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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.
Just wait until they start spamming us.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Internet was looking for a candidate
Really? I didn't know the Internet like to be anthropomorphised.
-Colin
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.
Apart from the horrid word, it's hardly a new process. Every electable official since the days of... well, since there were elections, has been a product shaped to win a constituency.
Dean did well using the Internet was because his constituency was one that relies on the Net for news and views.
But he failed for the same reason: he still spoke to a minority. For the majority, presidents have to be Presidential. In todays' world this means good looks and charm and political skill.
Expect future party machines to use the Internet much more, yes, but don't expect future presidents to be any less chosen on their ability to look good on television.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way.
Not to get too off-topic here -- but I consider communicating with friends and family to be at least as important as political activism.
The coolest voice ever.
Howard Dean may have been the internet candidate. But i doubt it. Unfortunately, his campaign is parralleling the dot com bust of the late 90's. The internet is a great way for candidates to construct platforms,and for voters to learn of candidates. It just so happens Dean turned out to to have a self destructive, insane quality that turned folks off. Dean is toast. I just wish he would get out the race, because I feel pity for his futility.
Dean is now looks like he has an alein in his head and the alien has decided to binge on cheap wine, and LSD. He is out of touch with reality. Well at the least the architect of his campaign jumped of this ship before it went down.
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.
Before everyone starts jumping up and down claiming that "productization" of politics is a bad thing-- please realize it`s been happening since the inception of the US republic: the tracts coming out of Boston (Common Sense, Federalist Papers) were all "productization" of one form or another-- the idea that you must package a message in palpable and swallowable formats for the masses to recieve and understand that message.
Poets, Priests and Politicians use words for your submission. The Internet thrives on disseminating text. It's just taken a while for the campaigns to figure out the most effective ways of doing that. Looking back, it makes sense that this would only happen _after_ the hypsters of the dot-com era faded away. Now that all the Flash intros, goofy graphics and image maps have all evaporated, the Internet is (hopefully) getting back to what it does best: disseminate text and solicit commentary. Wikipedia, Slashdot, Fark, and Google all understand this.
davejenkins.com |
Looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what THEY think is important.
I would agree that you should also plug their name into a decent search engine and see what else is out there. If there is anything significant out there, it will likely be online. Everything from ratings by various organizations to statements of their opponents.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Oh, and as a sort-of side note, that's the first time I've ever read Dave Winer's blog. Is his writing always that bad and his arguements that disconnected? I've been living in a non-English-speaking country for a few years, and I felt the English he used was as bad as mine is sometimes. What's his excuse?
"On the Internet, this card will confirm all the information required to gain access to a state (government) network--while also barring anyone who isn't legal age from entering an adult chat room, making the Internet safer for our children, or prevent adults from entering a children's chat room and preying on our kids...Many new computer systems are being created with card reader technology. Older computers can add this feature for very little money," Dean said.
Source. Scary... the man is looking to displace Bush, and he's more Orwellian in thought. Read the article.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
"In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed."
In a couple of years or so, we should be able to bid for our representation, much as goes on with the corporate sponsors, although I think they should wear badges to make such things obvious.
As for Dean, he was doing quite well until Trippi advised him that big, nasty lockdowns on personal PCs was the way to go, coincidentally somethng that Wave Systems (Trippi's company) would have cleaned up on. Palladium/DRM from a Democrat?
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I won't bother getting into a political shootout over this so here's my two ^*. The last place I would want to look towards when thinking of the pResidency, votes, voters* (and any variation of this) would be online. How many articles have you seen on Diebold, and all of the quirks associated with things political.
Wait before you shoot some quick response, I know this has little to do with voting so let me shift. Using the net in the fashion Dean has, is nothing new, he's probably the only one smart enough to publicize it though. Remember, many Americans aren't that literate when it comes to computing as it is, so think about this... Who are his real followers, and one has to know these numbers the Dean camp or whomever can be tweaked.
