This is a damn good look at why the blogosphere does what it does, using the EU constitution as just an example.

The medium really is the message here. It's not that bloggers are terribly gifted polemicists. Some are, most aren't. It's just that technology has reduced costs for the dissemination of information and opinion to zero. Which wouldn't be a big deal if the media (in all nations) were diverse. Then you'd just have further, amateurish opinions and news-hypers to choose from.

But because media institutions tend to be monolithically partisan (always tending to the left, though what the "left" is varies country by country), suddenly having a zero-cost-of-entry Shadow Media can actually make a difference.

Not because bloggers are saying things that no one else is, but for the exact opposite reason: because we're saying things that millions of other people are, only those people never get to register their voices in the establishment media. Or at least those opinions are given short shrift.

It's interesting that Rush Limbaugh credits his success to a similar phenomenon, not that he's telling people what to think, but that he's talking to people about what they already think, but don't get to hear anywhere else.

I note that those pushing the EU constitution don't seem to be discouraged by the Voice of the People. After all, what do the peons know about these things, right?

The Democratic Party in the U.S. is making a similar mistake, and it could be a fatal one. When you lose an election, you have to consider the possibility that you deserved it. Few Democrats will own that one, choosing to blame election processes, hacked voter machines, stupid voters, bad advertising, propaganda, and almost anything else you can think of.

When a party gets to the point where it decides that the outcome of an election, and what voters have said, is largely irrelevant to the idea of whether or not you should be in power, this isn't good.