DO BLOGS MATTER IN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS? Last time around, I said they’d probably matter in the primaries — when it’s mostly about a comparatively small number of tuned-in voters — but not so much in the general election. With the Rathergate affair, that was proved spectacularly wrong as the explosion of CBS’s bogus story may well have swung that close election, not only because it shut down a particular anti-Bush story but because it made other, similar stories less likely, and less believable. So who knows? So far I’d say blogs haven’t made much of a difference. But the election is nowhere near over.

Plus, “Republicans, they thirst for death.”