Douthat Column: Internet Politics From Both Sides Now

An interesting piece, especially in light of Scott Brown's shocking win in Massachusetts Tuesday, by one of The New York Times' house conservatives, Ross Douthat from a few days ago. The dynamics of new-media leverage is changing quickly — as everything seems to do in the digital age.

Click here to read the whole column, but here's an excerpt:

For a brief shining moment, late in the 2008 campaign, Democrats thought that they might own the Internet.

For decades, they had watched their Republican rivals exploit alternative media to raise money, organize voters and whip up outrage. In the 1970s, conservatives pioneered direct-mail fund-raising. In the early 1990s, they ruled the talk-radio dial. Early in the Bush era, they dominated cable news.

But the Internet was going to be different. Direct mail, talk radio, the cable shoutfests — these were inherently conservative technologies, pitched to senior citizens and middle-aged suburbanites. The Internet was for the young, the hip, the multicultural, the liberal. Let the G.O.P. be the party of Fox News. The Democrats would be the party of Google, YouTube and Facebook.

During the 2008 campaign, that’s exactly what they were. In a race where the Republican nominee didn’t know how to use the Internet, Barack Obama was the Internet: sleek, protean and ubiquitous. The Obama campaign dominated online fund-raising, online organizing and social media. This virtual edge translated into an enormous real-world advantage — in dollars raised, enthusiasm harnessed and Election Day boots on the ground.

A year later, some of the Democrats’ advantage is still there. But it’s been crumbling ever since Obama took office. Republican politicians have taken over Twitter. Sarah Palin has 1.2 million followers on Facebook. And in liberal Massachusetts, Scott Brown, the Republican Senate candidate, has used Internet fund-raising to put the fear of God into the Bay State’s establishment.

Last Monday, Brown raised $1.3 million from an online “money bomb,” and his campaign reportedly went on to raise a million dollars a day throughout the week. The race’s online landscape looks like last November’s in reverse: from YouTube views to Facebook fans to Twitter followers, Brown enjoys an Obama-esque edge over his Democratic rival, Martha Coakley.

Read the rest of this piece here.

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