November 9th, 2006
When the Internets win elections
Our president and Senator Ted Stevens notwithstanding, there are a lot of people who understand the Internet and use it to win elections. We know it is a series of tubes that delivers money and votes in exchange for effectively communicated ideas and positions. There is, though, an idea that the Net represents something new in political ideology, which, I think, is a conceit that needs to be put to bed if future campaigns are going to turn on winnable strategies.
The Net is often closely aligned with a libertarian or activist mindset, but the two are quite separate. Libertarians have certainly made active claims to the benefits of the design principles of the Net, saying that it is possible to engineerCrying "Net" and sitting back on our fat asses isn't much of a change. a political system guided by an invisible hand rather than ideology. That's just ideology. In fact, the design of systems still carries all kinds of preferences, just like the organization of elections did in the era of Tammany Hall.
For example, a friend of mine yesterday, talking about the evolution of democracy in India said that programmers are their firemen, saving society. He went on to say, "they are building eight-lane freeways over there, and they all have FastPass lanes for programmers." He was being facetious, but he was also describing the new caste system emerging because programmers are literally raising that country from poverty. Let's not be blinded by the fact that technology is helping when the benefits are being doled out: Programmers are the new Tammany bosses if you believe the Net is saving the world.
People, in my humble opinion, will decide about the world and the tools used to save it. And it needs a lot of saving. Crying "Net" and sitting back on our fat asses isn't much of a change.
Progressive bloggers made the mistake of thinking that getting Ned Lamont the Connecticut Senate nomination in the primary redefined the political system in that state. Instead, the system realigned to put Joe Lieberman back in the Senate, though as an Independent who will act every day like a Democrat. Not much really changed. That's because, having used the Net to take one step to victory, Lamont's backers thought they'd closed the deal when, in fact, a whole lot of plain old politicking had to be done.
By contrast, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, who was running against a well-funded Republican in what was expected to be a close race, used the Net without fetishizing it. A former RealNetworks executive, Cantwell sent copious emails to people who had shown a willingness to receive them (I am, admittedly, one of those people) instead of assuming that being on the Net and blogged about was sufficient. The result, she raised a lot of money and, more importantly, drove many more people to vote for her than expected, winning handily instead of by a narrow margin.
See Cantwell's "Thank you" message to Internet supporters, which she recorded before going on-stage to make her victory speech. Doing that recording first, before the physical audience, is a subtle and effective way of engaging people on the Web without letting the Web take over your campaign. All politics, after all, is intensely local. For Cantwell, the Net constituency is just one neighborhood among many. It's one that deserves the attention it gets.
People are still people wherever you engage them, on the Net or otherwise. As networked conversations become more important to winning elections, let's not make the mistake of thinking that the economy of abundance that defines online scarcity (or the lack thereof) can erase the very tangible scarcities of power and wealth that define real-world politics.
Even prophets of the new collectivism are selling their deeper ideas for $375 a pop these days. When we actually start eliminating poverty and creating more opportunity for economic and social mobility rather than less, then, maybe, we can start lauding the Internet for having wrought real changes to the body politic.
Mitch Ratcliffe is a veteran journalist, media executive and entrepreneur. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 11/10/06
