The question raised by Dean and Bai: What is politics for?

Micah L. Sifry — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:04:00 -0500

Colin is absolutely correct to say that "most political campaigns don't exist to create or to capture a movement, they exist to elect a candidate, which is a very different thing." And the fact that they don't have a lot of time to get to their very pragmatic goal of 50% + 1 votes means that we shouldn't expect most campaigns to be very innovative. They simply don't have the resources or the luxury to make many mistakes--with the exception of the mavericks and the outsiders and the long-shots, who basically have less to lose and more to gain from trying new tactics.

But something else is happening here, and it is the result of two hidden forces colliding:
1. Most of the American political system is wired to defend the status quo: the whole system of checks and balances, the disproportionate power vested in small population states by the institution of the Senate, ditto with the Electoral College--all of this militates against movements for change. But there is one office with tremendous power that, by comparison, appears to be up for grabs every four years, the Presidency. So a lot of popular energy--all the people hungry for some kind of change--gets vested in the race for the White House, and for a brief period (usually the year prior to the actual election) the process opens wide to all kinds of bidders, including mavericks and outsiders with little hope of winning something as prominent as a Senate seat. So every four years, we get all kinds of candidates promising "change" and some even meaning it.
2. The Internet and all the tools and practices that are growing up on it are subtly altering the rules of the political game in ways that shift power away from centralized hierarchies and out towards networked individuals. The Internet solves the dilemma of collective action by making the fragmented work of individuals into something salient, and thus stimulates more collective action. And by lowering the barriers of entry and the costs of communication, it is fostering far more civic action than under the prior regime of capital-intensive broadcast-dominated politics.

Sparks, meet tinder.

Now, political campaigns are under no obligation to try to light a fire and organize national movements for change, and thus perhaps Bai's argument about the lessons of the Dean campaign can't be universalized. But I think his argument is still valid for two reasons. First, some of the presidential campaigns ARE promising big changes if their guy is elected. It is fair to ask of those campaigns, you and what army? If these contenders AREN'T using the internet to build a dynamic, networked grassroots base, they're asking us to put a lot of faith in one person's ability to jawbone changes through a very entrenched political establishment.

Second, the question we should be asking is NOT who is making the best use of the internet to win an election, it should be how can we all use the internet to build a more democratic culture. Getting to 50% +1 may be one way of achieving certain ends (including that one), though in my experience usually all that is achieved is getting an individual into office.

The Dean campaign was obviously an electoral failure. But the reason we're still talking about it is that it hinted at the potential for something much greater, which is the creation of an ongoing, self-organized and self-aware movement of several hundred thousand political activists all oriented toward some big common goals. Nicco Mele, Dean's webmaster, once said to me, after the Dean tents had folded, that what was hardest about the experience of losing was that "We all felt the muscle flex of this new progressive movement and were stunned by it."

The fact is, American politics doesn't have many political muscles oriented towards fundamental changes. Dean got to 600,000 supporters and together the campaign and its base used the net to get pretty far before the crash. Right now, both Obama and Paul have similar dynamics working for them, and in each case we are getting a sense of how the internet can super-power the efforts of several hundred thousand people. It's possible we'll see sparks hitting tinder, but no real fire...but the campaign of 2008 is far from over.

Excellent addition

Colin Delany — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:08:03 -0500

Thanks -- I'll post that over at e.pol as well.

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

Forgot to mention

Xavier Lopez-Ayala — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:48:33 -0500

I loved the article, and it made some great points, but I think it might have also been helpful to reference some of the failings of the Obama tech staff.. For example, techPresident did a great job covering the MySpacegate (or whatever it's being called now) where Obama's campaign literally gave the shaft to a passionate netroots organizer.

Who Learned the Right Lessons from the Dean Campaign? A Reply to Matt Bai

Colin Delany — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:40:57 -0500

Writing in the NY Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, Matt Bai evoked a vivid picture to describe how political campaigns should, in his eyes, harness the internet:

In the new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses, the same way a rock guitarist might fall backward off the stage into the hands of an adoring crowd.

Powerful image! But some pictures hold less than meets the eye, and this might just be one of them. Are the presidential campaigns missing the boat, or do they know something we don't?

techPresident - Who Learned the Right Lessons from the Dean Campaign? A Reply to Matt Bai - Comments

The question raised by Dean and Bai: What is politics for?

Excellent addition

Forgot to mention

Who Learned the Right Lessons from the Dean Campaign? A Reply to Matt Bai