When the Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain came down today, I thought about the political clients I work with and wondered what I would do if I were a campaign blogger.

I know that my gut reaction would be to write a flaming, Anakin Skywalker-like post about how awful the ruling is. A “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, what the hell is our country coming to???”-type post is what comes to mind.

Because I am such a level-headed and non-emotional person however — ahem — I would of course take a deep breath and realize that my boss, (enter candidate’s name here), probably would not appreciate me editorializing on her blog. I would, straight away, ask her what her position on the ruling is.

Which brings me to my point. Candidates are pretty busy, most of them hold full-time jobs in addition to running for public office, so who can really blame them for not formulating a position on every issue that comes down the pike. That’s where the blogs come in.

If campaign bloggers do their jobs well, they will know a) which current issues are important to blog about and b) that they need to find out what their candidate’s position on the issue is before blogging about it.

The upshot is that even if a candidate hasn’t thought about their position on eminent domain and the government seizing private property to build new space for Pfize…um “public use”, they will have to decide what their position is. This may be the second greatest thing blogs are doing for politics today (with community building being first).

What could be better than forcing politicians to take a stand, for better or for worse, on the issues that are important to voters?