E.g.: Dean2004.com or whatever sites associated with them show 1,000,000 visitors for February. Oh really? How many unique visitors, etc. Don't throw out numbers without backing it. Secondly, when it comes to computing, for all you know, there could be some 13-17 (under the voting age) kids playing around with Dean & Co. No you say? Prove it. Who in Dean or any camp can say with a straight face "We've attracted 1,000,000 legal aged voters that live in America" that would be a flat out lie. Even if say "cache.bigcompany.com" (where Big Company was a Fortune 500 co.) connected to someone's party, how do you know it's not a misconfigured proxy allowing anyone to connect.
Dumb users spread viruses. Irrelevant? I definitely think not. I would not look to the net for the next best thing "politically" for a long ass time. Now when someone decided to post "this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way" ... They should have thought up something more meaningful like medical studies or something similar. My personal "REAL USE" of the internet would be the sharing of information on the educational level a-la MIT's Open Course Ware, and other projects similar to that. However I think medically it's underdeveloped and could rock. Think distributed dna sequencing type stuff.
Oh well my ramblings for the day
MoFscker
As a platform for political wheedling, the net could change the dynamics of voter behavior very much, but only in conjunction with REAL online voting.
What happens when, like telephone proliferation in the US, reliable net access is in the hands of vitually all americans and unique, verifiable online identifiers are adopted for users? Online voting is just the first - and most obvious - step. Politicians (and PACS, grassroots orgs and radicals as well) could cheaply distribute and track effectiveness of their messages. Most importantly, they could more easily gather vote paydirt from the largest (and previously unreachable) voting majority in the US - the non-voter - who I argue is just too damn lazy and busy to walk to thier local elementary school and push a button.
What if there was a link from Dean's blog to a "voting proxy" system which would cast your vote online for you on election day - even if you forgot? take away unidirection persuasive material and physical polling places and you'll have voting weirdness the likes this country has never seen.
...for me this is the first *real* use of the Internet in a meaningful way.
Step back from the keyboard for a bit...you need a good slap.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I must agree with one point in the article, at least. The way to use the 'net in politics is to use it to the hilt, and assume that the traditional implements of power will act against you. Using it as just a nontraditional means of fundraising and then trying to spend the money with the people you just bypassed is not too bright.
Instead, go *completely* nontraditional. Don't buy into the claim that you have to spend big to win big. For very little money a candidate can now have what amounts to his own publishing empire, one that's very difficult for the entrenched interests to silence or drown out. Point out that the other guys are spending $100 million to win a job that pays $0.5 million a year, and ask if that seems fiscally responsible, or even sane. Publish *detailed analyses* instead of meaningless sound bites and vague strokes, for people who want to read 'em, and make a point of the fact that *your* thinking is always available for study while *they* seem to want to hide all their details. Dredge up the news that's important to you, and become known as a place where people can find the stuff that's kept out of the daily papers. Don't try to outspend 'em; try to out-write 'em.
How much of this is true, and how much Dean being an unattractive, unsympathetic dipshit of a candidate had to do with the lack of campaign coverage for him, we'll never know.
But for those of us cynical about politics, it's a good mini-conspiracy theory that campaign ad money could, in the worst of all possible worlds, buy news coverage for a candidate.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
There are two points to be considered here...
1. Internet Campaigning
2. Productization of politics/politicians
Its all well for us to be discussing why Dean has done so badly inspite of his Internet-campaign. But the fact is that with over 98% of American households owning television and with each American watching over 4 hours of television daily, on an average, its naive to underestimate power of the television and in turn, the power of the networks. Compared with that, under 80% of the households own a personal computer. While television is a mass medium, the Internet is still a personal medium. So it was foolish of Dean to ignore this simple fact.
But yes, he has shown that it is possible to bypass the big networks entirely and still make an impact!
Coming to the second issue... that of productization of politics and/or politicians, well, its a mutual thing! The politicians consider the voters as mere means to get elected. Moreover, the people are fed information, by the politicians, that they would find easy to accept. Productization of politicis is this method of putting a spin on everything. And its not a bad thing by default.
