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Heres a tip, humbly offered, to political reality-checkers everywhere: Whenever youre mired in a perceptual rut and badly need alternative perspective, try shifting your attention underground meaning, anywhere removed from the pat assortment of official sources.

With the advent of the Internet and posted comments, this has become easy. In response to a very major story in the U.S. about our federal government running society-wide surveillance programs the unofficial comments lead me to suspect the unsanctioned disclosure has had at least one important effect that isnt being discussed in the mainstream media. That unremarked phenomenon? a sudden shift in some citizen electors party loyalties.

Mainstream follow-ups to the initial revelations about the domestic surveillance have, for the most part, been faithfully purveying the White Houses and Congress own preferred talking points on the matter. Conveniently, all the spice needed for augmenting the topics entertainment value has been readily available through the related, unfolding saga of leaker Edward Snowdens attempts to evade American justice, and the international intrigue surrounding those efforts.

And that, dear readers, has been the bulk of the package at most major U.S.-based news outlets. Be it on Fox, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or the New York Times, what we are mainly presented deals with either: (1) how much damage Snowden has done; (2) how little threat there is to our freedom from these once-secret surveillance programs, according to government sources we should trust; or (3) Snowdens whereabouts or where he may be headed. (At the time of this writing, he is still in Russia, but that may change by the time this column goes to press.)

Meantime, the more revealing material for the past month has been furnished either in reader comments posted beneath those mainstream articles or broadcast videos, or in posts by other non-governing types to topic sites unaffiliated with news organizations.

If you only read these a while, one major bit of fallout from the surveillance states unveiling begins to suggest itself. Its the potential for long-term damage to the national Democratic Party.

For illustration, I quote one June 6 original poster at a Democratic site, democraticunderground.com. I just left the Democratic party over NSA spying, reads the subject line, under which the poster briefly inveighs: I will support no party that supports the evisceration of the 4th Amendment. I wont volunteer, I wont contribute, until the rank and file of the party opposes and ends this practice, dont bother calling me.

This simple declaration spawns 437 posts over the next four days. Most respondents fall into one of two opposing camps, their numbers roughly equal. One camp defends the Democratic U.S. president, senators, and House members who enable the across-the-board surveillance, and reminds the original poster how bad America would become if Republicans held the balance of power instead. The other camp, though stopping short of endorsing the original posters decision to leave the party, nonetheless sympathizes with the OPs firmly held sentiment that this Fourth Amendment abridgment is too steep a price to bear just to avoid publicly criticizing ones team.

And the shower of critical posts, Blue-on-Blue, doesnt abate over the next several weeks, on into this past holiday weekend.

This article neglects to mention that Obama has lost support of those who voted for him on his promise of change. I for one voted twice for him and have come to regret my decision, reads one comment posted to a July 5 story about the NSA at cnn.com.

I cant commission a poll to test my hypothesis, but it appears to me that we are no longer a 50-50 nation. It could be 2 percent, 4 percent, or some other portion of recent Democratic stalwarts who have departed the party or are in the process of peeling away, but I perceive a definite flow toward the Blue exits.

Any week now, the party should start scrambling to try to reverse the exodus, but it’s hard to conceive of any approach that might actually get the job done. One could imagine, with aid of hallucinogens, the Blue team’s police state defenders performing a complete about-face, an orchestrated hallelujah moment in which they rediscover the Fourth Amendment. This could be followed, for good measure, by abject apologies from everyone from the president on down.

Even this massive ingestion of crow couldn’t explain away the previous deceit, though, or blot out victims’ perceptions that their trust had been callously, routinely violated, making them fools.

No, I don’t know where the disaffected 2 percent or so the staunch newly non-Blue will reinvest their political loyalties. Some may land with third parties, others may commit to independence. But what should be most interesting to see is whether the GOP, which serves its core constituencies by always standing tall for Amendment Two, starts to take a serious interest in championing Amendment Four as well.

Up With Freedom columnist Rob Ruth is editor of the Wallowa County Chieftain.