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Disintermediation and Politics
code_rage writes "Everett Ehrlich (capsule biography) writes an article in the Washington Post that examines Howard Dean's effective use of the internet to create a political organization. He says that Dean has created a 'virtual' party that has taken over the only remaining asset of value, the brand name of the Democratic party. His analysis refers to the theory of Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase: that the size of an organization is determined by the cost of gathering information. Ehrlich's article makes some predictions about the effect that Dean's strategy will have on the political system." In a related story, there's an mp3 interview with Dick Morris, along with a couple of (appropriately) blog posts about it.
The Dean candidacy is likely to cause great damage to the party come November 2004.
Dean, a far-left candidate, is campaigning to the far-left in order to win the nomination. He has given little thought to the "middle": a group which is necessary to win the election. He has Bush landslide written all over his face.
I am not necessarily a big fan of Howard Dean, but I love what he is doing to political fundraising and grassroots organization. His campaign team's efforts have really reversed the equation and empowered the small-money donors to make a difference. I think it is much better for the American political system for a candidate to raise $100 from 2 million donors than $200 million from some very large donors and interest groups. It's bottom-up campaign finance reform. Once again a technological and social solution can do what convoluted legislation cannot.
Just as JFK utilized the nature of the televised debates to triumph over Nixon, Howard Dean will attempt to use the power of the internet in order to take the Democratic nomination.
Just a prediction.
Yes, ol' Robert Novak knows about spreading the truth far and wide, all right. I find it really interesting that when anyone raises what current evidence suggests is a perfectly valid question (which the administration refuses to shed light on by releasing the documents that would demonstrate whether Bush's prior knowledge of the attacks was indeed an urban legend), the corporate media howls and shrieks treason and tries to discredit the questioner, rather than actually explaining *why* he/she is full of shit. It's unthinkable, sure, but the unthinkable has happened before. And it's not just the conspiracists who want to know, but many of the families of the September 11 victims. At this point I doubt it's the case that Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance. The administration is hiding those documents because they demonstrate ineptitude. Not criminal, exactly, but not likely to be helpful in a presidential election year.
I don't consider somebody who resorts to libel and slander to get her point across as somebody who is a "strong woman". I don't think anybody who hates another group of people because their views and opinions differ from her is "strong" or "mature" or any other adjective you could use to describe anybody from either gender who can behave in civil society.
I sure hope it doesn't mean the death of the two party system.
Why? A multi-party democracy can still produce strong governments. In my eyes, a two-party system is only one party away from being a single-party dictatorship, especially when the minority party is very weak; the current situation in the USA is a good example of this problem with two-party systems.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Man or woman, anyone who attempts to pass a litany of ad hominem as "commentary" isn't really someone I'd describe as strong or intimidating. Seething and slightly off-kilter perhaps.
This isn't any different than how the NeoConservative movement hijacked the Republican party in the 1980's (under the threat of Soviet Nuclear Annihilation), and how the Christian Wackjob movement hijacked the Reform party in 1999 (under threat of the previous Reform party being the only alternative for rational sane Americans).
Dean's hijacked the Democratic party on the basis of the Anti-Plutocrat movement. More power to em. If the internet was a key vehicle for that, I'm not really suprised, but since the internet exists for all people, that sword cuts both ways.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Actually, I disagree that this post is off-topic. It's exactly on topic.
Yes, people are dying in Iraq, both our boys and girls, as wells as Iraqis. We need to elect a president who (a) will never get us involved in something this poorly planned and thought out again, and (b) will get us the hell out of there as quickly as is possible, while not leaving the Iraqi people (not to mention what's left of our international credibility) blowing in the wind.
Regardless of what you think about President Bush and the war in Iraq, it's hard to argue that this has been a successful campaign. He and his administration have FUBAR'd this operation completely through their inept planning.
Any article talking about how we, as Americans, can stop the blood from flowing down the streets is exactly on topic. And to do that, we need to elect a new leader.
How will it help moderate, hum-drum politics and politicians (probably > 90%), or even interesting politicians without a drum to beat? It won't.
That's correct. Politicians who rose through the ranks based on their connections with party-elders and got into office due to the intertia of the voters are, in fact hurt by the internet. They will be vulnerable to politicians who are able to create networks of loyal rank-and-file supporters who "believe" in their candidacy.