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.
For the most part I agree (or at least agreed) with your observations, but this post-mortems of Dean's run (by a Dean supporter no less) does, I think, a hell of a job pointing out some of the shortcomings of Dean's use of the internet. The Cliff Notes version: if it doesn't generate votes, it ain't worth squat.
because they hate that
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
In the last election in Sweden there was one new party called Fria Listan (the Free List). They were depicted as populist libertarians in the media. I think that had some truth in it, but at the same time I liked some of their ideas. They said they wanted to get away from the old party politics with lots of money spent on politicians going around the country holding speeches on public plazas and so on. Very 1950s...
This new party tried mainly to spread their ideas using the web and writing articles and letters in newspapers, both because they couldn't afford traditional campaigning and because they thought this was a more rational way in the modern age. They did generate some media attention, so I think a lot of people would at least have heard of them.
So how did it go? In Sweden we have many more parties represented in parliament, if you get more than 4% nationally or a certain percentage locally, you get a minimum number of seats in parliament. This makes voting for a small party more attractive unlike countries like the US where the winner get everything and therefore parties tend to be reduced to two mainstream, close to the center parties.*
Total number of votes for the Free List in the election? About 500, from a population of 8 million. Of course, their politics might influence this more than their method of communication, but I was still surprised at how incredibly small the number was. Joke parties like The Donald Duck party have been known to get more votes. Their web page (http://www.frialistan.st/) is now gone.
* Of course, the downside of our system is the tendency for weak coalition governments with lots of internal bickering, and special interest parties gaining disproportionate powers because they can tip the scale between bigger parties which are evenly balanced.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
No, looking at a candidate's website is a good way to see what they want you to think they think is important.
0 83 5.asp
4 01 261431.asp
Take a look at John Kerry - http://www.johnkerry.com/about/
His dad was a volunteer, he was a volunteer, but he was in the wrong war! Then he went on to be a senate stud.
But that's not accurate, not really, and I think it's important to look around the web to learn what is important.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york20040122
"The publication Congressional Quarterly examined 119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes."
As for his voting for war, he voted against the First Gulf War, then voted for the Second Gulf War, but he claims he didn't really understand what power that vote was going to give the President. And in the 1990s he called for an end to the Iraqi government as it was.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/kerry200
Speech by John Kerry, delivered on the Senate floor on Nov. 9, 1997, as recorded in the Congressional Record.
"Plainly and simply, Saddam Hussein cannot be permitted to get away with his antics, or with this latest excuse for avoidance of international responsibility."
"We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation. If he remains obdurate, I believe that the United Nations must take, and should authorize immediately, whatever steps are necessary to force him to relent -- and that the United States should support and participate in those steps."
This is just a single example and I used a single source for my rebuttals. The point of this is, if you use the canidate's sites and ther suporters and organizer's sites, you won't learn anything real about the canidate.
http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/02/03
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I visited deanforamerica.com last week and got rewarded for my visit with a big nasty popup window that his site put on my screen (just like an X10 ad). If they knew anything about the Internet community, they would have known how much people hate these things.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Don't believe me? The news on Dean was pure shit nonsense right before the primaries. All they covered was crap like "ohhhh, he has a temper!" "oooh he's angry" "ooohhh, he looks like a groundhog!" (seriously, does anyone give a damn if he has a temper? he'd have to deal with generals and foreign leaders on a daily bassis, he'd better have a damned temper!) And then, Kerry wins the 'popular' vote for in Iowa and New Hampshire, and everyone declares Dean dead-in-the-water. Except, wait, he won more delegates than Kerry, which, in a delgate rate, put him in the lead.
People talk about how Dean isn't presidential enough, or Dean is too liberal, or whatever nonsense. The fact of the matter is that the media played those parts up at the expense of his other traits, and the Grand Ol' Internet didn't change any of that.
