Last month, in a straw poll on the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner for her party's presidential nomination, won only 9 percent of the vote, lagging far behind former senator John Edwards (N.C.) with 36 percent and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) with 27 percent. She couldn't make it past 4 percent for most of the year. But as the who's who of the progressive blogosphere -- the "Net roots" -- gather in Chicago for the Yearly Kos convention, which started yesterday, Clinton will be there. Her attendance underscores two seemingly contradictory realities: the...