In the 2008 election cycle, Donna Edwards, a “lawyer and community activist” who co-founded the National Network to End Domestic Violence, was explicitly and endorsed by a new movement of progressive activists--especially those part of what will be referred to as the New Electronic Left who use new information and communications technology to organize, publish and promote ideas, agendas and candidacies--in her primary race against the Democratic incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland’s 4th Congressional district. The Blue Majority Project, a coalition of progressive blog-based communities of Open Left, DailyKos and Swing State Project backed Edwards, who defeated “corporate Democrat Al Wynn” in the February 12, 2008 primary election, taking 60 percent of the vote to Wynn’s 35 percent. The New Left bloggers and their readers raised over $420,000 from 8,000 donors ($50 was the average donation) using the internet-based Democratic fundraising tool, ActBlue.

This race was the perfect storm for the new progressive movement that seeks to move the Democratic Party more to the Left, and it allowed the bloggers and online activists to use all available resources to influence the race from all over the country. It represented the best the New Electronic Left had to offer to American democracy. Al Wynn was a 15-year congressional incumbent, a stalwart in Maryland politics, and a member of the Black Congressional Caucus. Combined with the fact that only three percent of congressional incumbents are defeated, and that MD-04 is a 70% Democratic performing district, Edwards should have been easily defeated by Wynn, who could point to all kinds of legislative accomplishments and gather votes from faithful residents who valued seniority and experience. But influential bloggers like Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers, both contributors on Open Left, took the fight straight to Wynn, harping on his vote to authorize the president to attack Iraq in 2002, and raising the profile of the primary contest to attract national attention. Edwards tried a similar strategy in 2006, but lost the primary by a little over three points. If the internet activists and bloggers could actually make a difference and pull off a victory--many political strategists have questioned how just how impactful the bloggers can be on elections--then this was their chance to prove the critics mistaken. Wynn was everything that was wrong with the Democratic Party Establishment. He was a corporate Democrat who compromised to insure reelection by finding the mythical median voter. He voted for the Iraq War and for subsidies for oil and gas companies, earning him Stoller’s most malicious label, a “Bush Dog Democrat”—meaning that Wynn dared to work with Republicans on issues, being nothing more than a rubber-stamp for White House legislation.

Online, citizen democrats have found a place for community. The medium shapes the lives of men more than the message communicated through the forum. This notion is ever truer in today’s voluntary, political, internet communities. The media of the internet crave interaction; without engagement by users, these technologies found in the net remain useless. The communities of people make the internet work. And in general, communities function best when there is consensus regarding ultimate goals. Therefore, it is no surprise that online political activists have exacerbated partisan divides in the American electorate. Because of the structure of the medium, the community forms around the idea that democracy in America needs so remedying.

These people engaging each other in the online world do not simply crave power. They truly believe that democracy needs some help, and, optimistically, that it can be improved—for everyone—using some of the same tools they have used to find each other, and mobilize political actions. The revitalizers of American democracy do not come from the inside, from the Establishment. No, they have come in from the political sideline to win a game of democracy that is being played poorly on both sides. In sum, the Democrats have more people on their sideline with the training and skills to play the electronic political mobilization game, and are slowly but surely replacing the injured political and party Establishment. If they did not believe in the goal, then why would they bother to participate and invest so much of themselves in the outcome? All signs of the New Electronic Left’s propulsion of the progressive movement point to more inclusion, more discussion, more political participation in its broadest sense, and all of this means that America can live a fuller, more meaningful, democratic life.

Democracy is being revitalized in America. It’s happening. It’s happening now. And it’s from the bottom, of the people. And if you don’t know, now you know. The revolution began yesterday.

Why does democracy need revitalizing? From Peter M. Shane:



These are more than just perceived concerns however, because the political system itself inherently creates situations where the values and opinions of the population are not proportionally represented in the legislature.

Ironically, though Americans feel that they have been “forced out of politics,” Ginsberg cites several studies in which Americans are optimistic, maybe naïve, about the abilities of their government to solve problems and generally make life better. When things go wrong, Americans have a tendency to let the politicians off the hook. This is probably because they feel guilty about not participating fully in the political arena, and it is much easier to pretend that you cannot make a difference when in fact you can, that you’re just lazy.

Just did this little ditty. I think it's pretty good. It may serve as a frame for the paper as a whole, though I offer a lot of unqualified terms. Oops. Let me know what you think.

Aristotle warns that democracy will lead to an end to professionalism, using the example that a poor person in the position of being able to judge a physician will then think himself a physician, able to do the work of a professional though he lacks formal training. Aristotle finds this to be a problem inherent in democratic societies—everyone believes himself an equal though the reality speaks to the contrary: man is not created with equal endowments. The new information and communications technologies residing on the internet coupled with databases of perfect knowledge, has allowed the non-professional to have access to information once regarded the sole domain of the professional. For instance, relating back to Aristotle’s example, large numbers of Americans consult popular medical websites such as WebMD to self-diagnose before going to the doctor’s office in person. Partly due to a distrust of the profitable nature of the medical profession, but mostly due to a stronger faith on the part of the individual patient, a person seeks as many qualified opinions as possible to make the best decision regarding something very near to them—their personal health. Should it be a question, then, that a citizen engages the political establishment as vigorously as he or she does the medical establishment, in order that he or she might enjoy the greatest benefit to their own persons or families but to society as a whole as well? The users of the new information and communications technologies use the technology not to manipulate the system for want of power, but for the betterment of the system and society in general, for it means so very much to these new activists; they see value in a well-informed public sphere. The information is out there, available for everyone to become an expert, if only for a minute on the minutest of subjects, but it takes human initiative, action, to filter that information, and send it to the quick-to-mobilize segments of the public.