- The Internet is not reality. Not yet, anyway.
The Cluetrain one hurts, I think, because so many on-line denizens thought it was real. But 95% of the US population, while using e-mail and occasionally surf the web, does not live its life on-line, and they probably don't want to.Cluetrain Manifesto is not reality, and probably never will be.
sPh
Yes, I'm sure all those scientists connected around the world were doing anything but advancing the knowledge of mankind. Much more imortant to campaign for leadership of what is admittedly the most influential country in the world...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Fox News vs CNN This gives the news networks the appearance of political in-fighting, just like several of the democratic presidential candidates.
No exhaustive analysis to see here! Move along!
The second article quotes CBS pres Andrew Heyward, "Cable thrives on repetition and, let's be kind, exhaustive analysis, which has to constantly be freshened." Saying ANY of the news networks engage in "exhaustive analysis" is indeed charitable. They replay and replay without ever showing much success in giving context to the newsworthy items they cover. Almost any clip can be made to look wonderful or ridiculous if taken out of context.
The value of the Internet as news media is you can get the context you need to make sense of the news clips. Good print media is also useful for that, but it's often frustrating to wait for your weekly delivery of the Economist.
ANY media gains an advantage when the editors can help provide unbiased reporting AND context for the events they cover. The trick is finding editors you can trust.
From a CNN interview conducted by Wolf Blitzer:
Wolf: "Who are you looking for in a candidate?"
Mr. Internet: "I want Howard Dean. He makes my routers and hubs happy"
Wolf: "Do you have anything more to add, in our discussion of politics?
Mr. Internet: "I took the initative in creating Al Gore"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Until we can swing a big enough monetary stick around in a guided fashion, the corporate interests will continue to control US policies.
Thinking outside my Head
I still have little to no idea exactly what he (or any other Dem) wants to *do*. And I don't mean "create jobs" or "give power back to the people" or some other vapid propaganda. What PRECISELY do they think will lead to those results?
F*ck the whole lot of them, on both sides. If you think any of them give a crap about you, you are seriously deluded.
--- Ban humanity.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york20040122083 5.asp
"The publication Congressional Quarterly examined 119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes."
Wyatt, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not trying to dupe Slashdot, but the you've been duped by the National Review.
But whether you're a dupe or a Republican sock puppet, you're disingenuously misrepresenting Senator Kerry.
You mention that both Kerry and his dad were volunteers, but what you don't mention is that both Kerry and his Dad had prostate cancer.
Senator Kerry's father died from prostate cancer.
Senator Kerry's own prostate cancer was in -- surprise -- 2003. (He announced it a little less than a year ago today., on February 12, 2003.)
So yeah, he may have only been present for 28% of whatever subset of votes Congressional Quarterly was analyzing -- because he had cancer and at the same time he was running for his party's nomination for President.
In that light, I think showing up for more than a quarter of the votes sounds pretty hardworking, if not heroic.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
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.
As you know, we just had our primary here in SC last week. Some of my friends said they had robo-call messages left on their answering machines from the Kerry campaign that said something like, "If you want to hear more about John Kerry's economic plan, press 1. If you want to hear about his military service, press 2..." and so on. I can't help wondering how many people stood there listening to their voice mail, hitting numbers on their phone and wondering "Why doesn't this dang thing work?"
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
You know what, I had cancer too, and I showed up for school. In fact over 5 years of chemo, the majority of it carried out either 90 or 550 miles from home, I only missed 30 days of class in 5 years. The worst year of my cancer I missed 4 days of school, now the Senate doesn't meet near as often as 5th grade does, but I'd expect he could make more votes, as he was able to campaign at the same time and his treatments took place in D.C.
The cancer card doesn't get my sympathies for Kerry, if he was really into serving the country and carred for his family, he would have retired from the Senate to get treated.
Agree. I'm the original poster, and I thought I was actually being objective. Calling it as I see it.
