commented on entry was about a new ad Bowles is running on health care. The second most commented entry was about an editorial discussion Bowles plan for Homeland Security.

Quite a few of the entries were written by ‘Staff Writer’. Posts which don’t reveal the author always bother me. In some cases, it did reveal the writer in the post. On the upside, six of the posts were identified as being written by Bowles.

To get a little contrast, I did a quick search of some other senatorial blogs.

Over at Betty Castor’s blog all the entries had clear authors. Many had no comments, and only one, a discussion about a debate, had more than ten comments. There were no entries from Betty. Peter Deutsch’s Blog was similar. All posts attributed, none by Peter, and very few comments.

Barack Obama’s blog is a bit different. This is in part because of his delivering the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. His blog entries are not anonymous, and he has posted to his blog. During the period around the convention, he was getting hundreds of comments on his blog.

Patty Murray’s blog has lots of entries with very few comments. They all seem to be properly attributed to the various authors. Patty has several posts attributed to here, and she had two guest bloggers of note, Senator Max Cleland and General Wes Clark.

Joe Hoeffel’s blog is using some software different from MovableType which is so common. The attributions are not part of a comment line like they are in MovableType. It doesn’t appear to support TrackBacks. However, the posters generally put their names in the posts.

During the past month, only two posts had more than ten comments, although a few came close. One post ended up having an off topic discussion about comment moderation.

My own Senator, facing re-election, but expected to be a shoe-in, has a blog. It has only had three posts, and hasn’t had one since July 22nd. The initial entry had 23 comments. None of the entries are attributed.

When I first started writing this, I was thinking about Bowles blog, and then I thought to look at a few other blogs that I knew of. I ended up using my list of candidates from Local Pols. However, that list is only of progressive candidates that have been recommended to me. I then added my local Senator to the mix. Finally, I’ve decided to use Act Blue’s list of candidates

This list has fourteen senatorial blogs listed. Here are comments about some of the other blogs: Senator Barbara Mikulski’s blog only has a few entries in it, all attributed to her. There are a few comments, and that is about it.

Alex Penelas, who is challenging Betty Castor and Peter Deutsch for the Democratic Nomination for Senator Bob Graham’s old seat also has a blog. There are three entries, which are attributed, but have no comments.

Brad Carson’s blog has a lot of entries in it, all of them attributed. Like so many of the other blogs, there aren’t a lot of comments. However, Carson’s blog uses a device seen on many other blogs to get people involved, back in July, he had an Open Thread. It brought in a bunch of positive comments.

Inez Tenebaum’s blog is fairly active. The posts are attributed, but only on a first name basis. One post over the past month had more than ten comments, and it was mostly a discussion about the issue of taxes.

Tom Daschle’s blog has a fair amount of activity. Most of the entries are attributed, including posts attributed to Dashcle. However, some are attributed to ‘Daschle Campaign’. Unfortunately, this blog doesn’t have comments.

Stu Starky’s blog has all its entries attributed to Ed Snook. It has only had about ten entries, and only one had any comments. Stu is considered by many to be a long shot in challenging Sen. John McCain.

Denise Majette’s bloghas seven entries. They are all attributed on a first name basis. Several posts had more than ten comments.

Paul Van Dam’s blog has a fair amount of fully attributed entries. However, it appears that they have only recently started allowing comments, and have yet to receive any.

Maintaining a blog can be a lot of work, and it is great to see so many senatorial blogs. On the conference call there was a discussion about the need to get people off their keyboards and on the streets. However, it was also recognized that there is a need to build community. Having open threads, encouraging comments, listening to the commands and responding, having posts by the candidates and important guests is a great way of building the community that can then be mobilized to get out on the street.