The radical change is that politicians who depend on the inertia of voters are suddenly vulnerable.
It buys the Dean party line about Dean being an outsider.
This is not a matter of a "third party candidate taking over the Democratic Party" at all. It's a small-time, conservative Democrat leveraging the Internet to become a big-time player. And frankly the resulting party isn't that different. How is Dean different than Gore? He's a touch more conservative on some fiscal and social issues, that's all. It's evolution, not revolution.
The two-party system is still quite safe, I'm afraid.
So Dean's against invading Iraq. So what? So was the elder Bush when he was in charge. Take a look at Dean's other positions. They are equally unremarkable. He's not an outsider.
During the nomination process for any office you'll see this. Tim Pawlenty, our Minnesota Governor, was much more open about his right leanings durnig the nomination process. Once he got into the general election phase he emphasized his fiscal responsibility pitch. Totally obvious truism of the election process in this nation.
And in case you were wondering, you might want to ask yourself whether Bush, after having run on the promise of restoring trust and "fixing the tone" in Washington, has done anything to live up to those promises. Does anyone think Bush has "fixed the tone" in Washington?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Why? A multi-party democracy can still produce strong governments.
Multi-Party systems can produce strong goverments - but quite frequently they do not. There a several reasons for this.
First, there is the possibility of minority government where the party who has elected the greatest number of candidates does not have the majority of seats in the legislature. The result of this is a government that is forced to broker deals with weaker (and sometimes extremist) parties in order to survive. This type of government generally collapses within months of being formed.
Secondly, when there are more than two parties it is likely that representatives will be elected with less than 50% of their constituents supporting them. It is not unusual for candidates to win seats with only 30-35% support.
Finally, some multi-party systems allocate a percentage of the popular vote to a percentage of seats in the house of representatives. So, if a party can muster 2-3% of the popular vote they get 2-3% of the seats. The result of this is that there can be 20-30 parties elected to office. The deal-making that needs to be conducted before any decisions can be made can go on for many, many months.
So, if you want to have government that is democratic while remaining stable and effective, the two party system is really the way to go.
We have lots and lots of parties. But they don't get much press or many votes. We only have two MAJOR parties.
I see this differently. I see this as allowing different people in different geographical areas to coordinate their efforts to push their agendas.
Decentralized Democracy.
Instead of having lots of parties with lots of candidates, we'll end up with a few candiadates talking to a lot of people who are the leaders of their groups.
Dean's improbable sprint to internet cash-and-glory will only get him so far. And then the incredibly labor intensive huge Democratic machine will have to take over.
If you look at Dean's main Website and official blog you'll notice that it's not just fundraising that's going on. There are 150,000 people involved in Dean Meetups and thousands more have already sent over 100,000 handwritten letters to voters in New Hampsire and Iowa. Plus there are scores of independent websites discussing and promoting Dean from various perspectives. He's got more troops on the ground than the Democratic Party - particularly if you count the union troops he's already recruited as his and not the Democrats', per se.
What Dean's doing isn't taking over the "Left Wing" or even the Democratic Party so much as it is taking over the middle of the road. He's steamrolling right down the center with a good dose of traditional American common sense (although his invocation of Thomas Paine is a bit lame, at least it's an error in the right direction). He's redefining what the center of the road means.
And this whole thing about his - and his fans' - "anger" is just off the point. George W. is an idiot, and he's calling the Emperor naked and saying clearly that we should replace him with all haste. People aren't angry at Bush so much as disappointed and disgusted because Bush doesn't live up to the Main Street American values that Dean invokes.
The cynicism of the corporate-owned press is that we don't have any values to speak of beyond consumerism and the money to support our "American way" habits (and their advertisers). According to this cynicism all politicians are a bit false, so calling them naked is a bit beside the point. Dean's not a cynic, not false, and is using the Net to communicate directly with others who love America and see higher ideals as once again attainable by it, rather than a continued slide into blustering corruption.
