Over the past two weeks, I’ve presented various aspects of campaign 2008. I’d been planning to go ahead and point my readers to the most partisan websites in order to give a broad look at politics on the Internet.

Recently, however, many political commentators have started to call the race over, as Barack Obama surges far ahead in the polls. Does that preclude the value of looking at political sites?

Not on your life.

The race is far from over, and taking a look at the state of the art of political discourse on the Web can be fun and instructive.

To start on solid footing, there are rational, centrist, journalistic sites on the Web worth the reading by the left, center, and right. A top example is Slate at www.slate.com. Originally founded by Microsoft, Slate was taken over by the Washington Post group. Though some of its top journalists could be considered liberal-minded, its principal blogger Micky Kaus is decidedly on the right. Iraq war apologist and general political gadfly Christopher Hitchens is a regular contributor. I turn to Slate especially because of Dahlia Lithwick and her excellent commentary on judicial affairs.

On the more left side of Web journalism is Salon.com. One of a handful of successful Web “ezines,” Salon commentary lands decidedly on the progressive side of the spectrum. I’d check out Salon blogger and constitutional lawyer Glen Greenwald to see what political commentary on the left can be at its most passionate.

Conservative bible National Review has a strong presence on the Web, and its political blog, The Corner at corner.nationalreview.com, is often linked to by bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum. Without question, articles and blog posts by David Frum, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Mark Steyn, and others at NRO represent the current state of conservative thought in the wild.

Best-of-breed liberal/progressive blogs for non-stop political news and commentary are: Daily Kos at www.dailykos.com for some of the best pure political analysis; Talking Points Memo at www.talkingpointsmemo.com for political commentary and good progressive investigative journalism; Eschaton at www.eschatonblog.com for economic analysis and political commentary; the Huffington Post at www.huffingtonpost.com for Ariana Huffington’s commentary and tour-de-force news aggregation; and firedoglake at www.firedoglake.com for liberal/progressive analysis, commentary, and opinion.

Most popular and emblematic conservative blogs include:  talk radio’s Hugh Hewitt and his blog at hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/ with passionate support for John McCain and all viewpoints to the right; columnist and Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin’s blog at www.michellemalkin.com featuring some of the most volatile commentary on the Web; RedState at www.redstate.com and Power Line at www.powerline.com with lots of red meat for the partisans; and the Drudge Report at www.drudgereport.com, the mega-successful news aggregator famous for supporting right-wing talking points.

Prominent conservative Andrew Sullivan at andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/ is especially interesting because, in spite of his longstanding conservatism, he’s come out against the McCain-Palin ticket.

At any and all of these online magazines, news-aggregators, and political blogs you can find additional links to like-minded blogs leading to the discovery of the political commentary proliferating on the Web. But remember: the comments are usually not censored and don’t always reflect the opinions and principles of the bloggers themselves. Although these comments can be elucidating — and shocking — they often travel far afield of the bloggers that inspire them.

Ross can be reached at napanet.net. His Web page is napanet.net/—calross/