MSM Wars II: Attack of the Netroots

Matt Continetti argues [1]:

Inside Crashing the Gate, Armstrong and Moulitsas write that the top liberal blogs grow at a geometric rate, and that, "by late November 2005, the top seventy or so liberal blogs, led by Daily Kos, garnered about 60 million page-views every month." In Blog, his book on the phenomenon, the right-wing blogger Hugh Hewitt writes that "Kos gets 1.6 million--that's million--visitors a month."

For blogs, those are large numbers. For politics, however, they are small. Assuming there are 1 million regular readers of Daily Kos throughout America, that is still only 1/280th of the population--and only 1/59th of the number of people who voted for John Kerry in the last election. It is a tiny fraction of the American electorate.

The blogosphere is certainly encroaching on the mainstream, but is far from there yet. However, as Ezra [2] points out, absolute numbers in this sense are meaningless. Reaching a wide audience may produce a certain degree of influence, but is worth zilch unless translated into action. The netroots have certainly proven to be a motivated base and have cultivated dramatic inroads into equalizing the monetary war-chest between parties, have brought critical issues to the fore, fact-checked the hell out of the MSM, and organized dedicated activists throughout the country.

However, Continetti’s argument is pertinent to the extent that all base-movements are lacking. Preaching to the choir and motivating an electoral base is certainly a vital function of progressive media. However, like any mainstream movement, the blogs are doing a less than adequate job in reaching out to the disinterested. We tend to forget that in every presidential election, no candidate has received a majority vote. In fact, by a 3-1 margin, We the People have chosen ‘none of the above’ for every election in my memory. Until we start making inroads with the 60% of the country who don’t feel their vote matters, we will continue to battle it out for votes among the existing politically engaged.

Bottom line is that there is a helluva large group out there just waiting to be drawn in on issues that matter to them. The first to do that will win in a landslide.