I even have the draft to prove it, but I’m tired and Ezra over at Pandagon did a much better job of it. Look, I’m all for being right and responding. The thing is that we need to pound the offensive message, too.

Armstrong Williams took tax dollars.

The President lied (or forgot) during the debates.

One sentence, repeated, for each story. Just like the President’s PR machine does it. Except, our’s are truthful and sincere.

On a different note, I think Atrios sometimes suffers from the same problem I have. He thinks like an economist too often. Not that I think like an economist, but I think like a programmer. Things are ordered, there is logic, and there is right and wrong, truth and not. Economists, while maybe not like programmers, do also believe in the power of reason over the anecdotal. Political discourse in this country has long proven that this isn’t true. The anecdotal (”Al Gore said he invented the Internet”) tends to outweigh any interest in learning the factual.

Second, and we remark about this at work all the time, blogs and new media in general reach so few people compared to what happens on TV. Case in point is ESPN.com. We reach millions of individuals a month, we’re one of the biggest sites on the Internet, and yet we’re DWARFED by anything TV does. ABC’s Desperate Housewives brought in 25.2 million people a few Sundays ago. That’s 25 million people who chose to be in front of their TVs at the same time across the country. ESPN.com, on the other hand, reaches 15 million people over a month (see link above).

The point is that hitting back on the blogosphere is a tiny step in this entire battle. What needs to change is how this stuff plays out on TV. If Democrats aren’t going to put smart people up to counter this junk, then perhaps the bloggers need to find a way to work WITH the “MSM” instead of f’in deriding it all the damn time. The MSM isn’t dying, nor is it dead, nor is it useless. The nature of the technology, realities about the reach of the Internet vs. the number of people who vote, and just sheer reach mean that the MSM is something to work on, not avoid.

Granted, the right wing bloggers have it a bit easier with Fox News being what it is, but this isn’t impossible.