There is a crisis in Social Security. But it is not the crisis that president George Bush would have us believe. The crisis is that Mr. Bush is leading a raid on the Social Security trust fund on behalf of big financial institutions. Bush says he wants to help young people save for retirement. Problem is, that there is no guarantee that Bush’s proposed private accounts will be there when people need them. What is really going on is but the latest gambit by well-heeled lobbyists to get their hands on one of the biggest, if not the biggest pool of public capital in the world — the Social Security trust fund. For a generation right wing front groups for big financial interests have manufactured repeated, and always bogus “crises,” the solution for which is always privatization. The latest privatization scheme serves no more legitimate public interest than its predecessors. Rather, it is yet another example of the Republican spoils system, which seeks to turn public funds over to private business interests.

With Bush in the White House, and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, the privateers sense that victory is within their grasp. But in fact — the battle is far from over. Most Democrats and many Republicans are opposed to or skeptical of the president’s scheme. And progressive organizations are mounting a remarkable campaign to thwart the powerful privateers. And one of the keys to the campaign is something completely unexpected — modern pamphleteers, writing in the tradition of Tom Paine. They are the progressive bloggers. And all sides agree that they will play a crucial role.

An hour after the president’s speech, I was honored to participate in a national telephone conference call of progressive bloggers, who gathered to listen to post-State of the Union analysis from John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America’s Future, nationally renowned blogger Atrios (economist Duncan Black) and Bob Brigham of BlogPac, the political action committee sponsoring the There Is No Crisis campaign to save Social Security.

Duncan Black warned that if, under the president’s scheme, people invest in private accounts, and their financial manager “pulls an Enron somehow — that’s it.” Roger Hickey explained that Bush’s notion of the “ownership society,” means that “you are on your own,” and that Bush is “betting his presidency and the future of the GOP on the privatization of Social Security.” Bob Brigham estimates that the privateers will spend more than the presidential campaign expenses of Bush and Kerry combined to get inside the vaults of the Social Security trust fund. Clearly, the stakes are high. The pamphleteers and their allies can’t match the privateer’s money. But Brigham notes that we bloggers, we pamphleteers, have a combined readership surpassed by only a few of the largest newspapers in the U.S.

The power of the blogosphere to move information, ideas and analysis quickly is a great strength going into the battle — as talented researchers, writers, and analysts of all kinds bring writing to the fore of American politics in a way that is already making history. The democratic nature of the blogosphere is opening up the public debate — challenging government and corporate propaganda, and the conservative punditocracy in a way that regularly gives rise to howls of indignation.

The growing power of the progressive bloggers is slowly being recognized in all quarters. This week, for example, Rupert Murdock’s Weekly Standard, grudgingly acknowledged that progressive bloggers as epitomized by The Daily Kos, which “averages over 400,000 page views a day” are playing an increasingly powerful role in Amerian politics.

“By comparison,” writes, Dean Barnett, “the second most popular blog, right leaning law professor Glenn Reynolds’s Instapundit, averages barely 200,000 page views a day. The Daily Kos, is the most popular and important force in the blogosphere; it’s a fact with which Democrats are just now coming to grips.”

Although the conveners of the progressive blogger teleconference have high hopes that we will somehow come through — they really have no idea what we will do. But what they do know — what they are counting on, I think — is that this eclectic, feisty and far-flung network of writers are committed to a vision of a constitutional democracy marked by a passion for social and economic justice — that will propel the campaign forward in surprising and compelling ways. They know that the ingenious activists of the internet will give Wall Street and the Texas oil boys a run for their money; that money can’t buy the kind of committed, vivid, and persuasive writing that flows from authentic feelings and free and independent minds; and that that’s a force as powerful as anything in public life.