Old-fashioned politicking
The truth is, no matter how much new technology comes running into our lives and no matter how many mountaintops the tech evangelists find to shout from, politics -- the kind of old-fashioned, gotta-get-more-votes-than-the-other-guy politics -- really does not change.
Voters depend fundamentally on two things to make their decisions. First, they want to know the candidate is a human being they can relate to and would even invite home to dinner with their family. Think about Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton versus Bob Dole and John Kerry. Second, voters look for cures from those people they know and trust. This might be their minister, their local labor president, their spouse, their co-workers, or even (Heaven help us) a celebrity like Oprah Winfrey or Charlton Heston.
The dot-commers in the late 90s traveled to DC insisting that EVERYTHING was going to change and that those Luddite senators, congressmen, and especially the back-room-cigar-chomping-money-grubbing POLITICAL CONSULTANTS would know that the train hit them only when they looked back and saw the caboose on its way down the track. Ooops. Didn't happen. Al Gore and George Bush and John Kerry still had massive campaigns going door-to-door with clipboards, held campaign rallies and rubber chicken fundraising dinners, and good old-fashioned call-me-at-dinner phonebanks never stopped running.
Disintermediation / Giving more voices more outlets
On the other hand, this YouTube thing and technology in general has truly democratized the power of communication and information in politics. Howard Dean's presidential campaign manager Joe Trippi talks about "disintermediation", which may in fact be the truly revolutionary thing about technology. If you assume that information is power and you want to accumulate power (what good DC politico does not?), then getting and hording information is your pathway. The Internet has disrupted this whole thing. Access to elected officials is easier because of telephones (once a new technology itself), the Internet, well-read political blogs, citizen journalists researching and spreading data, and the occasional Macaca who chases a Virginia U.S. Senator around until he says something just plain stupid and ignorant helping cost the poor fellow his seat.
Journalists vs. people
There are differences and advantages in having regular folks ask questions rather than journalists. This is true for a regular, in-person town hall as well. For example, one journalist on CNN actually admitted that there are questions that he would never ask a presidential candidate, though he knows that regular folks might ask them. (When pressed to offer an example, the reporter declined! What are they afraid of?)
Participation
Finally and perhaps most importantly, the CNN-YouTube debate provides something that is essential to a thriving democracy -- a way to participate and a belief that citizens will be heard. Whether citizens have this opportunity because of a novel use of new technology or because they simply feel like the system is responding, the CNN-YouTube debate is great for the process.
To hear them tell it, they are the base of the political parties who have the power to elevate and destroy. To hear their detractors talk about it, they are know-nothing brats with a keyboard. The political blogosphere has come a long way, baby. But it's still the new kid on the block, wanting desperately to fit in but being shut out by all the self-styled cool kids that were on the playground first.
Just ask a political blogger, probably a white guy, over-educated, higher-than-average income, and in his late 30s. Fueled by technology-enhanced testosterone, these folks see themselves as enforcers of a sometimes moving ideological purity and as fighters for a cause that they, and only they, are allowed to define. Sometimes more interested in being against something (John McCain, Hillary Clinton, the "establishment," weak-kneed moderates) than being for something, many of these folks are just as likely to hit one of their own party loyalists as they are to take it out on the other side. They blame others when things don't go well and take credit when they weren't the only ones to deliver success.
For their nasty bark, though, the bloggers so far have not really shown good enough teeth for a real dogfight. The Democratic blogroll, for example, is not impressive, even in Democratic primaries where it's mostly Democrats who vote -- Howard Dean for President, Wesley Clark for President, Paul Hackett for Senate (OH), Marcy Winograd for Congress (CA). Oh, yes, and there's that guy from Connecticut. Declaring their own jihad against Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman in 2006 with comments like Matt Stoller's of MyDD, "Lieberman has no principle, no vision, and no ability to lead this country," the lefty bloggers convinced themselves that only George W. Bush himself could be worse than a moderate Democrat. Yep. Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to a wealthy venture capitalist who (shhhh!!) was really not all that liberal. But very, very few Connecticut primary voters read the blogs, even though every national political reporter did. Besides, Senator Lieberman's seeds of destruction were planted long before the digital stork delivered Web 2.0 to the pajama-clad masses. And, Lieberman won the general election, the real prize. Still a senator. And despite the guarantees by many bloggers that he would personally keep the Senate red by switching parties, he's still a Democrat. That's pretty important where a single senator switching parties would take power away from the blue team. So why should the blogs get accolades for a victory that, in the end, mattered as much as parsley?
Stop right there. You technological Luddites, you short-sighted "establishment" operatives, you blogo-phobes. Before you pat yourself on your analog back, take note. The political blogs and their readers are actually here to stay (at least until something else like mobile YouTube captures the attention of the political class). Any candidate or political party who ignores them is making a mistake that can cost them support and even do irreparable damage. The recent grassroots uprising that killed the U.S. Senate's and President Bush's immigration legislation came from conservative (and a few lefty) activists who organized using the Internet.
So blogs do matter after all? Why? First of all, the leading blog writers do not fully speak for their entire readership and, more importantly, cannot deliver their votes in a bloc. So even if the leading bloggers don't like you, Mr. and Mrs. Candidate, you might still get their readers to give you votes and (pretty please!) dollars be engaging with them in their own political arena of choice.
Second, the blogosphere -- or as one leading blogger said, "the highly engaged avant-garde of American politics" -- does represent one of many important constituencies in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. (Avante-garde? Really?) Just because a Republican candidate is not the darling of conservative Christian leaders like Pat Robertson or James Dobson, no Republican is going to ignore church-going voters. Just because a Democratic candidate is not the favorite of labor presidents or is not the darling of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, that candidate is still going to visit labor halls and talk to African-Americans.
The lesson of the way the political blogosphere has developed: just because some of the blog writers and even many blog readers do not support your candidate or cause, ignoring this vital constituency and new technology in your political endeavors would be short-sighted. Really, it would make you about as significant as that little green plant limply laying next to your steak and potatoes.
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