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January 4, 2009
There's been a mounted of stuff like this from Mark Pesci written about Obama's use of new technologies for campaigning and now for what looks like a reasonable stab at some kind of participatory excercise with change.gov. It's literally a world away from Kevin07, the 2020 Summit and the fleeting glog, none of which suggest serious, sustained levels of engagement with the great unwashed.
Via Cam, there's an interesting series of coversations going on among American conservatives, Republicans, the GOP, the right, whatever you want to call them, over how best to make use of the net in view of Obama's success.
In Reinventing conservatism, one tweet at a time, Julian Sanchez has a bunch of links and interesting thoughts on an ongoing, networked converstation which appears to have started with RedState's Erick Erickson. Among other things, Erickson says "Duplicating Obama's technology effort is not the solution for the right and those who say it is are the first people not to hire." There are two reasons for this. "The left and right use the web in different ways":
RedState is unique among sites on the right in that most of our readers do not consider themselves bloggers or blog readers. RedState readers are, trusting in surveys of our readership, much more like the average conservative in what Rush Limbaugh calls “fly-over country.” This is one reason RedState diarists do not generally engage in the “meta-conversations” between blogs. Our readers read RedState, two to three news sites, and sports websites. Seventy percent of RedState readers read five or fewer blogs. RedState’s readership is much more in line with the general right of center activist’s level of engagement.
The second is to do with the demographics of the right's support base. Facebook won't do much good for the stereotypical Palin supporter.
These observations send the whole question back to square one, which is where Sanchez comes in with the same obvious points currently plaguing the coalition here. There's no point trying to use the net to mobilise support for your product when even you don't know what your product is.
At RedState the comments thread is looking at solutions to the tech problems, while the comments at arstechnica illustrate why solving the tech problems won't change anything. There are a lot of would-be Republican supporters complaining about the Guns, God and Gays brigade, suggesting that the Republicans' biggest problem is their support base. How do you go about solving a problem like that?
Erickson suggests that conservatives need to come up with something brand new, the next big thing, the conservative killer app.
Just say you do invent some fabulous new techno beast and potential supporters flock to it. You'd have the GGGs and the Wall Street suits gathered in one spot. They'd actually meet each other. Is that really such a good idea? Do you really want to give your working class sporting shooters the opportunity to crack a tinnie and put their boots up on the minimalist furniture of your private health insurers and telco CEOs?
This represents a problem for both left and right. They both assemble their support from disparate groups which would be unlikely to reach consensus on an awful lot if they found themselves in the same room together.
If Erickson's right about the way conservatives use the net, and assuming that liberals get around a bit more, then the left has a natural advantage, which doesn't bode too well for the right.
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The cyber-Limbaughs and other Alan Jones types will be there beavering away. The backdrop or facade of the left's invicibility in logic as a natural advantage is meantime employed as in previous cycles, as cover while the truth is eroded way by all the cyber- noise, black propaganda and smoke and mirrors.
A new Howard is out there, slumbering but growing toward the day when ignorance and fear overturn common sense. Meanwhile, the Blairite leaders are doing the Right's job for it in its absence, until the old guard figure out how to botox themselves, for the time when the disillusioned voters see thru the that phase of the Orwellian farce and cast about for new heroes.