CHICAGO - We all know the media world is changing in a hurry. But I'll confess I didn't know it was changing so fast that bloggers would already have their own convention.

Is it me, or doesn't that seem just a little too, uh, mainstream?

I know the blogosphere has moved beyond guys in bathrobes typing away in the half-light of their parents' spare bedroom. Some of them, I understand, have actually moved into their own apartments.

But a convention? What do you wear to a bloggers' convention? I mean, besides the "Annoy Bill O'Reilly" sticker and the obligatory "Every Time You Shop at Wal-Mart God Kills a Kitten" T-shirt?

There's a great short story by John Sayles called The Anarchists' Convention, and I couldn't help thinking about it as I headed over to the second annual YearlyKos confab - spawned by the Daily Kos blog - where 1,500 liberal bloggers have gathered to listen to speakers tell them, for example, How To Outfox Fox.

Meanwhile, scores of reporters have come to explore the sociological and political implications of these blogging intruders in their midst, while Democrats running for president come running to pay homage to the blogging bloggers - as reporters watch and Bill O'Reilly fumes.

It's a new world, all right. It's the world of the net roots, where Democratic grass roots have found a cyberspace home.

And here they are in the real world, although clinging to the familiar. I'm talking to Wendy Norris of Colorado Confidential, who has "Em Dash" on her credential, because, she says, that's how she's known in the blogging world. Behind us, someone named Orange Cloud is doing a TV interview while selling T-shirts.

But it's not as weird as it sounds, and certainly not as weird as I'd hoped. This is the future. It's clear as the smile on your Facebook page. Or, depending on your worldview, as scary as the snowman puppet from the YouTube debate. (Or, for that matter, the macaca moment that gave the Democrats the Senate.)

Here's how Howard Dean put it in his keynote speech to the Kossaks: "What you have done in the last six years is restore . . . the democracy that George Bush and the Republicans have tried to undermine."

OK, it's no secret why the Democratic presidential candidates are coming here today for a forum, or why Bill O'Reilly is making such a commotion about it. On YouTube, you can check out the Chris Dodd-Bill O'Reilly smackdown, in which Dodd defends the Kos blog and O'Reilly - who insists it's a "hate-filled" Web site - looks as if his head will explode. I highly recommend it. Hillary Clinton, not exactly a favorite in the net roots crowd, sent an advocate on O'Reilly to make the same case as Dodd.

It was in 2002 that Markos Moulitsas, now 35, started DailyKos. That was five years ago, which in cyber time, is approximately forever. In that time, the Democrats have made their resurgence. They can thank George Bush, but they also can thank the Web world. And they do.

As Moulitsas told The Washington Post, "The fact is, the net roots cannot win elections by ourselves. But we can be a key . . . to a winning Democratic strategy."

This is not just an anti-Bush crowd or an antiwar crowd, although it's definitely both. It's not O'Reilly's far-left fever dream of wild-eyed radicals, either. It's more a populist world dedicated to getting past George Bush and getting Democrats who aren't Joe Lieberman elected.

But more to the point, this is the anti-Limbaugh, anti-Hannity, anti-O'Reilly alternative. There are plenty of conservative sites on the Web, but no one argues which way most of the cyber-wind blows.

Democrats have complained for years about what David Brock - the former Republican hit man, who now heads a liberal media-watchdog group - calls the Republican noise machine, which is even noisier than the whining you hear about too few liberal voices on talk radio.

You know the Republican-enabling drill. Everything starts, it seems, on Drudge, then heads to talk radio, and, before you know it, there are 160,000 troops in Iraq. Roy Sekoff, editor of Huffington Post, takes it a step further.

"There's a path," he's telling me, "from Drudge that takes you directly to Wolf Blitzer. By the time the talking point hits the Situation Room, it's accepted as fact."

On the panel with Sekoff was Eric Massa, who spent 24 years in the military, some of them under Wes Clark, who was also here. Massa, a Democrat, lost by a few thousand votes in his 2006 House race in upstate New York. He's running again in 2008.

"Aren't you tired of throwing your shoe at the television set?" he asked the crowd, which roared. He said he'd lost six TV sets and five pairs of shoes. More roars.

It was a call to action in a room of connected activists. The new technology may not be so new anymore. It's the old new. But four years ago, when Howard Dean's campaign seemed to discover it, it was a revolution.

Dean lost, of course. This time, though, the revolution will be YouTubed.

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com