Aristotle’s fear of rule by the poor, for the poor, may well be replaced by rule by the poor in status, wealthy in knowledge, for the poor, wealthy in access.

More specifically, in the political realm, large numbers of citizens are beginning to consult the databases of information equally available on the net to craft themselves into the image of political pundit, critiquing representatives and government officials on a limited number of issues. Once the professional political actors demonstrate their competence to the satisfaction of the self-endowed and internet-enabled pundits, the citizen-pundit returns to the database to aggregate knowledge on another issue to quiz the political pundit the next day. This situation can be extremely frustrating for political professionals, but a requisite of democracy is the notion of equality. Without the internalization and legitimation of equality into the psyche of the citizenry, democracy will remain nothing more than a sham oligarchy, where powerful elites institute top-down rule.

Democracy allows voting citizens to express their interests.

But it's not going so well. It turns out that the way I make papers is just too disjointed. I haven't completely finished any sections yet--and I'm 35 pages in. Oops! At any rate, I'll try to put something up soon, or at least I'll put up the slides to my powerpoint that I have to give on Monday at 7 p.m.

That's all. Just wanted to let you know what's going on. The paper is due on the 23rd or 24th, so it will be done soon.

Stef just told me there is lightening. Yikes.

“… let the momentum and the decision making come from the people—stop trying to control the river…just open the flood gates and see where the current [takes] us.”

American political campaign guru Joe Trippi is one of the persons most responsible for promoting the notion that the internet represents something new, good, and untapped in the foundations of democracy in America. The technology of the internet is useful, but reinvigorating democracy entails more than just putting up a campaign blog; it requires real hard work on the ground, the right kind of candidacy, and the right kind of governance.

Trippi is limited by his hands on conception of democracy, in that he believes that engaging people in a political conversation is the key to better governance and empowerment. In his book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, he claims that the real innovation of the Howard Dean campaign was democracy, and its use via a new medium.

Trippi, in typical blogger braggadocio, claims throughout his book and blog postings that people “just don’t get it”—politicians, media, party bosses, etc—as if it is unavoidably obvious that the next political wave is linked with the internet and a reengagement with disaffected citizens.

Along with many other social critics, Trippi almost single-handedly blames television for political demobilization and poor governance. He says that many people have blamed negative campaigning for political disengagement, that people have become fed up with negativity. But, he says, the problem is television—“the way it fails to engage people.”

“In the last half of the twentieth century, television staged a hostile takeover of American culture, in just twenty year going from reflecting American life, to altering American life, to dictating nearly every aspect of American life: the products we buy, the clothes we wear, the things we fear.”

One of the most successful aspects of the Dean campaign early on was its ability to translate internet fervor into actual bodies at campaign rallies and GOTV efforts. The way the campaign did this was involving supporters in the campaign schedules, allowing them to organize the people and locations through Meetup.com. It worked so well that wherever Dean went during his campaign, he made sure to go to one of the Meetups held in the city, to show his gratitude for the people’s support. Howard Dean--“he got it.”

In 2004, other campaigns used the internet, but mostly as yet another avenue for top-down advertising, and later fundraising. What they failed to understand, Trippi charges, is that the campaign does not use the internet, the internet—and the movement of people behind it—uses them. When Dean was confronted with a 1,200 person crowd in Seattle a year out from the Iowa caucuses, it was a further realization for Dean and Trippi that the campaign was “out there…anything the campaign could do, they could do better.”

This stuff has changed quite a bit since I first envisioned the project in November. I really just wanted to get something up here until I feel confident enough to publish semi finished stuff. Take a look and let me know what you think. (I have since considered many other works, and disconsidered many of these).


In Search of an Intellectual Framework:

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation.
Baudrillard, Jean. The Spirit of Terrorism.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America.
Debord, Guy. Society and Spectacle.
Gore, Al. The Assault on Reason.
Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism: Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. New York: Random House, 1967.

To guide and compare observations:

Cyberprotest : new media, citizens, and social movements. Win van de Donk, ed.
Dartnell, Michael Y. Web Activism and Global Conflict.
Davis, Richard. Politics online : blogs, chatrooms, and discussion groups in American democracy. New York : Routledge, 2005.
Goldsmith, Jack & Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Rich, Frank. The Greatest Story Ever Sold.
Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Harper, 2005.

Heffernan, Virgina. The Medium. < http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/>.
This blog on nytimes.com just started up a few weeks ago, and should prove a valuable resource for trends in the realm of politics and the internet.

Internet Sites to be investigated

This is by no means an exhaustive list, not will I investigate each in great detail, but I do plan at looking at these types of resources, definitely those listed below, and others as I come across them.

Facebook
YouTube
MySpace
Wikipedia and its cousins
Current TV

Mass Media
New York Times (nytimes.com)
CNN (cnn.com)
Foxnews.com

Interest Groups
Moveon.org
Others? Suggestions?

Blogs
Daily Kos (dailykos.com)
Wonkette (wonkette.com)
WatchBlog (watchblog.com)
Barelypolitical.com
Think Progress (thinkprogress.org)
Others? Suggestions?

Campaign Websites – Especially before they all shut down and people drop out
RonPaul.com
JohnEdwards.com
HillaryClinton.com
MittRomney.com

Virtual Reality
Second Life (secondlife.com)
Xbox Live and Windows Live
Massively Multiplayer games
Guild Wars
The Sims
Diablo
Lord of the Rings Online (Or whatever is hot right now)
The Halo Series

Interviews
Casual blogger and internet based political activist Justin Varner
Online Gamers Christopher Walborn and his friend DJ, as well as interviews with other members of XBOX Live.