The Revolution Will Be Webcast

A Brave New World of Political Skulduggery? - washingtonpost.com

Finally, politics has embraced our post-modern condition with thr massive dissemination of the Hillary-Obama 1984 ad via (print, tv and web) media in addition to blog and email forwards. The ad is everything good about post-modernism - the mixing of media (video and text), the use of sampling (the reuse of the 1984 Macintosh commercial - aired during that year's superbowl incidentally), superbly crafted subtext(s) (which I go into here using only the video and not the audio) and the ability to spread itself virally. Oh Joy!

Gil Scott Heron was right in that the Revolution will not be televised. It will be brought about by thousands of free spirits creatively using the tools at their disposal to effect massive change. James Carville once made the point that the entire Renaissance was only 1500 people but they changed the world. This ad could herald something similar. I hope it really is the beginning of "citizen political ads" as the MSM has stated. And this WaPo article makes the point that the commercial was made very easily. While it "only" reached a few million of our 300 million citizens, those are the people paying attention early and who will be opinion and grassroots leaders in their communities.

This brings me to a point I haven't made on this blog yet. Namely, that political campaigns belong to the people, not the politicians. Abominations like McCain-Feingold give politicians too much control over the direction of political debate and cultural discourse by limiting who may participate and when they may participate. This is simply the political class's unique version of rent-seeking.

Ads like this show that the barrier to entry for political ads (now that YouTube and its rivals exist) is extremely low and relatively inexpensive. Normal citizens can now make their own advertisements (assuming the FEC doesn't freak out and ban them all) very cheaply and still have impact. What happens now is the question.

External Validation Rocks!

"I even saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp, and it read Uneven Steven's a pimp." (With apologies to Ice Cube)

Of course, it WAS an honor to be nominated. I'd like to give a shout out to the Dewey Crew who have been calling me "Big Sexy" for years - you know who you are (of course most of those people have actually partied with me). I'm also grateful for the many votes I received from the DC blogging community. While some of the gracious people in this community know (and have done body shots with) me, not enough of you could possibly know me for me to win this award straight out. But thanks again for (further) external validation.

I won because of the method of voting. Different methods of voting produce different results. There is a whole branch of Rational Choice Political Theory dedicated to the different results that different voting methodologies produce. This is important enough that Democrats and Republicans both have crafted specific rules on legislative issue in hope of engendering their desired result through "democratic" means. Both parties are equally known for using their majority power to structure favorable voting rules for legislation coming to the floor (the acually most important method for determining what public policy will pass the House of Representatives). Both parties had their favorite rules, but the previous Democratic majority was masterful at it in a way that Republican never were. We'll have to see how this Democratic majority fairs

Being the second or third choice for most people when you're able to cast four per person means that you can be nobody's favorite and still win. This raises significant issues as to whether someone coming in first in such a contest (e.g., myself) is actually the democratic choice. In some sense the only contestant that can claim to be the "true" democratic choice is the "Condorcet winner", the one that beats EVERY other option in a head-to-head competition. I likely would not since I don't know enough of you.

All of that said, I DO APPRECIATE THE VOTES.

- US