He' proving the Republic still has some blood in its veins. He's no Thomas Jefferson (alas), but could well become the best US president since FDR.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'll bitch, cause I think we should have finished the job in Afghanistan. Instead we diverted forces over into Iraq, and it hasn't gained us anything. That's what I was saying back last year, it's what numerous other people were saying, it was what General Clark testified before Congress saying. The choices weren't "Invade Iraq" or "Let terrorists take over", we had other options. Don't listen to the Republican spin.
Look, ultimately we were going to have to deal with Iraq because sanctions don't work. But Colin Powell admitted in 2001 that we had Hussein under control and there was no threat of weapons... link
But really that's all water under the bridge now anyway. We're in there, we've got to fix it. I don't like what's happening over there, and I'll be damned if I let the prick who created this mess be rewarded with reelection.
And once unopposed, the Democrats will start to look a lot more like old-school Democrats (read: socialists in populists' clothing) than the Stepford Republicans they now resemble.
We have a republican congress and a republican president and they have managed to increase discretionary spending a whopping 23%(this doesn't include military spending). Far more than the democrats ever have. They have managed to increase this(and military spending) while simultaneously reducing veterans benefits and medicare benfits.
Why are the republicans giving my kids and future grandkids future earnings to large corporations? What ever happened to fiscal responsibility?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor).
What a lot of people in the media don't realize is that the Internet is only effective for reaching out to the hard-core political junkies and firmly aligned partisans. Regular people DO NOT read political news on the Net and are offended when people send it out to them.
The Internet makes it easier for fund-raising but it can't make a winner out of a bad candidate. Dean could have the best Internet operation there ever could be but he still won't win unless he can convince people that he's not insane.
Man, is that a strawman if I ever did see one.
Dean isn't "far-left", a moderate (former governor of a very conservative state) with some "left" or liberal views isn't "far-left".
Bush isn't a "non-fiscal conservative", he's a "starve-the-beaster". and his liberal medicare benefit will put most of the value into the pharmacutical (sp?) and private industry's pockets as they sell more drugs at guaranteed high prices and pull in the profitable seniors into private plans. In addition, the long term costs of his medicare benefit in conjunction with his rampant deficit spending could mean going back to only the well to do being able to afford school and retirement....or massive tax increases for my generation and my childrens generation.
I'll agree there.
> there was no threat of weapons...
I could care less about WMD. We helped put the SOB into power and inflicted him on the world, and the people of Iraq. He was our responsibility and we were morally obligated to deal with him and pay the associated costs. That's what we get for laying down with the wolves. If we had to use the pretext of WMD to get the country to go along with it, so be it.
BTW, at the UN we claimed Sadam had WMD programs not functional weapons, although we said it was likely that he had weapons capability. The programs alone violated the 1991 deal. No evidence has contradited this basic point, although both sides have spun it to hell and back....
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
At some point in the near future, with a deteriorating economy, people will be sick of the old two parties and a third party candidate will win.
No, historically that is not what happens. Typically, the third party movement is absorbed into whichever of the two main parties has the closest, watered-down version of the third party ideology. Look at George Wallace - all the white bigots that voted for him, registered Republican and the Democratic party has a very difficult time in the south these days.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Just compare the planning for the NATO interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo with the near total lack of planning for the intervention in Iraq. One example is to compare the large number of civilian police that were lined up and waiting to move into Kosovo immediately after the conflict. There were no pre-war efforts made to recruit international civilian police for post-conflict Iraq.
And no, this isn't a case of 20/20 hindsight. I spent 6 years in a U.S. Army Reserve Civil Affairs Bn. The professionals in the Army who know how to plan for and handle post-conflict problems were simply ignored by Rumsfeld. The outcome was frightningly obvious to those of us who have done this sort of work professionally. The Bush Administration is paying the price for their hubris.
FreeSpeech.org
How many times can the American people be fooled?
The dot-com era showed how clearly and blatantly easy it is to misrepresent your revenue, and your whole value, to an extrordinary degree.
And here comes somebody with a result that *shouldn't* be happening, and yet it is happening, and people just go: "Well, gosh, ain't that internet something!"
No, it ain't. I'm not saying it's definite, I'm just saying "raising wildly unexpected amounts of money" sets my bullshit radar off. I would think all the frauds of the past 3 years would make you suspicous too.
