I agree with all but one aspect of that: his disparagment of the "hinterland." The politically-unattuned live everywhere. Further, you would be surprised at how politically-attuned the hinterlands are.

You're right. If you dial some yahoo in the hinterland of Queens, you'll get the same response, probably even less informed.

Matt,
I'm not disparaging people in the hinterlands. I'm from the hinterlands. I think, typically, they have better sense than the non-hinterland folk (well, with the exception of Intelligent Design). But people in New York, DC and LA do forget how obsessed we are with media, media coverage, meta media coverage and forget that the majority of America couldn't be bothered.

Karol,
You ain't foolin' me. The only reason you agreed with me was to try to prove how right YOU are about my repeated claims that Condi and Rudy can win. I stand by my claims and you can feel free to dial up the hinterland and try Patrick Ruffini's poll.

if only half the population reads blogs and only half vote....what are the chances that those halves are the same.

blogs can make a big different if they reach the right people. I belive they do.

Cube,
Out of curiosity, has a blog changed your mind recently?

And sure, they CAN make a difference, but c'mon... MOST of this is inside politics for political junkies. It's no different than football or baseball. There are millions of people who don't give a rat's behind about either of those sports and who don't follow them--until the Super Bowl and the World Series. Then they have a party, watch the game and 90% of the crowd gets drunks, watches commercials and says things like "Which ones have the fish on their helmets?" or "Hey, what happened to the Dodgers this year?" while the 8% focuses on THEIR team and the other 2% sit in the corner obsessing over stats and pointing out when the announcers get the smallest thing wrong.

Oh, and Karol, for the record, I was right about
1) Joel Hinrichs
2) The Georgia Tech bombing.

I don't know your position on GT but on Joel Hinrichs it seemed to come down to 'stop sharing information you dumb bloggers and why aren't you linking to me', so not sure how that's correct.

Karol, Karol, Karol,
It wasn't "stop sharing information," it was "why the f-ck are you pulling stuff from your asses and spreading that filth all around the web and calling it 'fact' and/or 'evidence' for some moonbat conspiracy theory that would make the Democratic Underground proud."

People "share information" about Halliburton and Karl Rove every day, no?

As far as the Georgia Tech thing, I think my (bad) attitude was summed up in this post written immediately after and just as the usual suspects were automatically "spreading more information" (by which I mean jumping to wild and wildly wrong conclusions).
http://kenwheaton.blogspot.com/2005/10/here-we-go-again.html

And linking? Pffft. I gave up on that a long time ago. I'm just happy that Dawn Summers links to me every once in a while. She's the best!

You are only slightly overstating the case. I live in a town where we have f/o (fiber optic) cable provided by GTE. Everyone has very high speed internet; usually several machines per house. Most of my neighbors do not know what a blog is; and those that do rarely go to one.
Most do know about Rathergate but not that in addition to Talk Radio, it was blogs that got the truth out to the public.
Rod Stanton
Cerritos

"Out of curiosity, has a blog changed your mind recently?"

I normally don't change my mind quickly or slowly. I shift my position over time as new information comes available and as I learn more about a topic.

for example, i am now convinced that bird flu is somthing that individuals should prepare for (six months food and water should be enough), though I have not always held that position. I thought it was a bunch of WHO morons talking, i am not convinced that there is a chance that bird flu could be a major issue.

So i guess the answer to that question is yes.