When historians come to write the definitive account of the rise of the liberal blog in the US, it is quite possible they will identify a small meeting in Harlem this week as a tipping point. The gathering looked unremarkable enough, a group of about 20 men and women sitting round a boardroom table, but it represented something highly significant.

The people assembled were the elite, if that's not a contradiction in terms, of the Democrat-leaning blogosphere. And the man at the centre was Bill Clinton.

Over a two-hour lunch of southern chicken, sweet potato fries, cornbread and cherry cake ("our plates were clean at the end", noted the blogger from Talkleft), the conversation ranged widely across Iraq, healthcare, energy and tax. But it kept coming back to a central theme: the growing strength and confidence of the liberal blogs.

Clinton told the group that over the past two years he had become an avid reader, and that he now included blog posts in his daily news cuttings service. For the bloggers, toiling away in their front rooms, it was heady stuff. "Here I was with a group of my friends and colleagues, meeting with one of our nation's presidents because our small, do-it-yourself political operation had drawn his attention," writes Chris Bowers on the MyDD blog. "I mean, this is largely work I have completed from the bedroom of my apartment in West Philly."

Coming of age

To be bathed in the famously energising glow of the former president's attention is an unfamiliar sensation. Ever since blogs took off in America three or four years ago, the running has been made by writers and editors from the right such as Andrew Sullivan, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, the law professor behind InstaPundit. Liberal sites were confined to the role of second cousins.

So the Clinton meeting was a much-needed pat on the back. Bill Scher, who edits the Liberal Oasis blog, thinks they are now emerging as real forces. "Right-wing blogs have been very good and very fast at putting out misinformation. What we are now learning to do is to be better than that - to put out good information faster than they do and accurately so that it cannot be rebutted."

Scher's book, Wait! Don't move to Canada, is published next week. It records how liberal blogs first came to public attention when they raised substantial amounts of money for the 2004 primary campaign of the anti-Iraq war Democrat, Howard Dean.

Now they have moved a step beyond that. "We are no longer dismissed as just ATMs for the Democrats - now people have to listen to what we say."

ABC television had to listen to what the liberal blogs had to say this week. It came a cropper over a two-part docu-drama about the lead-up to September 11, The Path to 9/11, which portrayed the counter-terrorism efforts of the Clinton administration in a poor light.

One blog, Think Progress, exposed inaccuracies in the show, or "crockudrama" as left bloggers dubbed it. The site's editor, Judd Legum, became aware of the contents of the drama when rightwing bloggers and the radio host Rush Limbaugh began talking about it. "They had evidently been passed copies of the movie and that alerted us to it."

Legum started investigating the drama about 10 days before it was scheduled for broadcast, identifying the most egregious mistakes and researching and compiling rebuttals. He enlisted the help of the site's army of bloggers and within days he had ignited a firestorm that enveloped ABC and brought Clinton and several of his former aides into the furore. "You could watch it build exponentially," Legum told the Guardian. " First we had seven mentions on cable TV, then 40, then 300, then 400. It just took off."

In the end, ABC was forced to re-edit several of the disputed scenes. It removed passages suggesting Clinton had been distracted from the emerging threat of al-Qaida by his obsession with Monica Lewinsky; it reined in a critical depiction of Clinton's former secretary of state Madeleine Albright; and it cut out a shot of Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser, slamming down the phone on a CIA operative who was pleading to be allowed to attack Osama Bin Laden.

So has the leftwing blog finally come of age?

Peter Daou thinks this week's events suggest that it is moving in the right direction. "The Clinton meeting and the Path to 9/11 both put down a marker."

Daou advised John Kerry during his 2004 presidential bid on how to reach out to bloggers. He has recently taken up a similar role for Hillary Clinton, acting as a go-between in her campaign to be re-elected to the Senate in November. "There have been tensions and growing pains, and at times a lot of elbowing and jockeying for position," he said. "But we are on the way to building a new centre of power politics in America."

Liberal blogs

Think Progress

With a staff of just five, Think Progress punches well above its weight, as was seen by the impact it had on the ABC docudrama, The Path to 9/11. It is connected to the Washington- based liberal thinktank, the Centre of American Progress, whose director is the former chief of staff under Bill Clinton. It has about 100,000 visitors a day, and its focus is on monitoring rightwing blogs and the mainstream media. It calls itself a movement of "guerrilla fact checkers".

thinkprogress.org

Daily Kos

Founded in 2002 by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and run by him from Berkeley, California. The site now attracts 20 million unique visits a month. The blog is named after the nickname Moulitsas acquired when he was in the army (it rhymes with "dose").

dailykos.com

Feministing

The site by and for young feminists. The executive editor is Jessica Valenti, a 27-year-old feminist writer from New York. Its mission statement says that: "Young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing provides a platform for us to comment, analyse and influence."

Feministing.com

Liberal Oasis

The blog, edited by Bill Scher, publishes original commentary every morning from Monday to Friday. It carries the motto: "Where the Left is right and the Right is wrong."

Liberaloasis.com

Firedoglake

Founded by Jane Hamsher, who produced the Oliver Stone film, Natural Born Killers. Its blogger, Christy Hardin Smith, who was present at the Clinton lunch, writes on the site that there is a need for "better messaging and coordination/ cooperation with blogs and the Democratic leadership, who seem to constantly be trying to work at cross-purposes with all of us."

Firedoglake.com

America blog

Focuses on US politics, particularly the Bush Administration, the radical right, and gay civil rights. Why turn to it? Because, it says, "at some point you tire of the lies". It is run by John Aravosis, a Washington-based writer and political consultant.

Americablog.com