I wholly expect 2006 to be vicious, with Thune type blog efforts in many many races. Knowing and expecting this is the key. So that when the slime comes the ground work is already done to deal with it.

That means having local blogs blogging local races, and being able to feed that stuff up to bigger blogs and into the press.

Of course that is now, as people think the blogs are more and more important, so they will be - it is almost self fulfilling.

What we really need is a political blogger university, to train activists in political blogging. How to frame, how to talk to the press, how to push back and push forward and how to do effective oppo etc.

What is also needed is a viable funding model. Blogging is very time consuming, and doesnt support the blogger - the best folks arent going to do it forever and for free.

I don't know, I'm not a blogger. I do know the Democratic leadership seems to have regular conference calls with bloggers, so to some extent there seems to be coordination taking place.

I'm sure this happens with the mainstream media journalists/pundits as well. But the mainstream media folk are not on our side -- they can go either way. So in that regard, one gigantic side of the triangle is missing.

I often wonder what exactly those with power/influence on the Left are doing. The Right Wing Noise Machine isn't a secret -- it's been discussed to no end. So where is our version of that? Is anyone making a serious attempt to create a Left Wing Noise Machine comparable with the Right's?

I've often heard DLCers mention that the Democratic party needs to move to the center, because our base is smaller than the Republican base. What I never hear them talk about is what to do to change this.

I get incredibly frustrated whenever this discussion comes up. Because I have to keep asking myself, what are our guys doing? Are they just incompetent? Inert? You cannot keep relying on the mainstream media to convey your message to the people, because the mainstream media is unreliable. So where's our Fox News, or Washington Times, or Wall Street Journal? And why are there only a handful of liberal talk-radio hosts, when there seems to be an unending supply of conservative ones?

Does anyone know?

(BTW, it's not that I'm not acknowledging the work of Air America, Ed Schultz, or the various lefty blogs, or the numerous liberal writers out there. It's just that all these efforts still pale in comparison with the Right's, and I'm wondering if there is a concerted attempt being made to fix this.)

Fuhgettaboutit.

Seriously . . .

Right Wing Blogs are effective because they are a coordinated extension of the Right Wing Noise Machine.

The Democratic Party and the Left Wing has no central message, and no message cooridination -- which makes it much more difficult to have a meaningful impact.

In South Dakota, the the GOP campaign operative bloggers successfully intimidated several MSM reporters; the best thing we can do to help our team is attack and expose the phony right wing blogs, and defend the MSM from this new line of attack.

conversely, dkos, mydd, and other fine liberal blogs (including my own) have only been around for 4 or 5 years tops.  leftwing radio has only been picking up steam for about the same amount of time.

granted, right wing politicos (or at least, their staffs) pay more attention to right wing blogs than their counterparts on the left (and much to the left/moderate politician's detriment).  but even that is changing.

albeit slowly.

the solution?

if you're a blogger, create relationships with actually msm reporters (even locally).  that's what the rightists did and do.

if you're simply a citizen, don't be afraid to call media and politicians' offices and decry misinformation or provide real information.

don't criticize the media.  become the media.  (sorry we forget who said that first, it was not us, although we did coin the phrase "blogtopia"!!)

South Dakota is not a unique situation but it is a rare situation.  The Des Moines Register, for example, has an outsized influence in Iowa.  But a model built on influencing ONE newspaper will not work as well in nearly all of the states as it did in South Dakota.

We may find that influencing Associated Press reporters and editors has more effect than working on individual newspapers.  And my own experience shows that the editors are reasonable and can be moved.

Right now I suspect that Daily Kos is far more influential than any GOPer blog.  It has already been givn the Michael Moore demonizing treatment.  When one GOper attack centered on the evils of Armando it was a sure sign that dKos was having an impact.

Beyond that, liberal blogs, as mentioned above, serve a more vital function than conservative blogs.  They provide information and opinion beyond what "even the SCLM" like the NY Times, LA Times , and Washington Post manage.