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I came across an article in last month’s issue of Campaigns & Elections magazine entitled Lessons Learned from the 2006 elections with a segment written by former Joe Lieberman Communications Director (primary campaign) Marion Steinfels. The title of the Steinfels segment: Beware the Bloggers: Lessons from the Lieberman campaign discusses how strongly the Lieberman primary campaign was affected by the onslaught of the blogosphere.

What’s strange is that when I went to link the story from their site for this post, her segment is mysteriously missing…

The entire article is well worth the read, but here are the three lessons she offers:

Lesson One: Monitor and engage early in new mediums like the blogosphere, viral video sharing sites and online social networks

Lesson Two: If you don’t engage early enough and wind up in trouble, engage then. It is never, ever, too late. After all, if you don’t have an online presence or relationships with bloggers, then your mnessage online, and this is important, in the mainstream media can be compromised in a split second

Lesson Three: Don’t just worry about defense; get on the offense. Use these new mediums to your campaign’s advantage

No duh. It would seem that her new boss - Joe Biden (she’s his deputy national communications director) has taken this to heart. His presidential site is easy to navigate and offers numerous online engagement features. Too bad… because nothing’s going to get him over the $50 million fund raising hump he’ll need to get over by summer’s end.