The Man is still The Man
: John Robb gets carried away with himself:
One other thing to consider, are Dean or Clark the leaders of their respective movements? Increasingly no. The communities that have sprung up around these men are now bigger than they are. They have a life of their own.
Let’s let the hot air out of this technopolitical bubble before it bursts. That’s what I’ve been trying to do in this contrarian post and this one and in arguing with Jay Rosen here. Weblogs and community have made big changes in campaigning this year — in fundraising, in organizing, in the sense of involvement and excitement. But they have not changed the essential structure of a campaign: The candidate is still the candidate; the party line is still the party line; that’s still a top-down and one-way path. Dean and his chief advisers are still very much in control of his campaign and technocrats and fawning commentators and blog commenters shouldn’t fool themselves otherwise. It’s still politics, folks. It will be a movement when the movement ousts the candidates. Until then, it’s still a campaign.
