Personal Democracy Forum

The annual Personal Democracy Forum was Monday and Tuesday in New York, and it was very good.  As always. You can read more about it at TechPresident.

Naturally, there was a great deal of conversation about the imbalance between the Left and Right online.  The general consensus is that Republicans are behind on the internet, though there is a great deal of debate over how and why.  The least convincing answer was offered by a PDF audience member, and it basically boiled down to "Republicans suck. Democrats are cool.  So we're better at the internet."

Yeah, well, those who forget history...

Democrats race to catch up to GOP online

The Democratic National Committee relaunched its Web site Friday and appointed its first technology adviser in an effort to match the Republican party's success in using the Internet to build its constituency. [...] "We realized that the Republicans were ironically peddling their Stone Age ideas with modern-day technology tools, and we were just not at their level in our dedication to technology," Buck said.Insiders say it's widely acknowledged that the Republican committee has done a better job than the Democrats' committee in creating an online strategy.  The Republican committee "is far and away ahead in securing a large constituent of online activists and does a better job of using the medium to move their message," said Pam Fielding of E-advocates, an Internet advocacy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

That was 2002.

What changed?  Again, that's the subject of a great deal of debate, but I would argue that it was two things:

1. Republicans got comfortable.
2. Democrats got entrepreneurial.

In 2016, there's no doubt that the online landscape will be very different.  The Right will be much more effective.  The only question is how they will do it.  The balance of power on the Right will depend, in large part, on who the new entrepreneurs are and how they build the infrastructure.

The afternoon breakout session at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York is "Covering the "Click-ocracy": Tracking the Internet's Impact on Politics and Journalism". This is a fascinating view of the media's interaction with the New Media.  I'm not sure anybody really has this figured out, but it's fascinating to see reporter's perspectives on how the internet is affecting their job, their profession and our information.

One thing really stood out, though.  A reporter referred to "Media Matters...and their lesser counterparts on the Right."  Note the word "lesser".  I'd bet that this is probably not an uncommon opinion within the media. 

New as it may be, the Left's media criticism infrastructure (Media Matters, but much more than just that) is already more effective than that of the Right.  The institutions of the Right have failed to evolve, while, as they've done in so many other areas, the Left hasn't just built online infrastructure to compete with the Right....they have built equivalent infrastructure that surpasses the Right. 

I think there are a four main reasons for this:

• The Left's media criticisms are fresher, more relevant to the current media landscape, and to structural political problems they face.
• The Left is addressing issues of media competence, not just ideology (e.g., "that liberal media"). This makes much of their criticism harder to dismiss as pure ideological bulldozing.
• The Left's media infrastructure is collaborative.
  • They focus on inserting themselves into the news cycle, maximizing their daily relevance to reporters, bloggers and activists.
  • They provide material specifically relevant to the Left's most prominent activists, increasing distribution of their content.
  • They tap into the work already being done by activists and bloggers, ensuring they remain aligned with, and a part of, their audience and political movement.

• The Left's media criticism infrastructure is built for Web 2.0. They're not just trying to re-purpose battleships for guerrilla warfare - they're building for the current fights and in the current landscape.  They are very effective at using blogs, petitions, email lists, alerts and other tools that make them better at distribution and targeting online.

Thoughts from Day 1 of the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in New York City.

• Zephyr Teachout is discussing how people organize to discuss and act upon their interests, and argues that “association” has declined in American society.  However, Zephyr says the internet allows people to become much more engaged participants in the political process.   In response, Mike Van Winkle makes a very good point….

Of course, she didn’t discuss how the government is now responsible for all the social capacities that were once reliant on voluntary association. Is this coincidence? Has the expansion of the Federal Government lead to the decline in voluntary association?

Political organization premised on rent-seeking is not a positive development for democracy.  More interest group lobbying is not a solution to a government and governing system that is already thoroughly perverted by the incentives they exploit.

Further, I think people have a dangerous tendency to idolize "democracy" and "populism" when it helps their political agenda. The Founding Fathers made a lot of too-often forgotten criticisms about the danger of a political system that is too responsive to public whims.

• Jane Hamsher just showed a political ad that had a jingle (sung by the Squirrel Nut Zippers).   The jingle was grating, annoying, somewhat silly.  I bet the immediate reaction to that by many people is “ugh, jingles suck.”  But – and here I refer back to stuff I learned during my decade or so in radio – jingles work.   In fact, the simpler and more grating they are, the better they can work.  Sure, we all hate ditties that get stuck in our head….but they get stuck in our head.  That helps a message resonate long afterward, even if only subconsciously.  

• The “Inside the Presidential Campaigns: What Worked, What Didn't” session is going on now.  Mindy Finn echoes Patrick Ruffini's earlier comment, saying the Rightosphere has been eclipsed because it has gotten complacent (for various reasons).  That will begin to change before too long, I think.  It will have to.  This social media battleground is far too important to avoid, and it will only grow more central to our political world.

  The problem, I think, is that the Right still wants to build the traditional behemoths - the political Pentagon that soak up massive resources and come with the typical limitations and perverse incentives of large bureaucracies.     Meanwhile, the Left is building for political guerilla warfare.   The Right has aircraft carriers, the Left has pirate ships.  

  Those Right’s behemoths are good at certain things, but there are many more things they just can’t do.  And they can’t be made to do them.