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Political philosopher Peter Levine pooh-poohs the Internet side of the Dean campaign: "I don't buy that the 'distributed' methods pioneered by Joe Trippi will do anything to improve our democracy." He cites a Washington Post study that found that the median family income of those contributing to the Dean campaign was $54,117 and the fact that in NH Dean did best among those with postgraduate study under their belts. Further, he writes, W "has raised more than twice as much money through the Internet as Howard Dean. This suggests to me that online fundraising will soon be part of the standard arsenal of an 'establishment' candidate."
First, Peter may well be right: The experience and experiment of the Dean campaign ultimately may prove to have done nothing to improve our democracy in the long run. For example, it's easy to imagine how a single, devastating terrorist attack could effectively put the military in charge of our country. (The Internet then would likely be the last forum for free speech...until it too was "secured.") Short of that calamity, it's certainly easy to imagine that politics-as-usual continues for years and years; money and power provides a heap o' inertia.
Even so, it seems clear to me that the Dean campaign in the short run has certainly improved our democacy if only by bringing more people into it. Further, it sure seems to me (i.e., anecdotal "evidence" ahead) that the participants felt a sense of involvement and ownership unusual in the dreary, broadcast slugfests that have become the norm in politics.
Second, Peter sees nothing in the Dean campaign other than more efficient fund raising. That, to me, is to miss what's most interesting about the campaign, but also the most fragile: The campaign's attempt to allow the ends to connect directly. Maybe that was a bad idea. Maybe it would not have spread beyond the early adopters. Maybe it would have created a new elite. Or maybe it could have made candidates more accountable to their supporters in a way that I believe Peter would like. We don't know. The experiment has been cut short either because its hypothesis was false or because its candidate lacked appeal, or both. We don't yet know.
But it's important that we know that we don't yet know.
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David--Thanks for treating my skepticism so open-mindedly. I know that there are lots of people whose hopes for democracy have been raised by the Dean campaign; I respect that and don't want to throw a wet blanket over their good work. But I will ask: how many more people has the Dean campaign actually brought into politics? Our research shows that the signature methods that Dean used (blogs, for instance) are only appealing to people with very strong political views. They usually vote anyway. So I suspect that the Dean campaign successfully used Internet techonology to draw strongly liberal voters to support Dr. Dean--but most of these people would have voted for someone else if he had not run.
There are, of course, hundreds or even thousands of people who actually volunteered for the campaign, and for some, this was their first experience of such intense political activity. But I think we should bear in mind that there is always excitement in the early stages of a presidential primary competition when there is no anointed party leader but lots of insurgent candidates with grassroots operations. The last time the Democrats had such a campaign was 1992. Even though Bill Clinton and his Democratic rivals did not use especially new campaign techniques (and certainly not the Internet), they did generate excitement on the left. There was ultimately a large spike in overall turnout, and especially youth turnout, in November of '92.
If participation rises as much as in '92, we'll be very lucky. I am happy to recognize an increase in excitement this year, but I'm not yet ready to say that the Internet has helped, nor am I sure that new voters will be attracted to politics in any large numbers. I hope so, but I don't see the evidence yet.
Posted by Peter Levine on February 17, 2004 06:19 PM | Permalink to Comment-- Peter