Over at Tech Central Station, I wrote a follow-up on Andrew Rasiej's unsuccessful campaign for New York City Public Advocate ("The Technorati Candidate"). Despite a technology-centric platform that seemed to resonate with tech-savvy voters, the Rasiej campaign team nevertheless barely managed to win more than 5% of the popular vote:

"In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore found out that it was possible to win the popular vote, and still lose the electoral vote. In last week's Democratic primary for New York City Public Advocate, Andrew Rasiej found out that it was possible to win the blogger vote, and still lose the popular vote.

For the two months leading up to the primary election on September 13, Rasiej captured the hearts and minds of bloggers like no other candidate since Howard Dean with a technology-centric campaign that included a plan for citywide wireless Internet access, a video blog (in addition to a regular blog), and a plan for making 911 calls from the NYC subway. On the day preceding the election, in fact, "Rasiej" ranked as one of the ten most popular search terms on the blog search engine Technorati. Anyone convinced of the power of the blogosphere to determine the fate of political careers (Trent Lott, anyone?) would surely have guessed that Mr. Rasiej was on the cusp of sweeping into office with a broad new mandate to revolutionize politics."

Alas, it was not to be. So... will the blogosphere ever be able to elect one of its own? Are candidates like Howard Dean and Mr. Rasiej on the right track, or are all bloggers collectively participating in some kind of mass delusion?