In reality, the true old-school definition of Liberal should be applied to Newt Gingrich Republican Revolutionaries because they were trying to rock the boat and change the status quo. Old-school meaning how Liberal was defined 100 years ago.
Today, Liberalism, has been usurped by Socialists. In America, there are enough people that associate Socialists with Communists. And slowly Liberal is being connected to Socialism, which is connected to Communism. Whether this be fair or not.
Simple fact, Liberalism basically means more state control of the economy. Who disagrees with that statement?
It's no secret that several of the more liberal leaning congressmen and women are members unapologetic socialists.
Slashdot Moderators showing their true colors.
Any post pointing out Dean's Liberalism is getting flamebait.
No, widespread candidate spam isn't going to happen. Here's why: when you get viagra spam and chuck it, you do no harm to the spammer. It's not like you're going to go out the next day and boycott viagra. But if you have a choice about a product you see heavily spammed and one you don't, the choice will be clear.
If anything, I'd expect candidates to spoof spam from each other.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The only ones who were harassed or arrested were the ones who engaged in violence, criminal trespass, or other actions which went beyond speaking their minds.
You know, I have the loveliest bridge to sell you, over in Manhattan.
How's that kool-aid working out for you, now?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I liked the article and agree with a lot of the authors sentiments, but disagree with the overall analysis for a number of reasons:
1. Dean didn't have the kind of control over his Internet presence to force it to zig or zag. You're right, Dean didn't plan on being an Internet candidate he wandered into it, or rather it wandered in to him. The pissed off Internet masses were bubbling and looking for someone relatively mainstream to throw their support behind. This was a relatively large and vocal group that looked scary, but in the end was a mutual admiration society of bloggers and activists that was going to love Dean and/or themselves no matter what Dean did. However, as much as the zealots of this group have and will always love Dean, the realists in the group realized that ultimately he is unelectable. Right or wrong, he's been painted as angry and he vocalizes for a small section of society. These realists fled the cause for a more electable (and yes mainstream) candidate, come primary day.
2. The media is dumb. You said it yourself, look at the kind of crap that's on at any given time. Just look at the coverage that Jackson's Teatgate has received. There is no media conspiracy to prop up Kerry. On the contrary, the media bubble had been so Dean focused for so long, that he was bound to disappoint. Instead of being a solid contender now, he a washout, because the media had set such high expectations of his performance.
All I have time for. Discuss.
Don't dismiss the internet as unable to support a political campaign just yet - I have begun my own political party here in Australia, based largely online:
www.neteffect.org.au (be gentle and mirror if you can; I have 8GB monthly quota right now and don't want to get it completely slashdotted)
Whilst it's early days for my idea, I'm hoping that I can generate enough support to get a senate seat in our upcoming federal election at the end of the year. We don't have the money politics you have in the States, nor do we have primaries and the like. The only stipulation to getting on the ballot here is to have 500 members. There are lots of disenchanted people out there who are fed up with the current climate of politics, and don't feel they have a say anymore. I hope to fix that by being truly representative of the people's choices.
As a party, we are aiming to be completely open in everything, from software, to policy formation, to financial disclosure etc. We have an active forum where we will hopefully gather ideas from all around the world on how to best serve the people of Australia (which can have flow on effects elsewhere). You are welcome to take our documentation and use it as the basis of your own political party - I want to encourage others to run for politics, so as to try to reduce the current two party system that operates here in Australia, as well as the US etc.
I've taken a hard line against the imperialist ambitions of the current US administration, but that doesn't mean I hate America. I've served with US forces in Japan and they are just as dedicated to professionalism as we are, with the same hopes and dreams for peace and prosperity. Sadly they're being told to do things they'd rather not do, in far off places around the globe, to serve the narrow interests of a few war-hawks in Washington.
Anyway, have a look if you are interested, and we'd especially like to hear from you if you think you can implement an open source secure online voting system we can use to allow members to vote on our policy formation. We plan on setting up such a system in an open framework so all democratic people may benefit from it in the future. If done correctly it could form the basis of 21st century representative politics - something that has been lacking for a long time now.
