{"id":4236,"date":"2003-07-04T11:33:45","date_gmt":"2003-07-04T11:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4236"},"modified":"2003-07-04T11:33:45","modified_gmt":"2003-07-04T11:33:45","slug":"limitations-of-the-dean-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4236","title":{"rendered":"limitations of the Dean model"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, <b>Gov. Howard Dean&#8217;s extraordinary fundraising success<\/p>\n<p>is due to the Internet<\/b>. In a broadcast email <a href=\"http:\/\/www.e-thepeople.org\/about\/news\/96497694\">(read<\/p>\n<p>full text here)<\/a>, Mike Weiksner, Chairman of <a href=\"http:\/\/e-thePeople.org\">e-thePeople<\/a>,<\/p>\n<p>writes, &quot;It started out last December when a small cabal of online pundits<\/p>\n<p>started posting supportive commentary about a relatively unknown candidate, Dr.<\/p>\n<p>Howard Dean. These pundits posted their commentary on &#8216;blogs&#8217;.&quot; The next<\/p>\n<p>step was Dean&#8217;s launch of a campaign <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deanforamerica.com\">website,<\/a><\/p>\n<p>which described his positions and requested donations. &quot;Then, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\">www.meetup.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>got involved. Meetup.com hosts informal get-togethers for like-minded individuals,<\/p>\n<p>and offered to help Dean to link supporters together.&quot; Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.MoveOn.org\">MoveOn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>held its unofficial online Democratic &quot;primary,&quot; which Dean won. Mainly<\/p>\n<p>as a result of these events, he is first in fundraising, having raised $10.1 million<\/p>\n<p>in 2003. He is a leading candidate instead of a protest vote. <\/p>\n<p>Whenever<\/p>\n<p>someone scores a political success by using an unconventional tactic, it is natural<\/p>\n<p>to ask whether the change will last and whether it will benefit or harm the political<\/p>\n<p>system overall. But it is important not to generalize hastily from the first candidate<\/p>\n<p>who uses the new methods. For instance, an insurgent leftist candidate could invent<\/p>\n<p>a tactic that is ultimately used most effectively by mainstream conservatives.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, novel tactics may play out very differently once they&#8217;ve become routine.<\/p>\n<p>Thus I think we should be cautious about predicting the effects of a new tactic<\/p>\n<p>or technology on the political system over the long haul. But I&#8217;ll risk some guesses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Campaigns that successfully exploit peer-to-peer networks and advanced technology\n<p>will have highly educated, youthful, reasonably affluent constituencies. I do<\/p>\n<p>not know the demographics of Dean supporters, but it stands to reason that young<\/p>\n<p>urban techies would gravitate to a politician who is socially liberal, fiscally<\/p>\n<p>conservative, anti-war, and conspicuously educated. (&quot;Dr. Dean,&quot; the<\/p>\n<p>newspapers call him.) It wasn&#8217;t Al Sharpton who won the &quot;blog primary.&quot;<\/li>\n<li>If\n<p>these tactics work, they will benefit independent candidates who have little or<\/p>\n<p>no institutional base but who take unconventional positions&#151;to the disadvantage<\/p>\n<p>of organized movements such as unions, churches, and parties. Dean is a quirky<\/p>\n<p>guy from a small and quirky state; his success contrasts starkly with the troubles<\/p>\n<p>now facing Rep. Dick Gephardt, an urban midwesterner who gradually built support<\/p>\n<p>in unions, his state and national party, and Congress. As a general matter, I<\/p>\n<p>think that average people (those without special skills or capital) desperately<\/p>\n<p>need such organized institutions to represent them. Therefore, it may not be a<\/p>\n<p>good thing if someone like Howard Dean can easily beat someone like Dick Gephardt<\/p>\n<p>by using new technologies. (And I say this as someone who would probably vote<\/p>\n<p>for Dean over Gephardt on the issues.)<\/li>\n<li>These tactics will work best in\n<p>multi-person competitions with small numbers of voters. In such races, a candidate<\/p>\n<p>can stake out an unusual position, capture a small but energetic constituency,<\/p>\n<p>and come in first. In contrast, two-person races, especially at the national level,<\/p>\n<p>require mass mobilization. Blogs and peer-to-peer networks don&#8217;t have the necessary<\/p>\n<p>reach. Imagine that Dean won the Democratic nomination on the strength of the<\/p>\n<p>Internet. I believe he would be crushed by George Bush, who has a party and other<\/p>\n<p>organized political movements behind him. In fact, Bush has raised three times<\/p>\n<p>more than Dean this year, relying on just a few fundraisers. One could argue that<\/p>\n<p>blogs and peer-to-peer networks will grow until they are truly mass phenomena.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt it. Their growth will be limited by shortages of education, background<\/p>\n<p>knowledge, and motivation. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, Gov. Howard Dean&#8217;s extraordinary fundraising success is due to the Internet. In a broadcast email (read full text here), Mike Weiksner, Chairman of e-thePeople, writes, &quot;It started out last December when a small cabal of online pundits started posting supportive commentary about a relatively unknown candidate, Dr. Howard Dean. These pundits posted their commentary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}