random rants and references

In his view, "Dean ... amassed an E-mail list of 600,000 names. ...(which) Kerry inherited" This enabled his campaign to raise more money than the Bush campaign. But that Internet constituency was motivated primarily by hatred of George W. Bush; and “Now the big money comes from the left blogosphere and Bush-hating billionaires like George Soros.” On the other hand (the right one!), “The Bush campaign, quietly, used the Internet to build an E-mail list of 7.5 million names and a corps of 1.4 million volunteers who produced more new votes than the Democrats. But the right blogosphere was different from the left. There was no one dominant website and no one orthodoxy. ..... The focus of hatred in the right blogosphere is not Kerry or the Democrats but what these bloggers call Mainstream Media, or MSM. They argue, correctly in my view, that the New York Times, CBS News, and others distorted the news in an attempt to defeat Bush in 2004.” He concludes : "So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans."

I agree and think the Old Media Impact is a fundamental change that will accelerate and extend far beyond political campaigns. Just when I thought I could add a discussion of blogs impacting Old Media on the SwiftBoat Vet, Rathergate, and Eason Jordan stories, I found that Powerline has an interview with Barone and 2 great posts on those subjects and more. Read both herePower Line: A word from Michael Barone More Power to them!

# posted by Gene @ 12:21 AM