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The Internet, Media and Politics
Several people submitted an interesting column on Davenet about the differences in methodologies of the Dean campaign and other primary campaigns. Of course, the analogy doesn't have to be strictly Dean - it can apply to any candidate who breaks from the traditional norms of campaigning. and while I think people have been saying since 1996 that this is the year of the Internet in politics, for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way. In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed.
Those who used to research candidates before can now hit their website and get a quick summary instead of digging through newspapers and mass mailers.
Those who never really cared, pretty much still don't care, even if all they have to do is click on a website and read.
The biggest affect has been that communication within groups of like-minded individuals has been greatly increased. Between sites like meetup.com for live meetings and email discussion lists for ongoing meetings online, if you care about an issue or set of issues, you can coordinate with others who feel the same way.
It's gotten to the point where non-internet enabled members of political organizations are starting to feel left out because they miss 90% of what goes on in their group.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way
Well the Blair Witch Project, back in 1999 used an internet-based marketing approach to rack up 140 million dollars. Not only that, it set the standard for how movies are marketed online.
Just because this is about entertainment and art and not politics doesn't make it less real. There's a lot of money in movies.
Dean's principal problem was not the hostile media. The media is hostile to all candidates--after all, when was the last time you heard a Campaign talk about how happy they are with the coverage of their candidate? Dean's problem was he got stuck in a feedback loop with his base--while his base loved everything he said, the rest of the electorate didn't, and the base was all that Dean's campaign managers listened to. The internet makes it much easier to for minorities to organize and be far more vocal than in the past, but a vocal minority is still a minority. The organization capabilities of the internet made it far easier for Dean to get crowds to his speeches, which made it appear his support was far broader than it was. It used to be three hundred people at a speech early in the campaign was indicative of far greater support, but in Dean's case is simply meant that there were three hundred people in that area who supported him.
All the things about Dean that his base loved--his irreverence, his red-faced speeches, his jokes--many other voters found annoying and un-Presidential. Some of Dean's policy proposals just made him look silly (like the campaign finance reform proposal where you give $100 to a candidate, the candidate gets "matching" funds of $500 from the Federal campaign funds, and you get to take a $100 credit against your next income tax bill. Net result: $600 flows to the candidate from the Federal coffers, and you don't lose a dime). It didn't help matters that his base could literally see no wrong with their candidate. I read the Dean Campaign blogs for a while, and they were a scary place. When a campaign becomes incapable of criticizing their candidate, a bad ending is almost ensured. Dean's decline in the polls came not so much from voters deserting him, but from all of the "undecided" voters who made up their minds right before the election all choosing other candidates, mainly Kerry.
I suspect Dean's die-hard supporters will find comfort in the "media assassination" and "Democratic Establishment was scared of us" theories to explain the collapse of their candidate, the fact is in elections, there are winners and losers, and it really doesn't matter how "right" you believe your candidate is, because the other candidates also have supporters who utterly believe they're "right" as well. In the end, the winner is the person who does the best job of persuading other people to support them, not the person who may be right. Just because Democracy doesn't produce the outcome you desire does not mean it isn't working. You win some, you lose some, move on to the next battle.