Eric Boehlert thinks that might be the case:
The race is unrecognizable in terms of where the players are situated now and where they were five weeks ago. (Between September 15 and October 19, there was a 12-point swing in the Gallup daily tracking poll.) Now ask yourself: What role has the Drudge Report played in that burst of campaign movement? The answer, of course, is zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. His trademark flashing red lights have gone missing.
The dynamics of the campaign have irrevocably changed, and the mighty Drudge Report, the news site Beltway journalists trip over themselves to genuflect in front of, has been a complete bystander in the closing weeks of the 2008 campaign. [..]
The reason is simple. Because of the unprecedented economic turmoil, we're now in serious times. (Fifty thousand home foreclosures this year, in the state of New Jersey alone, is serious business.) And the Drudge Report doesn't do serious. The American public's attention has shifted from the campaign to the economy, and that's why the Drudge Report remains largely irrelevant to that unfolding story.[..]
As long as those patterns hold, Drudge finds himself in no-man's-land with no levers of power to pull.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving hack. While we're looking at influence exerted during this campaign, Peter Daou urges the netroots not to underestimate our power.
