The Cyber-factor...

Michael Barone looks at how the internet - and the blogosphere - has changed U.S. politics generally and each party specifically.

The rise of groups like MoveOn.org and blogs like Kos have energized the Left base enough to wield more power within the Democratic party at the grass-roots level:

As Dean says, "I hate the Republicans and everything that they stand for." Hate. But Bush hatred was not enough to beat Bush in 2004 -- Democratic turnout was up, but Republican turnout was up more -- and doesn't seem likely to beat Republicans in 2006 and 2008. The left blogosphere has driven the Democrats into an electoral cul de sac.

Whereas the GOP took a different approach:

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 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.

Can Democrats reverse their fortunes? Not likely IMO, they first need to get over the hate, which means admitting they have a problem.

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