As editor of Voic.us, a Drupal community covering Southeast politics, I've been able to watch the political blogospheres of 9 states for the last year, and track their success in moving the political conversation and elections.

Now, with newspapers and campaigns alike fighting to either hire bloggers or get their own blog products out there, I think it's a good time to talk about what works, based on an enormous pile of evidence.

The winning strategy is a scaled community with full-time analysis of candidates, issues, and other bloggers. The site should be friendly with your party, but not overly-friendly. If the site managers feel free to diss their friends at times, so will others. And I can't emphasize enough the need to use a Community Service Network platform, like Scoop, Slash or Drupal, rather than a blog metaphor. (Dailykos runs Scoop.)

Details follow.