By Dave Cribbin
With the election of Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusetts, Internet-enabled voters have given the political parties and their machine politicians the same bruising that a whole host of formerly successful business models have received, while barely lifting a finger in the process. They have bested the legions of campaign workers and party bosses by going straight to the candidate digitally (note: none of these puns are intended;) a political progression that has rendered the power structure of the Political Parties irrelevant. Politicians can no longer count on the machine to protect them. What's in store for Representatives who refuse to represent is going to rock their worlds!
It's no coincidence that the Big City Newspapers have experienced this same digital beat down; they are a glaring example of an industry that has also lost its focus: reporting news. As a result, their business models and bottom lines that rely on the continuing trust and confidence of their readers have been crushed. More and more, people get their news online these days, with fewer and fewer of them perusing the offerings of the MSM. Newspaper editors are left seething in a state of denial as they watch their circulation numbers and ad revenue continue to plummet. So too, the C's — as in the ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC — have suffered similar losses in viewership and ad revenue. Why have they fallen so far, so fast? The answer is simple. Their own voters, the readers and viewers who vote daily with their remote controls and pocketbooks, are no longer confident that they are reporting the truth to them. They have been punished in the market place because they stopped representing the truth to their readers.
Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate election is just the latest example of the incredible power of the Internet to organize and flatten distribution channels. The money-bomb posted on Glenn Reynold's Instapundit and elsewhere to solicit campaign contributions first met, then exceeded, then nearly doubled Scott Brown's Campaign fundraising goal as contributions poured in from all over the country. A couple of lines of code had replaced the many hundreds of bodies of the party's machine and nullified two of the biggest advantages of incumbency: name recognition and the ability that comes with it to raise money. This new way to political prominence is brought to you courtesy of ordinary people and their mouse clicks. Ouch, that's got to sting!
Martha Coakley and the political elites, who were trying to save "Ted Kennedy's seat" by flying to Washington and holding a wine and cheese party for the big Pharma and health-care lobbyists (tell me again, who was she representing?) were no match for the ordinary people who voted first with their Visa and debit cards and then when it mattered most: their ballots on election day. Poor Martha, having to go all the way to Washington to scoop up campaign contributions. It just seems so inconvenient.
This new Digital Revolution is being fought by patriots armed not with pitch forks and ax handles but by voters armed with PC's using Visa and debit cards as ammunition to defeat those who claim to represent their interests, but instead serve their real masters: the special interest groups and the party. They organize in digital town hall meetings, and gather at rallies to show their support for candidates who will truly represent their values.
And so, the latest business that has been forever changed by the power of the Internet is politics, an industry whose business model had for too long counted on brute force instead of brain power to carry the day. Mouse clicks are the new brute force in this unfamiliar political paradigm. It's about to get real interesting.
Dave Cribbin, President of Tailwind Capital, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
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