Extreme Mortman is interviewing top bloggers from early presidential caucus and primary states. Here are Andrew Seal and Niral Shah of The Little Green Blog in New Hampshire:

Mortman: Tell me what The Little Green Blog is.
Seal: The Little Green Blog is a blog run by a group of liberal/progressive Dartmouth College students. We try to focus primarily on issues directly concerning the College, though we often comment on politics and culture–pop, highbrow, anything that strikes our fancy.
Shah: As a legacy of the Dartmouth Review, a once-notorious (and now irrelevant) conservative student publication, there is a skewed perception of Dartmouth by alumni and the outside community in general. While the Review may have faded, conservative blogs continue to provide a one-sided, often reactionary perspective, targeted towards alumni. Little Green Blog provides a slightly more realistic source of information about Dartmouth as students.

Mortman: What is your role?
Seal: I guess I’m just the most frequent poster; we really have no sort of hierarchy or anything.
Shah: While I post less frequently than in the past, my main role is as a poster. I served as the transition link between the seniors who founded the blog and graduated in 2005, and the students who currently write for LGB.

Mortman: How will blogs and online communities affect and change the New Hampshire presidential primary in 2008?
Seal: I think the impact will be fairly significant, but perhaps the influence will be greater in forming external impressions of what is happening in NH rather than on shaping internal impressions. In other words, I think blogs will be more useful for pundits than voters, but that this will quite likely act in a sort of feedback loop–what you may see on the news or read in the paper tomorrow may be influenced by what a blog observed about a candidate’s visit today, and that will impact the voter in the election.

Mortman: Compare the impact blogs and online communities will have in 2008 primary campaigning and voting to that of the mainstream media?
Seal: Clearly, the blog’s advantage is its speed and mobility. A blogger based like we are in a typical campaign stop (Dartmouth College) can cover a town hall meeting in progress or just after it; I think pundits, and all interested parties, will find that a great advantage. In addition, bloggers often have specific focuses in covering political events; they’ll be looking for different things in a candidate than the press-at-large will, and will notice different things as well. Quality subjective judgment (assuming for the moment that the press is objective) can be enormously useful when trying to evaluate a candidate’s performance, especially on specific issues.
In addition, blogs are much better at aggregating news sources–news reports, other blogs, video, etc.; the soul of blogging is connection, and I think that will be useful to a variety of different people–candidates’ staffs, the press, amateur wonks outside of NH, and, hopefully, to the voters.
Shah: Everything Andrew says about blogs is true, and applies to LGB as well as any other. However, I’d also like to note, we are aware that our blog is not the end-all-be-all in any argument. Staying grounded keeps our opinions accessible and honest. We’re part of the debate, not the noise.

Mortman: Will blogs follow the mainstream media or will the mainstream media follow the blogs?
Seal: That’s pretty much the choice of mainstream media. They can choose to ignore blogs–at their peril, I think, but they can. Bloggers can’t choose to ignore mainstream media. We enjoy critiquing it too much, for one thing.
Shah: Bloggers and the MSM can’t exist in a vaccuum. There is definitely reciprocal influence between each, and while the MSM has long been predominant, the balance is starting to slide just enough for blogs to check the most egregious errors of the media. Ultimately, mainstream media has the money and the masses, blogging does not, and the principal causes of this discrepancy won’t change anytime soon.

Mortman: What role will young voters play in the 2008 primary?
Seal: Well, young voters were almost exclusively behind Dean in 2004, but that didn’t turn out very well, so I’m not sure. I feel like New Hampshire is a state that prides itself on avoiding trendy choices, which is basically what the youth candidate always is. On the other hand, you’ve got a whole lot of kids who are aching to have some excuse to avoid schoolwork or their job or whatever and who make an ideal cadre for getting out the vote, getting out the candidate’s name, etc. Maybe the strategy should be: be the youth candidate, but don’t let everyone know about it.

Mortman: Which potential candidates, Democrats and Republicans, have been organizing online campaigns?
Seal: I haven’t really run into any large netroots efforts yet. I know Obama has had a few excellent posts on DailyKos and Feingold just had something up on HuffingtonPost, but not much yet.

Mortman: As we approach the NH primary, which candidates, both Dem and Republican, will have more appeal to blogs and online communities– and why? And which will have the least — and why?
Seal: I don’t think bloggers will support a candidate for reasons too different from those of a normal voter–if the candidate takes you seriously, then you find him or her appealing. Candidates that develop and work through netroots will be liked by blogs and candidates that seem too arrogant to stoop to the ‘net for exposure will probably get some rough treatment. I think this is doubly true for left-of-center blogs, which are often run by people attracted naturally to the type of candidates who need blogs for exposure–the underdogs.

Mortman: Who will win the 2008 New Hampshire presidential primary — both Dem and Republican?
Seal: Well, I can answer one burning question pretty confidently. I don’t think Hillary will win; she seems to hate New Hampshire–I don’t think she’s been here since 1994 or something. Candidates don’t win NH unless they actually spend time in the town halls and similar events.
As for who will win, I can’t really say. I think NH will respond well to Feingold’s toughness and poorly to Bayh’s smoothness. Edwards is somewhere closer to Bayh in that regard, but he’s already put in quite a bit of effort into NH; Warner’s record of sober executive efficiency will probably sell well. Then you’ve got Clark, who ignored NH last time. [Extreme Mortman note: Clark actually ignored Iowa, not New Hampshire]. I doubt he’ll do that again, but it might have irritated state party leaders and confused voters.
I think Giuliani will probably do well as long as he puts in the effort. McCain has won here already, and his maverick image will win him a lot of support. George Allen’s out there too, but he seems more of a party favorite than a people’s favorite.

Mortman: How will The Little Green Blog cover the primary?
Seal: We’ll try to do as much live-blogging, on the spot reporting as we can. I personally will have graduated before the actual event, but candidates have already started their rounds, and things will likely heat up a whole lot this fall with the midterm elections. We’ll see if we can get some interviews–at least with staff, but who knows. We’ll try to get as much access as they’ll give us and then post anything we get.
Shah: I’m not sure. I’d assume we’ll have photo-blogging, first-hand accounts of events, a picture of student opinion towards candidates, political analysis, and hopefully interviews. The midterm elections will be a good chance to see just how we, and Dartmouth blogging in general, take on such high-profile politics in our backyard.