Despite years of near maniacal determination to beat conservative talk shows at their own game, liberals have nothing to show for it but a growing list of cancelled programs. Jim Hightower, Phil Donahue, Mario Cuomo, and now Air America have all failed in their bid to topple Rush Limbaugh and company from atop the political talk mountain.

Air America was supposed to be the savior of liberal radio – the antidote to Rush’s popularity. Bankrolled to the hilt and with a left-wing dream team that included Al Franken, the station never quite got its footing, however. Beset by scandal and financial troubles, it finally filed for Chapter 11 in October of this year.

It wasn’t for lack of trying or encouragement. From the moment of Air America’s inception, the left and mainstream media had gleefully pointed to every blip on the ratings EKG as a sure sign of robust life. No matter how small the victories, each one was touted as a radio Waterloo for Limbaugh. As recently as October of 2005, Air America was boasting that Franken’s show had beaten Rush…in San Francisco and Portland.

For an enterprise that cherry-picked its markets, Air America’s boasting is comical. It is like me saying that I’m more loved at my grandmother’s house than you are. The more newsworthy slant is the fact that it took Franken longer than a week to beat Limbaugh in such left-leaning towns. Although still operational, the network’s future is clearly in doubt.

The new avatar of liberal talk is Keith Olbermann, the erstwhile sportscaster turned edgy firebrand - a Jon Stewart who wants to be taken seriously. To be fair, Olbermann’s MSNBC show is doing well: his viewership is up since last year (November 2005 over November 2006), while his arch-nemesis, Bill O’Reilly, lost 22% of his viewers over the same period.

Despite the gain in ratings, Olbermann still pulls, on a good night, about one third of the viewers that O’Reilly gets. He also remains clueless as to why conservative media still thump their liberal counterparts on a consistent basis. When asked by GQ magazine why conservatives do better as TV commentators, Olbermann’s response was that liberals understand nuance “in ways that Republicans don’t understand.”

Ah, of course: nuance. That’s what we’ve been missing! Or is it the subtleties of nuance? In any case, it’s tough to equate Al Franken, author of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, with “nuance.” Air America had several shows and ample opportunity to discuss nuance all day long. I guess the chatter was so “nuanced” that even liberal listeners didn’t get it.

We’ve heard this tired claptrap before. Former New York governor Mario Cuomo had a similar response when interviewed on Phil Donahue’s now defunct show back in 2003: "It's because we wouldn't want one (a show as popular as Rush’s). Their message is written with crayon, ours with a fine quill pen."

Whether it comes from Cuomo or Olbermann, this snobbish brand of thinking belies a raging jealousy. Frustrated by the popularity of conservative talk, liberals are reduced to either feigning indifference to the whole endeavor or lobbing up the ludicrous theory that their ideology is just too darned sophisticated to be discussed and processed by the masses.

Who are they kidding?

Not done with his sweeping insults, Olbermann added, “The point is, the people who would be watching a left-wing mirror image of the O’Reilly show, in O’Reilly like numbers have things to do. They go to the movies, they watch HBO, they have kids, they go to the PTA. The right has been told they can’t watch any of these things.”

I’m not sure who told conservatives that these things are forbidden, but I didn’t get the memo. Don’t let the members of this right wing cabal know that I love “The Sopranos.” (And don’t tell Cablevision that I cancel HBO when each season ends – they might cut me off.)

And which is it: the message is too sophisticated, or liberals are go-getters with barely a moment to spare? It’s as if Olbermann likens all conservatives to Ned Flanders, home schooling their children and terrified to turn on the TV unless it’s for “Veggie Tales” or “Kathy Lee’s Christmas Spectacular.” Can we go see “Happy Feet” or will talking penguins give the children nightmares? Turn on “The 700 Club” – we’d better check with Pat Robertson.

As long as liberals think of conservatives in such pejorative terms, they will continue to get their clocks cleaned in the free market of talk media. Liberal talk doesn’t do as well because it has already saturated everything from NPR to The New York Times. Liberals must be so caught up in discussing “nuance” that they overlook the obvious.

Perhaps frustrated by the lack of progress, there is talk that the incoming Democratic congress will go for the nuclear option: reinstating the “Fairness Doctrine.” A legacy from the golden age of radio, the doctrine mandated equal time for political views on the airwaves until it was overturned in 1987. By resurrecting it, liberals will be able to do what they have failed to do in nearly twenty years of open competition:

Win.