About the benefits of insurgent bloggers vs. those who have to defend the establishment, Tim at Balloon Juice writes:

More than that I think people realize blogosphere left faces real trouble when when and if Dems sweep government in ‘09.

Yes, indeed. It is going to be tough for lefty bloggers if the Dems win. But it's going to be tough for conservatives, too. In each case, there are going to be multiple year's worth of hastily-taken positions which will give them trouble when their opponents go back and read the archives.

"You were all in favor of _____ when Bush was president, now that Biden [ha!] is president, you've changed your mind? Hypocrite!!111elevn!!"

"But it was diiiffferennnnnt!!! Wah!"

Yesterday's fans of oversight will become tomorrows defenders of presidential privilege; isolationists will find good uses for intervention; nuances will take precedence over hard and fast rules they favored mere months ago; fans of the filibuster will find reasons why it's unconstitutional (again). It will become really obvious that so much of the noise the political blogs make simply boils down to "_____s are stupid and evil !"

In my ideal world, because I'm a big fan of out with the old, in with the new, a lot of intelligent people will give up political blogging after realizing there's nothing they can say in defense of president Richardson that won't be a 180deg reversal from the position they took when Bush was president. They'll switch to blogging about music and posting pictures of their cats. And then the next generation of political bloggers will show up, full of fire and passion, carrying none of that Bush-era baggage, free to take any position they want so long as it serves the cause. And they will. And they'll repeat all the same arguments, get into the same fights, defend the same indefensible positions that their predecessors did - until the next change of power, when the next generation will sweep in and repeat all the same mistakes, etc., etc., ad infinitum - all of them oblivious to their part in the great cycle of amateur punditry.