Sunday analysis (holiday edition)

With the talking heads in the morning and the Sunday paper in the afternoon Sunday is the day for political analysis.

Around here, Saturday night usually puts to rest any thought of Sunday morning and recently I've gone "paperless" with the help of this intriguing internet thing.

Still, I like the political analysis. So much so we are going to try a hand at it. Or rather, we are going to try analyze the analysis.

Isn't that we what always do on JSB?

Kind of. This is going to be straight up analysis without the jokes. It may or may not work, and may or may not become a Sunday JSB tradition.

Today an article by Jonathan Alter in Newsweek caught my attention. Alter argues "netroots" -- or internet based political activists/operatives could grab control of and redesign the presidential nominating process. He writes;

Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point on "The Charlie Rose Show" last week. He said that successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times. The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering. Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio. And John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.

Will 2008 bring the first internet president?

Alter spends the rest of the article making a case for a potential third party candidate from a web-based nominating process -- a noble and interesting concept, but one that probably won't come to fruition in '08.

What will be relevant to '08 is the ascension of the internet towards dominant medium of our time. Since I started this blog two weeks ago I have spent a lot of time looking over the more popular political sites in the blogsphere and found there is clearly more energy and volume on the left, which makes sense at time when the left has virtually no real political power.

I've had a particular interest in checking out the comments section of these sites because of an idea I had to parody political blog commentary. I've since realized 80 percent of the comments are already well beyond parody. Going by what I've read most people who chose to participate in web based political forums define themselves more by who they aren't than who they are, and draw this definition quite crudely. There must be some kind of therapeutic benefit in repeating different variations of George Bush is an evil, corrupt chimpanzee over and over -- if not it's just a weird thing to keep saying to an audience you know already agrees with you.

Certainly the right wing of the blogsphere does the same to Al Gore, Ted Kennedy and the like, and they can be just as bitter and petty. Although it's more difficult to pick up on the depth of that sentiment since many popular right leaning sites don't provide space for comments. Furthermore, I doubt the right wing of the blogsphere will have much of a say in nominating the Republican candidate for president in '08, whereas there is no doubt the left-wing blogsphere fully intends on deciding who the Democrat will be.

Of course that doesn't mean they will. But Howard Dean rode a wave of web energy to position himself for the nomination last time around. With four more years under their belt it stands to reason the blogsphere left should be able to do at least the same in '08 for their anointed candidate.

On their way to the presidency Roosevelt and Kennedy were able to use new mediums to show off a fine speaking voice and a winsome all-American persona respectively. While the internet provides an aspiring presidential candidate the same fresh, relatively untapped opportunity for exposure radio and television did for Roosevelt and Kennedy, this time it will come at a cost.

People have been sending nasty politically charged letters to newspapers (and radio and television stations) since media and politics first intersected. Almost all these letters have ended up in the trash, not electronically recorded and easily accessible for perpetuity. But it isn't really the comments themselves that will stain the first nominee to come through the web.

What will be damaging is the tone the comments help create. The sites the comments appear on are also commercial enterprises and it behooves their minders to toss out as red of meat as they can to keep the numbers up. Even if they weren't selling ads, there is human tendency to keep consensus with those who look to you.

In 2004 John Kerry was forced to distance himself from the Daily Kos, the most popular left wing weblog, because of comments Kos's founder and main contributor made concerning the deaths of American contractors in Falluja.

Kerry was able brush Kos aside because he never was the blogsphere's candidate. Dean would have had a lot more trouble doing so. Any Democrat would be hard pressed to dismiss the blogsphere in 08. Daily Kos was getting 90,000 unique visitors a day in 04. It gets 600,000 today. It should be getting well over a million by '08.

It should be noted that the New York Times website gets about 11 million unique visitors a day. But the NY Times covers more than just politics and it stands to reason that political active left-wing democrats that read the New York Times editorial page are also checking out and putting their two cents in on sites like Daily Kos.

The increased traffic in the left-wing blogsphere can be attributed to two things: extreme displeasure with Bush among Democrats and the saturation of the internet into the lives of all Americans.

George Bush will not be on the ballot in '08 but the rabid left-wing blogsphere he created will remain in full force.

I have no doubt the want-to-be king makers of the left-wing blogsphere are aware of this and realize they need to tone it down if they want to put their man in the White House. Yet life in an rapidly multiplying echo-chamber can led to certain sense of invincibility.

A couple million out of 300 million is not a lot. But a couple million eager, energetic political activists out of the 25 million that will vote in the '08 Democratic primary is a potential difference maker and then some.

If they do tip the scales, get ready for a series of polemics not seen in the political mainstream since age of pampheletering. Will the public be able to compartmentalize these screeds, as they are able to the slickly produced, focus grouped attacks ad that have defined a generation of political campaigns?

That remains to be seen, but I have my doubts.

There will probably be a time when a candidate can use the internet to capture the White House. For now, it appears a candidate can only get as far as the nomination. Until the political blogsphere cleanses itself with more mainstream blood, I wouldn't want to be the party to test how far the internet can take you.