2008: The Information Age Continues To Revolutionize Politics. For The Better.

I have a presentation called "two circles" that I give to progressive groups and candidates; essentially, trying to make them understand and be more comfortable with the new world of power that is emerging, occasionally conflicting but ultimately integrating with the legacy world they are far more familiar with.

In this presentation, I ask a question about what the following have in common:

The Huffington Post

YouTube

iPod Nano

The answer is that on the day John Kerry conceded, November 3, 2004, none of the three were known to the American public.

It is just an attempt on my part to illustrate how fast the world is changing, and as the change quickens, how we are reaching what should be a very interesting breaking point in politics and communication.

With every revolution in communication, from the printing press to the telephone, ultimately, it has been about information, the ability to access information and the speed at which someone can access the information.

What we are seeing in politics right now is the conflict that emerges when one group that has had little or no access to information, for our purposes, the base of the Democratic party, activist and interested parties, voters, gains virtually unlimited and instant access to information while the second group, the insiders within the same party, used to controlling that information or, in fact, relying and existing with the knowledge that the voters do not have access to that information has to come to grips with the fact that they do.

Here's what I mean.

Up until recently, the process of determining which way your representative voted on a bill was a tedious one. Votes were recorded and, eventually, the record of that vote became public in printed material -- often long after the impact of the vote or the interest in the vote waned.

The fact that the votes were taking place in Washington, D.C. far way from constituents made politicians even more inclined to take liberties with their base responsibilities to vote.

The politicians only real concern was whether or not the local newspaper reporter that may cover votes would cover a missed vote, or a changed vote, or a vote of 'present.' As long as the representative's Communication Director could cover this one potential risk, the politician was essentially free to do what he or she wanted.

As we all know, this is no longer the case. Votes are accessible instantly now, and there are not just one reporter covering but literally thousands of people watching and willing to write instantly on the vote.

Often, we see online coverage of a vote in real time, analyzing the vote and bringing up either inconsistencies in voting or absences in voting. This has never happened before.

You would think that by now, politicians and D.C. staffers would recognize this and begin to adjust behavior and certainly some have. However, it is fascinating in a car-wreck-during-a-NASCAR-race sort of way to watch as old D.C. hands try to rationalize old behavior to people with this newfound ability to access information.

The one who has struggled the most with this has been Barack Obama who has made a habit of voting 'present' or not voting at all on key issues, MoveOn and Iran votes for example.

Of course, this is a considerable liability to Senator Obama who is positioning himself as one who wants to change Washington, D.C., and yet, he adopts potentially the most old-school D.C. means of avoiding having to take a stand.

There is no courage in voting present.

The clash between 'wanting to change the way DC works" with the tried and true practice of skipping key votes because no one will notice is glaring. From a broader perspective, the whole disappointment with the Democrats and their inability to do anything about Iraq comes from the same phenomena.

Two more glaring recent examples come from the opposite ends of the spectrum, President Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney.

Bill Clinton claimed that he had opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. This is not true. President Clinton is a product of the old days of politics; in fact, in 1992, he won the race for the White House before the Internet, before email, and in fact, before cell phones were in widespread use.

Perhaps I alone find this fascinating in that we look to Clinton and his very capable cadre of senior advisors as 'best in the business' and yet they won in a world that no longer exists.

A few years ago, or even 24 months ago, Clinton probably got away with that comment, in fact, the whole concept of triangulation is really based upon the base concept of being able to spin an issue to two groups. All politicians want to have things two ways, but those that espouse the concept of triangulation, they want to have it three ways.

Watch someone like Bill Clinton say he opposed the war, or my favorite example, Dick Cheney telling John Edwards in the VP debate that they had never met before they were on that stage together. It's not just that the statements are clearly false, it's that they can with their best game faces on, flat out lie because they know, historically, they will not be called on it.

Mitt Romney saw his father march with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Oh wait. No he didn't. Romney didn't just say this once, he was using it as part of his stump speech, but it wasn't true.

In fact, Mitt Romney deserves an award this cycle because he seemingly completely ignores that everyone of his positions he is running on can be directly contradicted with video from his time as Governor of Massachusetts.

Another example is the discussion of lobbyists and their money that John Edwards is pushing, hard, in Iowa.

My friend Matt Stoller at OpenLeft has a great post about it here.

In it, he ends the argument very quickly with the following data point -- gleaned, again, instantly, from the records of the campaigns:

"Obama and Clinton both get substantial sums from D.C. contributors, with at least two D..C zip codes in the top ten areas from which they derive funding. D.C. isn't in Edwards's top ten zip codes."

In his post, there are links to actual records. So, boom, the facts are there for all to see.

So where does this leave us moving forward?

I think we will end up, ultimately, with better and more real leaders. The constant access to information, video, and more will leave us with more real leaders and less Romneys. True racists will be weeded out in a series of Maccaca moments while those that make honest mistakes, like John Kerry and his botched joke, will be forgiven, if they understand the world they are now operating in.

John Kerry's mistake was he and his advisors fired back at the White House claiming a smear and an attack. It wasn't a smear and an attack because everyone could see John Kerry say the words on YouTube. What it was was a mistake and certainly I know as well as anyone that John Kerry would never, intentionally, say anything harmful or negative about the troops. He made a mistake, if he had instantly said that, the negatives would have faded, virtually instantly.

