More on the Gore endorsement

Lessig’s blog pointed me off to Dan Gillmor’s essay on Gore’s endorsement of Dean, which also reminded me of Joe Conason’s piece in Salon (sorry: you’ll have to register for a free day pass to read the whole thing). Bottom line: Gore is doing something different from the mainstream Democratic establishment because he’s regained some of his integrity and passion (that which was lost in the run up to the Clinton years). Again and again — and Gore did it, too — people are pointing to the genuinely grassroots nature of the Dean campaign. The net has been an essential element of that, given its decentralized architecture. As Gillmor notes, though, we need to keep protecting that (a la Lessig’s long arguments).