] If Dean could actually raise enough money online to match
] in aggregate the much larger and fewer donations Bush has
] bought from the plutocrats with his tax cuts, it would
] shake the system to its rotten core. Worse, if
] information from the Web and the Blogosphere were to
] start defining enough personal realities to contest the
] great mass of tube-zombies at the polls, the gazillions
] presently spent on television campaign ads would start to
] wither. An enormous amount of power and money might be at
] stake.

Barlow's argument is similar to one I offered Rattle after Iowa: that the Dems have lost the election because doing so is preferable to loosing control of their party to Dean's new infrastructure. Rattle countered that he thought Dean might have intentionally flamed out and is in the process of handing the infrastructure he built off to the old heart of the party. I'm still not sure which one of us is right.

Barlow's argument is similar to one I offered Rattle after Iowa: that the Dems have lost the election because doing so is preferable to loosing control of their party to Dean's new infrastructure. Rattle countered that he thought Dean might have intentionally flamed out and is in the process of handing the infrastructure he built off to the old heart of the party. I'm still not sure which one of us is right.

[ both. neither. for one, i don't think the dems have lost anything. i think even john kerry has a shot at beating W. i think, like it or not, the democratic core is being forced to absorb some of the fundamentals that Dean/Trippi brought to bear. It was a case of convergence... blogging was a meme on the edge of expanding into the public conciousness, and i think Dean's catalyzing nature, and the resulting political dialouges, actually helped propel that beyond the brink. DailyKOS was on the cover of USA today last month... that's something. No democratic campaign will be run, from now on, without a blog, online donations, and if they're smart, tools for organizing and mobilizing their support base.
i definitely don't believe dean flamed out on purpose... (or that he's totally out of it yet, though it'd take a miracle). if i thought he was that sort of person, i wouldn't have supported him. I think, despite the eventual outcome, people are going to view his campaign as a turning point in politics... something approaching the actual meaning of grassroots organization. i think commentators will look back and see, certainly, tactical errors, but they will also see a man who raised a hell of a lot of money in little tiny blocks, and that's the kind of "of the people" that i think will continue to be appealing.
perhaps i'm overly hopeful... the party needs to be shaken up after the bush-apologist, spineless, self-serving manner in which it has been run recently. If nothing else, Dean has offered a compelling vision of how it *could* work (even if it doesn't this time) and i think there are enough progressives to make that happen.

as for extracting bulk mind-share from the tv-sphere to the blogosphere... i think it'll happen, eventually, but i wouldn't be comfortable with a prediction. Even online, entrenched interests still wield too much power, too many people are still unwilling to analyze the speech on a blog for themselves, so they turn to CNN who they feel can be implicitly trusted as "right". that'll change, someday, but not soon i think. ]-k