Some perspective, on the Meaning of It All:

...it is a delusion to believe that the blogosphere is representative of anything but the hundreds of thousands of scribblers that join in this marvelous medium and the few millions of good folks who read it. The Moose is always struck by how few people actually read a blog or even are familiar with their existence - even those who are politically active. Of course, it is also true that a diminishing number of people by the day read mainstream newspapers and journals - not necessarily a healthy phenomena for a functionary democracy.

So, alas, it is generally a good thing that the blogosphere provides an opportunity for more and more Americans who want to get engaged and sound off. However, we should keep it in perspective. The blogosphere is generally an ideological hothouse that does not reflect the everyday thoughts of Americans. In that way, it is much like talk radio.

Blogs appear far more influential in the Democratic than the Republican party. With the waning influence of the labor movement - the blogs and the trial lawyers are picking up the slack as influential institutions. However, politicians should not make more of the blogs than what they are - highly ideological and only representative of the very left faction of the base.

--Marshall "Bull Moose" Wittman

Not being a centrist, and as a skeptic of calls for a "Third Way" in American politics (oh, if it were true that we even had a "Second Way"), I view the emergence of the blogosphere as a welcome development. But the combination of years having been spent in the political wilderness with the unmediated forum that is blogging has created a poisonous strain in the rhetoric of my cohorts on the left, one that is more atuned to letting us vent spleen and less towards actually persuading fence-sitters and accomplishing something as mundane as, well, winning elections that matter. As with talk radio, the more violent and extreme the rhetoric, the more popular the sight, and with this phenomenum afflicting both sides of the debate, the blogosphere is becoming an increasingly ugly arena.

Not having an editor permits many of us to reveal Our Inner Asshole, in all its resplendent glory, on a daily basis, and it's not a pretty sight by any means. It may warm our cockles to pretend that outing a CIA spook is the same thing as treason, or that the 2004 election was lost because of some nefarious scheme cooked up at Diebold's headquarters, or that photoshopping the face of a blackfaced minstrel is a witty jibe at an African-American Republican, but we shouldn't pretend that it's a ticket to the White House.