Mark Binker thinks that Richard Moore is creating a "snark cycle."

In a Spinning the Web panel this morning, the Greensboro News & Record reporter said that the state treasurer's campaign is waging a low-level online campaign of "elbow jabs" at his rival for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue.

In years past, Binker said that the charges — of flip-flopping on abortion or years-old investigations — might have been column fodder or part of a whispering campaign. Now, they're online.

He said that he's watching this tactic closely to see how it affects the campaign offline.

"What's going to be interesting to me is to see whether this baseline snark carries over when the campaign heats up or whether it backfires on him," he said.

Zephyr Teachout said not everyone has to be online.

In a Spinning the Web panel this morning, the former Howard Dean organizer pointed out that only 11 percent of Ukrainians were online during that country's 2004 Orange Revolution.

But she said that those people were influential enough that they could get the word out about mass protests, help plan events or debate political ideology.

Teachout said there is a lesson there for people in rural North Carolina communities who want to organize online.

"Even in rural counties with a low percentage online you can still connect with the real influentials," she said.

As William Goldman once said of Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

That was the running theme of the morning session of "Spinning the Web," a conference by the Institute of Political Leadership and the John Locke Foundation.

In a panel with conservative online blogger Jon Henke, former Howard Dean online organizer Zephyr Teachout and Elon University pollster George Taylor, all three agreed that political campaigns are not doing as much as they can.

Henke said that conservatives, in particular, have not organized online, in part because they haven't had a unifying cause like the left has had with President Bush and the Iraq war.

Teachout said that political campaigns are not following up with interested volunteers, or as she put it, making a campaign more like church and less like a rally.

And Taylor stressed that more young voters than ever are communicating online, but they're still a largely untapped resource.

How will blogs affect the 2008 races in North Carolina?

Your guess is as good as mine. But I'll be giving my thoughts on the issue along with other state political bloggers at a conference next week regardless.

The event, sponsored by the N.C. Institute of Political Leadership and the John Locke Foundation, is called "Spinning the Web: Politics in the Internet Age."

Aside from yours truly, the other speakers will include former Howard Dean online strategist Zephyr Teachout, bloggers Ed Cone, Laura Leslie, Mark Binker and Mary Katherine Ham; and Robin Dorff of the institute.

The event begins at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 8, at the Research Triangle Park Hilton. Tickets, which cost $25, are available here. For those unable to attend, I will post some of the highlights that day.