Does Howard Stern hold the keys to the election?

MSNBC is now running HardBlogger, featuring blogging of the conventions. It's interesting to see blogs getting that much mainstream attention, although we'll see how it pans out.

The first link is to this article by Joe Trippani, who sees the election coming down to three groups of people he said don't traditionally vote. The first of these are Howard Stern listeners, who he sees as a large block of voters who rely on Howard Stern to tell them how to vote. That's a pretty scary though. Howard Stern is a great source for lesbian strippers, but the thought of people depending on him for political advice frightens me.

He also sees get-out-the vote websites like VoterVirgin as a big determining factor. I've never heard of VirginVoter before, so it doesn't strike me as hugely sucessful, but what do I know? VoterVirgin in theory is nonpartisian, so shouldn't it's voters be evenly split? Then again, it works with WorkingAssets, which works with groups like the NAACP, so it would seem to lean Democrat - in which case it may be more that Joe Trip is hoping it will have an impact than that it actually does.

His third force is blogs, and that's the one I find the hardest to swallow. Blogs are great for getting news out, getting different reaction to news, and mobilizing the faithful to do more. For people who haven't voted or aren't interested in politics, they don't seem as useful. Blogs appeal to people who have strong opinions on politics, and thus are already likely to vote.

He does list all the bloggers that will be at the Democratic National Convention - KOS, Wonkette, et al. Maybe they would have more appeal if they had a more diverse crowd of blogger there - in other words, if they hadn't kicked out the conservative and moderate bloggers. But I think if you read KOS/Wonkette/et al, chances are you are already voting and voting for Kerry, and would have even if you had never read their blog.