People say I remind them of a centrist Brad Pitt (or is it Arm Pitt?)…

That was the pits, Joe!

And he clearly likes to write blog. He simply also sees the limitations of the medium: that the people most listened to tend to be the ones who scream the loudest. In poliblogs, that’s usually the party hacks and uncritical disciples — the blind leading the bland. (Alms for the bland, alms for the bland!) In my own opinion, despite the great images cooked up by the most rabid bloggers of our supplanting the MSM, we will probably be at the best an electronic form of Speaker’s Corner, open to all comers no matter how much they foam at the mouth, with the ability to reply as well as speak. We have our place, hopefully, in shaping thought — maybe even rallying the center to a return of political power and reasoned discourse for Good Government — but none of us have the resources to become a true alternative media form, except perhaps on a local basis. (I think Joe has bemoaned this in the past here in TMV. Bravo, Mr. G.!) Wittmann sees this, too; that’s why he cautions the Democrats to spend their time working on rebuilding the ranks from the migratories instead of preaching to the choir. With at least a little tongue in cheek, as I see it (grin). As for comments, that’s the choice of the writer; if things got too het up, I’d turn off comments at the Mews. I don’t know if that’s been the case with the Moose, but it’s his right.

It’s good to have a face to associate with the handle of the Bull Moose. Wittmann’s picture sort of reminds me of Ben Stein, as it works out. A centrist Ben Stein? Interesting concept….

Seriously, I’ve been wishing for a viable 3rd party in this country since Reagan was president. I don’t care if it’s a far-left party or a far-right one, because either way, Coke and Pepsi will be forced to actually differentiate themselves into two noticeably different entities again instead of just pretending they are different.

As to your point about the importance of blogs – don’t underestimate yourself, either. Blogs represent the most passionate people – who tend to be the most extreme, true. But they are also the most motivated to act for change.

Where these people fall down (and not just in blogs, but everywhere) is in their tendency to sneer at those who lack their passion. Instead of evangelizing the unwashed masses they prefer to condemn them to political hell – then wonder why they lost the election.

This is quite simply a resource that didn’t exist.

Political blogs are simply a subset, but they are a subset which loosely link hundreds of bloggers, thousands of readers, provide ways of gathering sources, deepening arguments and developing to dialogue of real democracy.

The process is in a formative stage, but like many other technologies it does develop expotentially, a doubling of readership wevery few years is expected, more powerful tools and the like.

Wittman comes from a top down, main stream mass conception of media. He can’t even grasp that there is for example a radical leftism that does things like create EBay to open up markets to the masses, Craigslist to fully develop the power of the claasified and even experiments with structures of banks. Nor does he see that anarchist models of development have had brilliant success on the net and are increasingly and more effectively combined with markets as open source philosophy is developed.

Yes if you insist on ten million readers and think that quotes are the kind of politically influence that matters some gal with a few hundred readers is nothing, except she’s 20 times more influential than she used to be, her readership if inflamed has the most powerful printing press ever imagined offered to them free and can link her ideas to thousands who can…

To Wittman the increased power of an ordinary citizen is unimportant because he believes in rulers telling the masses what to do, he doesn’t even support comments on his blog.

He will be a “nothing” in a couple years because he plays the fashionable game, but the modest blogger putting out humble but good ideas will slowly grow.

Witmman is a man who finds nothing disturbing about machines possibly listening to evetry unencrypted phone call and email we make, scanning them for “evidence” and letting police examine all our communications on hunches and thinks anyone who is concerned is goping to be politically unpopular and thus wrong.

This attitude informs his opinions.

If I recall correctly, Republicans meet constantly with their most extreme supporters (corporate lobbyists and televangelists) quite regularly. Why begrudge Harry the chance to take a few minutes and talk to people who are likely to not only devote countless hours pounding keyboards, but also chip in some increasingly significant dollars towards Democratic causes?

If Harry was cancelling a VFW speech to speak to kossacks Whitman might have a point, but I’m fairly sure the Senator’s time isn’t quite that zero sum.