To those who don't visit blogs or get their news from them (which a recent poll shows includes the vast majority of the American public) this might seem to be a provincial conflict, but it is highly significant.

In political terms, it underscores the raw, angry and bitter rivalrly between supporters of Obama and Clinton (as I noted in my appearance on CNN's blog segment last Sunday).

The mirror image distrust, hatred and dismissiveness felt by each side towards the others' candidates accentuates by the day - raising the authentic prospect that even in an awful economy the Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - as some supporters of the losing nomination candidate stay home.

"First, these people should read up on the definition of 'strike.' What they're doing is a 'boycott.' But whatever they call it, I think it's great. It's a big Internet, so I hope they find what they're looking for."

"It saddens me that Daily Kos is the largest progressive media outlet," Moulitsas mused, in response to a question about the effects the Internet will have on progressive politics in the years to come. "We can't just put it all on the blogs and MoveOn and hope that this is future, because if it is, we're in trouble." These were strange words to hear from a man who has made his name with a blog. But odd as it seemed to me at the time, Moulitsas is almost certainly right: Unstoppable and ever-expanding though the Internet appears, web-based progressivism is not a substitute for the traditional political infrastructure, nor will it be anytime soon.

Consider the numbers: Daily Kos gets about five million page views a week. That's not chump change, but Rush Limbaugh still gets somewhere between 14 and 20 million listeners in the same period of time. The contrast with cable news is equally striking: While Moulitsas gets about 700,000 page views a day, almost four times as many people tune into cable news stations during primetime alone, and more than twice as many watch Fox. Nine of the top 10 highest rated cable news programs are on Fox.

The bottom line--and it is a bottom line Moulitsas was manifestly aware of--is that blogs aren't reaching an audience anywhere near the same size as the traditional news outlets.