Flash: Bloggers not so powerful

According to National Journal's Beltway Blogroll:

The bottom line is that on the big issues, bloggers are batting zero. Their only significant policy claim to fame this year occurred at the Federal Election Commission. The blog swarm against that agency arguably forced it to draft a less sweeping plan for applying campaign finance law to bloggers -- but even that war is not over yet because the FEC has not finalized the rules.

Bloggers are not powerless in policy circles and actually are gaining influence. Otherwise, official Washington would pay them no mind whatsoever -- no conference calls with political chieftains, no question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers, and no other forms of outreach. But bloggers today are not as persuasive or as intimidating as they might like to believe.

Bloggers were never as powerful as most journalists seemed to think they were. Their "power," such as it is, comes from picking up on angles and stories that the liberal MSM never thought of, but should have. The big blog driven stories are things like Dan Rather vouching for obviously faked documents, Eason Jordan's paranoid statement about U.S. troops targeting journalists, etc. This is the first time those bloggers have targeted Bush and the Republicans this directly.