CLASSIC OLIGOPOLY. Thus does Glenn Reynolds describe the three-network era. "Those who didn't like it could shout back at the television, but that was their only outlet. This suited politicians like Gore - whose mainstream Democratic liberalism fits well with the traditional network-news mindset - well enough, but left a lot of viewers unsatisfied.

"But technology changed all that, as broadcast networks were augmented by cable and satellite. Now viewers have a choice, and Fox's share is growing while its competitors' shares are shrinking. The same is true in other areas: talk radio, where liberal hosts have failed to get the kind of audiences enjoyed by conservative and libertarian hosts, and the Internet, where conservative/libertarian voices predominate to the great frustration of, well, guys like Al Gore. In fact, it seems that the greater the competition in a medium, the more that medium leans away from traditional establishment liberalism."

Do I hear an echo?

Joanne Jacobs recommends a Michael Wolff column pointing out a further failing of liberal commentators: they're boring. Put more precisely, many confuse earnestness (anybody remember gravitas?) with seriousness. Same failing the assessors of the obvious and the teddy-bear pushers have: they dread the possibility that someone, somewhere, might be laughing at them. Add to that their failure to recognize that important doesn't have to be boring, and visualize the channel being changed. Or visualize the television being turned off, and the model railroad being worked on.

Professor Reynolds concludes with "Gore, on the other hand, seems to have moved to the left, introducing new policy proposals like national health insurance that seem tailor-made for old-style establishment-liberal media. It remains to be seen whether his views will be rewarded by the political market." He has a better chance of succeeding in his own party with that strategy, than with the public. It's the median voter theorem, again. If the Democrats seek to attract voters to the "left" (although there's more than one dimension to left) and Republicans to the "right" (same caveat) the successful strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is to run to the left (what Vice President Gore is doing) and then position yourself more as a centrist for the general election. Mr. Gore learned the first part of this lesson the hard way in 1988, positioning himself for the primary between Governor Dukakis and Vice President Bush. All he achieved by that was to provide Republicans with a Willie Horton stick to beat Democrats with. We will see if he learned the second part of the lesson in 2000, when he offered continuity with the Clinton administration in the primaries, then sounded like Walter Mondale with personality from his acceptance speech until the election.