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.

Comments

Re:The end of the (non-)religious right?

[Zeinfeld]

Think about it: do you know anybody in the Moral Majority? No. The 'Moral Majority' faded away. Even Doctor Evil himself, John Ashcroft, doesn't shove his religion at people the way people trump it up.

The Moral Majority turned into the Christian Coalition. At this point it is not unusual for 70% of the board of a state republican party in the south to have come from the Christian Coalition.

The thing that has changed is that MM and CC are no longer able to bring out voters the way they once did. Having got their place in the party the apparachicks are less willing to work for it the way they once did.

Curious fact is that the Democrats regularly outpoll Republicans amongst Christians. The big divide is between the evangelicals who believe that the moral of the parable of the good samaritan is 'love thy neighbor' and the fundamentalists who claim the point Christ was making was the samaritan had the money to be able to afford to help.