What if our political process were conscious?

Wednesday, January 09, 2008 by Dave Winer.

I think something pretty amazing may be happening with our political process that mirrors what's happening on the Internet, in the blogosphere. I've been talking about it on and off since the Howard Dean candidacy, which I think most people misread or misunderstood, seeing it only in the existing context of how it can be used to make a candidate more competitive in raising money to buy ads to run on TV.  

First, let's summarize what's happened so far in the 2008 political season. 

1. We had a long run-up of a year or so, with candidate debates, lots of punditry, and two front-runners, one in each party, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. 

2. The Democrats outraised the Republicans for the first time in a long time. Obama actually raised more money than Clinton did. 

3. Huckabee, a candidate who raised little money, and who was never considered a front-runner, won the Iowa caucus on the Republican side. Money didn't choose the winner in Iowa on the Republican side.  

4. McCain, a candidate who in the end spent very little money and had almost no organization, who had long since been forgotten as a front-runner, won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. Again, money didn't choose the winner in NH for the Republicans. 

Now, in the aftermath of New Hampshire, the pundit on TV are quickly snapping back with new crazy theories on why what happened happened, bu we shouldn't believe them, because they don't see what's happening in the electorate. Neither does Clinton, but the Republicans may be beginning to get a clue (and Clinton will soon too).  

My belief: The electorate is waking up. Maybe it's just my hope speaking. Can't tell yet.  

The electorate doesn't need messages, just as Doc says there is no market for messages. What the electorate needs is to hire someone to lead it for the four years between elections. It needs someone who will ground our collective behavior in something resembling reality, so we deal with the problems that are collectively in front of us: 1. The honor and prestige of our country (the equivalent of goodwill for companies). 2. The integrity of our homes (everything from disaster response to changing behavior on a global level to respond to global warming). 3. Caring for ourselves (health, education, etc). 

We've gone crazy in the last seven years. The 2004 election was amazingly crazy. The candidates appeared to be running for President of Iraq, that's all they talked about, what was good for the people of Iraq. The lunacy of the electorate is that we didn't throw it back in their faces saying "Come back when you have something to say about the USA." 

Obama and Huckabee are still the only ones who get that we're not all expecting very much from people who live "Inside the Beltway." I don't live there, never have, don't even like visiting the place. To me it's just like the arrogance of Silicon Valley, who believes everyone is waiting for them, we're not. And you can't pop out every four years get us to vote for you and then go back into your nest. Politics belongs to all of us, in this country, the people are the government. We really lost our way, now it's time to come back. It's the change that's happening in everything, decentralization, disintermediation. Obama speaks of a plurality, his campaign isn't about a mere election, it's about changing the way we do things.  

My advice to candidates going back to Dean was to start implementing the change you seek to make before you take office, while you have the full attention of the electorate. Ask us to give money to buy health insurance for 50,000 uninsured people in a particular state, just so we can see how powerful we all are, how we can do good, starting right now. Hillary Clinton could have gotten up yesterday and said "There's no time to waste. We can't wait until January 2009 to solve the problems. Let's start right now." 

Maybe she won't get elected, but getting us organized now would make it more likelye.