If they'd allowed Medicare to do so...would have severely cut costs...and made it easy for all elders. I think this was the biggest waste part on this bill. I know the drug industry had to spend lots of $'s on R&D, but, even with this provision in, they'd still do well.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Because Bush is a bible-thumper.
Not really. He is a Christian, he is a Republican, and he does occasionally make scriptural references in his speeches, but that is common of anybody who actually reads it regularly. But he is by no means one of the people the poster was talking about. I generally vote Republican (but am not a registered Republican), and I am a Christian. I generally like Bush.
The "Religious Right" are a completely different situation though, and they comprise a small but well-united element of the Republican party, a few million people (I don't remember actual numbers). These people would end up being a Christian equivalent of the Taliban if they were given half a chance. They push for prayer in schools, support of Israel, anti-pornography laws, anti-alchohol laws, etc., and generally an elimination of the seperation between church and state. A recent example would be that judge who tried to put a giant marble ten commandments in the state courthouse.
I don't think prayer in public schools is appropriate, I don't think the Ten Commandments in a state courthouse is appropriate, I like to drink, I don't think we should be as involved in the Israel thing as we even are now, and generally I think that they are a bunch of self-rightous little shits in general, who need to mind their own business.
The problem is, if they quit voting Republican, the party would probably only ever get about 40% of the presidental vote, because of the pervasiveness of the Dems, so they are put up with. Bush is actually rather popular with them though, because he "quit drinking and found God." This is the sort of shit that they love to hear. In reality, he had a bunch of DUI's, and his wife threatened to leave him.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Sorry, but, all hardcore evangelical Christians are not religious right.
Not all but surely most.
Speaking as a formerly agnostic follower of Jesus who grew up with no religious background at all, I'm confused by the way practicing Christians seem invariably to be conservative in their politics. I can't really find a way to reconcile the pull yourself up by the bootstraps brand of Rush Limbaugh conservatism with the teachings of Jesus or the canonical books of the New Testament.
In truth, the Gospels show that Jesus came most sharply into conflict not with the big partyers (sinners), but with the Orthodox Religious Right of the day, the Pharisees, over their imposing morality onto others, and their attempts to side-step their responsibility to care for others' well-being.
Also, the First-Century Church, was strongly socialistic. Compare Marx's dictum, From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, with Acts 2:44-46 (NIV), All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
I've found that intimating that Jesus was socialistic in His politics will probably get you into a nasty row with most church folks; saying that He was a Communist will virtually guarantee it.
But I really don't know why.
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
"Muslims hate the west because their culture has stagnated by their own choosing for half a millenia."
Uh, no? Don't bother strawman-ing the issue, that's not the reason.
Muslims dislike the West because the West wasn't the nicest to them. The British ruled India and portions of the Middle East, and weren't the nicest to the indigenous people. France had similiar, I believe. We really didn't care bout Iraqis for most of this century, in pre-Gulf war times the Europeans divided up the land and separated them into separate countries, nationalism and all. The West, including the US, propped up dictators and non-democratic governments in these countries, which angered the people. Look at today, the democratically-elected Islamic government in Algeria was overthrown by military dictators, and many criticize the US and France for their tacit support of it.
The West had other things that alienated people. First, the West snubbed all non-Western people as savages, basically. They didn't have "modern philosophy", or our morals, like secularism or Christianity. The West had this nasty way of imposing their culture on others, like the British pushing English on their colonies, or France forcing Algerians to learn French and study French literature. The West didn't like the Muslims, myths from the Crusades are STILL propagating in some literature I've read.
Currently, Muslims in general dislike the US for its unconditional support of Israel and its injurious manipulation of other countries for its own sole interest. However, I should point out that the Muslims really weren't bothered by the US pre-9/11. 19 foolish people really stirred things up, but if you didn't know, the terrorism was widely condemned by every country (including Afghanistan), except Saddam Hussein's government. Imams, Mullahs, and Ayatollahs all over the world condemned the act, and prayed for the victims. Iran had public candlelit vigils on the streets, there were public anti-terrorism demonstrations in Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Post-9/11, things got a little different. The US invaded Afghanistan, which upset some, but many said it was a natural consequence of 9/11 and revenge. Even television preacher Sheikh Qaradawi said that he could understand why the US was invading, and he said it was legitimate. But honestly, the threat of terrorism didn't really get worse, Muslims all over the world still said they didn't support Al Qaeda, terrorism, or Bin Laden. Sure, they got angry when Christian evangelists made statements that insulted Muslims, but Bush denied it was a war on Islam, so it never boiled over.
