Whatever happens on November 4th, a small but growing group of populists using Web 2.0 have plunged us into a new political order.
That said, there is compelling evidence that Barack Obama’s emergence was about as spontaneous as arson. Seven Web samurai transformed Obama from novelty to nominee, setting the stage to deny the indomitable Hillary Clinton her party’s nomination.
Recommended Stories
Obama’s candidacy was initially seen as completely implausible. Clinton had the party establishment, many loyalists among powerful elected officials, the Name, a brilliant campaign team, a near monopoly on big donors and “fire in the belly” – assets that forestalled potential rivals and quickly stalled out challengers, many formidable in their own right.
Except for one. The splendid eloquence and charisma of Clinton’s most exotic and improbable challenger alone do not provide an adequate explanation of his rise, considering how far left Obama is to his own party’s center, much less America’s.
What the heck happened?
Although all the dots are not fully connected, the record shows that the Obama phenomenon was not a fluke. The likely suspects are MoveOn’s Wes Boyd and Eli Pariser, Facebook founder Chris Hughes, Dean campaign veteran Joe Rospars, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mark Gorenberg, entrepreneur Steve Spinner, and Markos “The Daily Kos” Moulitsas Zuniga – who worked in concert, though not in collusion, using their sophisticated mastery of the World Wide Web.
Of equal importance, they tapped the open-source, bottom-up ethos that undergirds Web 2.0 to flood the Obama campaign with money, volunteers, and the critical credibility and momentum required to wrest the nomination from Clinton and deliver it to their progressive anti-war candidate.
MoveOn started as a vehicle to oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. As that issue faded, MoveOn was revived by a merger with an email list of 500,000 created by Pariser in opposition to a militant response to 9/11, which proved a durable unifying and motivating issue as the war in Iraq became increasingly unpopular.
Boyd and Pariser sensed their online community’s enthusiasm for a progressive candidate, so they provided Obama with exposure and channels to the liberal base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn’s 4 million members are an electoral asterisk, but they became an extraordinarily potent force in the political culture. And with his theatrical flair, the indefatigable Kos kept the liberal base excited with his consistent pro-Obama, anti-Clinton advocacy.
Meanwhile, venture capitalist Mark Gorenberg opened the doors of Silicon Valley and gave Obama credibility and a high-powered fundraising base in one of the few elite groups not nailed down by Clinton, and inspired entrepreneur Steve Spinner to become an important evangelist for Obama in the high-tech sector.
When Dean campaign veteran Joe Rospars and Facebook founder Chris Hughes created My.BarackObama.com, the tsunami of money and activists that Ron Brownstein described in National Journal as “a vast evolutionary leap in the way candidates pursue the presidency” began in earnest.
That these behind-the-scenes leaders of the anti-Clinton insurgency were able to keep their irregulars in line during the conventional warfare of the general election was no small trick in light of Obama’s rhetorical temporizing on issues like Iraq, wiretapping, gun control, and capital punishment. Whether or not the forces unleashed by the Magnificent Seven propel their liberal icon into the White House, they have already transformed the political world.
In an interview with The Hill, Kos was asked whether the Right was catching up on the Web?” His answer? “Ha ha ha.” But self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals two to one, so it is eminently possible for them to emulate and even exceed what the Left has done by embracing a populist posture of inclusion. In plain English: Web 1.0 site providers do 99 percent of the talking; Web 2.0 is 99 percent listening.
Can the Right get this right? A bright strain of conservative populism, defined by Jeffrey Bell as “optimism about people’s ability to manage their own affairs better than an elite can do so for them,” is imprisoned lightning that could be unleashed just as it was by Ronald Reagan.
It only takes one. And Web 2.0.
Ralph Benko is the author of “The Websters’ Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World” which will be published November 4th (www.thewebstersdictionary.com).