We also will see a widening and more painfully obvious gap between politicians and their staffs that understand the impact of the access to knowledge and those that don't. The statement of Communication Directors make you cringe sometimes, and ultimately, you feel sorry for them because they are used to spinning journalists who, frankly, can be spun. Journalism has, sadly, become the art of re-writing the press release from a campaign or a an elected official.

However, the larger world -- not worried about access or status -- cannot be spun. And journalists will have to get better too if they wish to survive, which they will not in their current form.

They need to adapt as well, they will be forced to comes to grip with the people outside having insight and often better ideas than the people inside.

The market is speaking, clearly, on what it sees as good reporting and who is providing the information that is timely, helpful and interesting. Over the past four years, as a site such as Daily Kos has grown from 3,000 visitors a day to 700,000 visitors, your average newspaper, which might have had 200,000 readers on Election Day 2004 has declined slow and steadily, using national averages, to around 150,000 readers.

Every information revolution has led to major political changes, and this one will be another one, but like history before it, it will be painful and potentially bloody.

Your first chance to see this in action will be Friday. Of the top three, Obama, Clinton and Edwards, only one will win Iowa and the other two will go, hard, into spin mode and thousands of thousands of people will happily point out what they're saying Friday against what they were saying for the last 30 days or more.

Onward.

Follow James Boyce on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamesboyce

Comments

[HypocrisyAlarm]

I firmly believe that this is why powers-that-be have engaged the fight over net neutrality. They do NOT want to have such divided information channels; they wish to at least have the ability to assure that receivers get their message FIRST, if they cannot control the entire process. If television had not begun using the sponsorship model, perhaps the US would not have reached its current, sorry state. Since each of us pay for our own access to the Internet, support for websites is less dependent upon the corporate powers, whose only motivation is greed (although in economics and accounting texts, it's referred by the euphemism "profit motive"), and altruists the world over can, giving of their own time and resources, produce content free of this sort of commercial slavery.

[FogBelter]

The best part, James, is that the new technology is giving the Lords of Washington a rude awakening.

Never again can they take comfort in the belief that the unwashed masses aren't paying attention.

Shocking.

[Pdubya]

information age....primaries....voice of the people....ron paul???????????

[realitytrumpsbull]

Real-time Digital Democracy...hold on to your hats! LOL

[oldpotsmuggler]

A fair question, with the arrival of technology that is now available, is when are we going to grow up enough to take responsibility for doing our own legislating, and getting rid of the middle man altogether. Representative democracy can now evolve into true democracy, but the discussion of how we want to make the transition has still not really started. If any information of any importance is not already available by computer, making it available is certainly a simple fete. No matter what issue ends up being put in front of us, becoming informed enough to make an intelligent choice is very manageable.

The way that legislative proposals get generated is guaranteed to be a completely fascinating discussion when it finally happens. And it really is only a matter of when we have the discussion, isn't it? The concept that this vast array of technology would exist and that we would not put it to its highest and best use someday is literally unthinkable.The day will finally come when it will be accurate to say that we have no one to blame but ourselves, and it would really seem to make sense to have that happen as soon as possible.

[mamacat]

A touch of the Devil's Advocate: how long will it be before the crooked political right-wingers, the dominant force in American political maneuvering today, figure out how to add using the internet to their campaign to sabatoge democracy?

[Sundialsvc4]

Very good article, James. There are a few, I think, relevant ways in which this thought can be expanded.

(1) For the record, the definitive web site as to what the Congress is actually doing is run by the Library of Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov. Surf it and weep.

(2) We have not only instantaneous info about what Congress is doing; we also have instantaneous info about what Congress is doing it -about-. The Internet has, for better or worse, made every cell-phone a reporter and in real-time. The "media" which is once again accustomed to controlling access to information can no longer do so. William Randolph Hearst could not exist today.

(3) The present political operatives continue to believe, and continue to spend millions of [our...] dollars on the belief, that they still "have us fooled." That their crimes go on, unrecognized; that their version of "reality" is actually true. I believe that 2008 can be the year when this is proved to be devastatingly wrong, and many grievous crimes may at last be put aright.

Happy New Year.

[danielshays]

The problem with decision making in Washington is that it is insulated by the millions and millions of dollars spent to either sway legislation or keep it from ever reaching a vote. There are over 35,000 lobbyists inside of the Beltway that have created a self serving culture.

A perfect example of money affecting a vote happened a few months ago when John Kerry and other Senators worked to keep from closing the tax loophole for Hedge Fund Managers. He and other Senators used the excuse they were too busy to take up such a loophole.

The fact of the matter is that John Kerry and other Democrats joined Republicans influenced by the approximately $6 million in lobbyist fees paid to keep this legislation from being voted on.

If you look at John Kerry's fundraising, for example, he is taking considerable money from individuals tied to Hedge Funds.

The bottom line is that often times it is not what our elected Washington Representatives vote on, as much as it is what they do not vote on. The result is a reactive government vs. a proactive government.

I agree with James Boyce that the only way Democracy still has a chance in this country is to keep information flowing without the "censorship" big money can impose.

Let's vote to rid our government of representatives who have lost touch with working people. John Kerry is one of those people. His every move is calculated for his own political ambition including his vote to authorize war in Iraq.

In Massachusetts, a Progressive named Ed O'Reilly, a former professional firefighter and 25 year trial attorney, is challenging John Kerry in the Democratic Primary. His website is www.edoreilly.com Ed is a fighter and a true outsider.

Let's send a little culture shock to Washington D.C.

DanielShays