What really Fubar-ed the whole thing was this war on Iraq. The US government did things that infuriated the Arab world and Muslim world at large. I don't have to go into why, but it really turned the tide. People now refuse to support the US; everyone, including me, feels that the US government is untrustworthy. Who else can they turn to? Bush's actions became a top recruiting tool for terrorists. Turn on a TV and watch soldiers raid homes, drag women out of their homes not fully clothed, harrass old men, hear about how civillians died every day, it's all making people support other groups.
"Their priests tell them they are the good, the faithful, the chosen, and yet they are the poor, the weak, and the oppressed. How can this be?" Two things. Respite, and there's a hadith "God will allow a fair government to survive, even if it isn't Muslim, and God will cause an unfair government to fall, even if it is Muslim." They declined, and lost it.
"Of course the truth is comical. They're the most corrupt, the laziest, the most decadent." Blah blah blah.
Totally different culture there. Germans today deeply regret Nazism, and Japan wised up. Your "Feudalism" theory doesn't make sense, please elaborate because I don't understand what you mean.
Israel? Do you really want to open up a can of worms here? Fine, but I warn you, this will be lengthy.
But a bunch of farmers with a hodge-podge of weapons were too much for the surrounding muslim pussies to even imagine tolerating. So they attack the recently declared state. And predictably loose. Now Israel is this great evil because they've defended themselves and bought land from people who sold it to them.
You're reading this from the Zionist view? Did you know that the Jewish settlers carried out terrorism against the Palestinian people who were already there? David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, actually had a wanted poster with his name on it, for terrorism and attacks against the Arabs, in his effort to push for a "Jewish state." Israel didn't buy Palestinian land, instead it was stolen when people fled their homes during the war, and weren't allowed to return. There are eyewitness accounts of Israeli soldiers driving them out, killing a few even. I'm not going to get into blame, my point is that the Palestinians were driven out, not voluntarily as your post alleged. Israel demolished some homes, moved Jewish immigrants into others. The Palestinians are understandably upset, they don't get their homes back and don't get an apology or compensation either. This isn't like ancestors losing land, but people who are still living. This could evolve into a giant rant, but I'll cap it off here.
The arabs lost and blame the US for their own weaknesses
Really? Who has ever publicly blamed the US for Egypt losing the six-day war? Who has blamed the US for Israel's refusing to make peace? I recall Clinton leading a peace accord with Netanyahu and Arafat, both shaking hands. I've only heard criticism for the US' current support of Israel, not for "Arab weakness".
The only reason Israel has US support is because the muslims murder civilians specifically.
I think you are blind. You didn't know about AIPAC giving MILLIONS in campaign contributions? That every candidate for decades has sided with Israel to court the Jewish and evangelical votes? If that as you said is the sole reason, then why does nearly the entire UN condemn some Israeli military actions? Why does the UN complain that Israel is in violation of refugee laws? The UN has condemned terrorism on both sides.
Fuck the Muslims. Give them a taste of their own morality. It's ok to kill me because you don't like me, fuck you, eat hot thermonuclear death. Reciprocity is a bitch. Clearly if civilian populations are fair game, the civilian Muslims populations are NO exception.
Sheesh, you really have to strawman the issue here, don't you? First off, Islam does NOT condone murder, ok? Second, don't say Muslims when you only mean Arabs/Palestinians, of which I am neither. It's completely forbidden to murder anyone or attack civillians. The terrorist attacks have received worldwide condemnation from scholars, Imams, Mullahs, Maulanas, Muftis, Sheikhs, you name it. Terrorism is completely against Islam, are we clear on that? I am a Muslim, and I will help you hunt down any scum that kills children. It's not as easy as you think, Terrorists, Baathists, and the Taliban don't exactly walk around in broad daylight, despite what you think.
I'll never forget the CNN foot