My guess is that you're both partly right. I think with "ordinary folks" its the combination of arrogant partisan, self-promoting pundits; talking-point repeating campaign operatives; nasty, lousy, lying 30-sec. spots; chaotic, superficial and horse-racy, he-said/she-said news reporting that leads to a sense of political alienation and disempowerment.
I'd sum it up as the self-reinforcing socio-pathology that is the interaction of the consultant/pundit/flack class with a television news industry.
That interaction combines degraded journalistic values with the worst tendencies of the commercial TV entertainment industry (lowest-common denominator [read unconsciousness-inducing] content and assorted TV "production" techniques to maximize eyeballs without stimulating constructive thought [which might lead someone actually getting up from the TV and doing something else]).
So, by giving voice to a new class of interested and knowledgeable netroots activists (oops, I mean "Kos-following rabid sheep"), and creating an evolving technical and economic alternative to television and the MSM in general, and to "traditional" fundraising and organizing, the neutral Internet is enabling a fairly complete alternative system to emerge, with things like YouTube and PoliticsTV beginning to push into the "TV" space after blogs have secured a solid position in the text space.
Which brings me back (once again) to the issue of Internet policy and the value of a neutral network, and a reminder that Stevens' markup is taking place right now, with audio available (mine keeps dropping out for some reason and I'm about to give up on it) at: http://commerce.senate.gov/live.ram or http://commerce.senate.gov/public/ or http://www.capitolhearings.org/
