Voting with our eyeballs

Very interesting. While the right is currently deceiving itself into thinking it is ascendant (the polls give no indication of either a sustained Bush bounce or of a repug bounce, by the way), the reverse seems to be true. In the marketplace of ideas, the left, America, or whatever you prefer to call the forces of freedom, is winning.

During the last three months, AnnCoulter.com is down 10%. Fox News down 13%. RushLimbaugh.com down 18%. The Drudge Report down 21%. Townhall.com down 24%. Washington Times’ website down 27%. And BillOreilly.com down 40%.

Could it be that Internet users are getting tired of political sites in general? Maybe so. But http://moveon.org is up 13 percent in the same period. Delicious! thought I. But I’ve always got to do my own research. So I headed over to make sure there was no cherry-picking going on. What did I find?

Focus on the Family down 18%. Free Republic down 19%. Hugh Hewitt down 21%. World Net Daily down 23%. Michelle Malkin down 30%. The Weekly Standard down 37%. Pajamas Media down 39%.

Raw Story up 6%. Center for American Progress up 12%. Crooks and Liars up 17%. Think Progress up 41%.

Kos is down 10%, one might add; but that could be because of the YearlyKos convention, who knows? And there's always Faux "News", right? Wrong. They're in freefall as well.

Now Bill [O'Really] has to swallow the difficult truth that Keith's [Olbermann] viewership is growing while his own is shrinking. In the key demographic group of viewers aged 25-54, the Total Day ratings for MSNBC rose 47% while Fox declined -13%.

Fox's Prime Time erosion was even greater at -21%. In fact, in every hour in the daypart, from 3:00pm till midnight, Fox numbers were lower. This is a distinction that only Fox, of the five nets surveyed, was able to achieve.

The largest decline was suffered by Greta Van Susteran's On The Record (-22%), followed closely by O'Reilly (-21%). Hannity & What's His Name took the Bronze (-17%). Of the MSNBC programs opposite those losers, Olbermann's Countdown was the biggest gainer (55%), which I'm sure doesn't bother O'Reilly at all.

I'll say it again: the nightmare is not over yet. But change is in the air and more importantly, on the ground.