Visceral Psyche Films
You're the one spreading a myth, bud. A few minutes with Google puts the lie to your claim:
- mass arrests in San Francisco
- Brett Bursey was arrested for "trespassing" while on public property with an antiwar sign - and is now facing federal charges
- Thomas C. Frazier arrested for trying to carry an anti-war sign
- Anti-war veterns not allowed to march
- Protestors arrested after violating unconstitutional restraint of demonstrations in Lafayette Park
- Protestor beaten in Santa Cruz
The Progressive has a page dedicated to the New McCarthyism.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
In that light, I think showing up for more than a quarter of the votes sounds pretty hardworking, if not heroic.
No.
We're not talking about making cars or writing code or building houses or playing baseball. We're talking democracy.
Being elected Senator means it's your job to represent the people by voting. Yes, senators do a lot more than vote, but those are not the focus of the job. If Senator Kerry was unable to perform his duties because of cancer, I am certainly sympathetic and would wish him the best (not that he needs my wishes, since he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars). HOWEVER...he should have resigned.
Certainly, a resignation would have made it harder for him to advance his political career. It's clear to me that he chose personal advancement over representation of the voters.
I appreciate your input on this issue; I know who I'll be voting against.
This guy is about as disconnected from reality as the "Dean is the frontrunner" belief turned out to be. How did the media networks defeat Dean, when *everything* up to Iowa was Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean. I never heard jack squat about any other candidate, ever. Unless Howard Dean tried to run television campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire and was *refused*, then I don't see what their deal is.
Arguing that he was picked on by CNN and others after his Iowa concession speech may be correct, but that doesn't change the fact that he gave them the target to aim at, and it was HUGE. That was not "just being a normal person". The thing that lost Dean this election was Dean himself.
Howard Dean spent more money and had more visibility than any other candidate until kerry started winning. I have a pre-caucus Economist showing Dean and Bush as the candidates; To many, it seemed all but decided. There was always some doubt; every conversation I had about Dean moving towards the elections was "Sure he's winning, but could he beat Bush in a million years?". The answer, sadly, was no, and people realized this. Sure he opposed the Iraq war, and with today's data he can look back and be proud. But had the president/CIA/whoever not been lying/stretching the truth, who knows how acceptable that stance would be now.
I have been to the Dean site. I have read On The Issues. It's all "I will implement a plan..." with no real details. When there is some hint, it's something that flies in the face of 5000 years of civilized experience.
This is commonly followed by a laundry list of problems that are implied to be all Bush's fault instead of the millions of assholes in this country who possess life skills below those of a retarded squirrel.
--- Ban humanity.
They clubbed people who were obviously tourists who had just finished shopping and were trying to find the train. They clubbed everyone after charging at them and pressing them into a narrow walkway under scaffolding. The cops clubbed people because they were nervous, not because anyone was breaking the law, rioting, or endangering anyone. It was a pure act of aggression.
Take a look at the photos of the Oakland Longshoremen if you want to see what happens when you speak your mind. They were shot because "protesters refused to move and some of them allegedly threw rocks and bolts". Note the key phrase "allegedly". The police shot longshoremen who weren't even protesting. I guess being shot by the police is about as "unlucky" as you get.
After all the hype, all the buzz, and all the "we're savvy on the Net" hyperbole, the plain fact of the matter is It-Didn't-Work. There have been some great and insightful posts here on why that happened, with lots of "if he woulda, coulda, shoulda" quarterbacking, but that doesn't disguise the fact that for whatever reason It-Didn't-Work. I suspect that the 'Net exaggerated the phenomenon, but it is not at all new or soley as a result of the 'Net. After all, though he may have gathered it there, Dean did not blow $40 Million on the 'Net.
