The WaPo has a good article up on the contrasts between how each party handles working online, with some good quotes from Kos:
If conservatives have mastered talk radio -- with Limbaugh as the undisputed king of the AM dial -- those on the left hope to achieve the same dominance on the Internet. Daily Kos, a sounding board for opposition to Bush and the Iraq war, among other topics, leads most political blogs in Web traffic and notoriety. Last year, the site spawned Yearly Kos, the first political blogger convention. Its founder, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, refers to himself as the site's "mayor," with everyone else "doing their own thing, managing their own projects, while I keep the plumbing running."
Moulitsas will concede the influence of conservative blogs and Web sites in the successful attack on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during his 2004 presidential campaign, when he was accused of exaggerating his service record during the Vietnam War, and on CBS News for its reporting on Bush's war record. He also concedes that Republicans have their own popular blogs, such as InstaPundit, RedState and Michelle Malkin's -- sites, he asserts, that are parts "of the Republican noise machine, affiliated to talk radio and Fox News." Malkin, the doyenne of the conservative blogosphere, is a frequent contributor to Fox News.
"Sure, conservatives can point to the Dan Rather controversy and the Swift boat episode as a measure of their success online. But that's it," Moulitsas said. "Progressives can claim to an actual movement that raises a lot of money, that helps put politicians in office. . . . Progressives can claim to actually having communities online, where an average Joe can have a voice, and not just a radio personality who happens to write a blog, too."
As Markos has noted countless times, the right-wing blogosphere is potent and its own right, but only as an extension of the existing Right-Wing Noise Machine. They're really not needed in the broader scheme of things, while the left-wing blogosphere developed because there was NO equivalent on our side of the aisle of the GOP's machine. This site launched in 2002, when BUsh's job approval was still in the '70s, and when the Beltway clique's conventional wisdom was that opposition to the war meant that you were on the "fringe". It was in 2002-2003 that we really saw the progressive blogosphere come into its own, with the Dean campaign, the Draft Clark movement, and the rise of "web 2.0" first getting public notice. Before 2002-2003, IMHO, the web was still in favor of the right, as sites like Drudge and Free Republic were able to run roughshod during the Clinton years, and into the immediate post-9/11 period. Progressive bloggers felt under-represented, and average citizens took to their computers and protested. In doing so, we as bloggers now have the ear of the same Democratic establishment that once ran in fear of the likes of David Broder and Joe Klein. Harry Reid listens to us now. Nancy Pelosi listens to us now. Even Hillary, who is criticized by many in the left-wing blogosphere for not being assertive enough, listens to us now.
When Broder/Klein told us that Bush was King, and that Social Security and civil liberties were faux pas, we collectively responded, as King Leonidas to that Persian messenger in a certain blockbuster movie, "THIS. IS. AMERICA!!!", to which we gave the beltway a good decking.