CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR BILL SCHNEIDER is many things, but a dispenser of new and original insights he is not. So when even the avuncular cable analyst noticed the rise of the left-wing political blogs last week, it suggested that the ascendancy of the liberal blogosphere has gone from conventional wisdom to cliché.
What had caught Schneider’s eye was the role blogs played in the special congressional election in Ohio’s second district. When President Bush appointed the district’s incumbent Rob Portman as his trade representative, political analysts widely assumed that the seat would remain safely Republican. Portman routinely won the district with over 70 percent of the vote and Bush had defeated Kerry by a wide margin in the district; analysts widely considered the district one of the reddest in the country.