Remember when Jesse Jackson was surging in the polls because of his "Rainbow Coalition" during the Mondale-Gary Hart fight? The hype was tremendous, and Jackson started to believe it. Amazed at the buzz Jackson, in a major speech, intoned, "There's somethin' happenin' in this land!"
Well, when push came to shove and people actually had to choose their candidate they 'came to their senses' (in quotes in case there are some Jackson fans out there) and voted in a middle-of-the-road, basically boring sort of guy who got himself trounced by....George (Herbert Walker) Bush!
Could it be, instead, that people took a good look at Dean, saw through the hype and bluster and said, "No, thank you."?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
[can you]Come up with any valid claims of protesters being harassed, other than:
* protesters engaged in such crimes as trespass or violence
* protesters unlucky to be caught in the middle of a riot caused by the violent ones.
Can you?
Yes. Easily.
I was there for all of the major New York protests and I can tell you firsthand that the police repeatedly slammed into crowds of peaceful protestors. No violent actions to be seen at all except for cops riding horses into packed crowds of peaceful citizens.
Same is true in D.C. The protestors were peacefully and lawfully assembling when the police blocked all exits to the park, trapping everybody within, and then pushed everyone into a too-small space. Then they started arresting people for "refusing to leave" (if they just stood there) or "assault" if they tried to get through the police lines to leave.
On Feburary 15th, as you can read about in my JEs, they also closed down the subway stations, blocked streets, and worked quite hard to force a confrontation by shoving us into ever smaller spaces and trying to force us into a clash.
Did I see anybody being flat out inciting? Yeah, two guys, both big, young, muscular, white guys in preppie clothes screaming at the people around them that we should get violent. One of them on top of a police van jumping up and down and yelling in his Long Island accent. In other words, undercover cops doing their illegal best to create violence.
The real protesters just avoided these guys, with some of us making loud comments about "agents provocateurs", assuming that they were either cops or crazy but either way they certainly were not part of any group *we* would ever support.
So yet again, I call bullshit. We were not violent. The cops were.
And frankly, from what I've now seen and read, chances are the whole damned thing was coordinated by Ashcroft's slimeballs exercising oversight from within local police offices.
Too bad, so sad; yet another right wing bit of disinformation falls in the face of actual facts. Got any Iraqi WMD documents to sell me?
-Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
...everything looks like a nail. The author of this article is one of "those people". You know, the ones who attach themselves to current fads and don't realize when they're dying or dead, and keep flogging the blog, er, I mean horse well beyond its death throes.
Whether Dean was or was not a potential candidate is beside this guy's point--he was arguing that the internet is an effete medium that cannot overthrow "big corporate" control. I've got news for him, the internet isn't media-controlled. If someone wants to find something, there are ample search engines and plenty of word-of-mouth via email. Over 70% of the American populace is logging on, so it's not like there's an accessibility problem. Fewer than that even bother to vote!
If people are gullible enough to believe what's on the TV, they're never going to choose the candidate that represents them. The internet isn't necessarily a more pure medium, but there are at least a lot of voices. The problem is, bloggers are bought the same way TV and radio spots are, so how does a change in media really matter? It doesn't. That's why Dean isn't the Democratic candidate: he didn't win.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Dean's campaign vanished from the face of the earth after he fired the Trippi dude and hired an Al Gore lobbyist-stooge. And Trippi had spent all the money on Iowa and New Hampshire. But before that.....
1) He didn't control his volunteers. You don't let kids with pierced tongues try and persuade Iowa farmers to spend all day at your caucus. You don't let your gay volunteers kiss you with camerapeople present - however you might feel about it, gay rights is a loser issue except in a very few Zip codes. Did Karl Rove pay the guy to smooch him?
2) He didn't understand television. TV is a cool medium. When you are on TV you are a guest in people's living rooms. Dean vomited on the rug.
3) He didn't do damage control. After the New Hampshire speech, he should have gone on TV to apologize and show how levelheaded and non-angry he could be. Instead, nobody ever saw him on TV after that.