First things first - if you have not read The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Joe Trippi, you need to do it, pronto. I mean, this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to know anything about how politics are going to work in the 21st Century, at least as far as Democrats are concerned.
In 2004, Governor Howard Dean made his Presidential run. I hardly have to remind anyone here of the heights his campaign reached, or of his dramatic fall. What is important and has to be understood is, his campaign did not die in Iowa. It went on a hiatus, and then reincarnated in '06, when we took control of Congress, and again in 2008, as the Barack Obama campaign. The Obama version of the campaign was bigger, stronger, and infinitely more successful, but for all intents and purposes it is largely the same phenomenon (that the MSM has not caught onto this is, quite frankly, baffling - or at least it would be, if I still had any faith in the MSM's ability to do their jobs). Again, I think this hardly qualifies as news to anyone on this site.
As a result of the Dean/Obama campaign, the Democratic Party has been almost completely decentralized. The money is now coming from the people - the voters, the grassroots activists, etc. - and that is helping to determine not only who gets the most media exposure, but more importantly, who can build the biggest and best political machines. And not only the money, but the ability to raise an army of supporters willing to volunteer their time and effort. That is why Howard Dean was able to go from obscure governor of a tiny state in the middle of nowhere to the Democratic front-runner. It's why Ned Lamont was able to knock off Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary despite patently absurd disadvantages. And it's why Barack Obama is going to be the next President of the United States.
Caught on the train tracks of this movement are our esteemed opponents, the Republican Party. The Republicans simply have no way to counter this political revolution. The rules are being rewritten, and every single new rule puts them at a new and different disadvantage. For as long as anyone can remember, the Democrats were the Party of David, trying to build their scrappy campaigns to topple the Republican giants. That's no longer going to be the case. The Democrats are going to be the ones who are building the Goliath machines from now on. I'm going to put this right out here: I wouldn't be suprised if Barack Obama raises a billion dollars this summer. That's billion. With a b. Who is going to compete with that?
Why can't the Republicans adapt? Is it because they are technophobic? I say no. In fact, I would be willing to bet that the spend-all-day-and-night-in-your-mom's-basement-on-the-internet crowd are disproportionately Republican. Conservative blogs populate the internet just as left-leaning ones do.
But here is the difference: those people are anti-social. They HATE other people. Leaving the comforts of their chair to spend time with actual other folks is anathema to them. They're not the kind of person who will go out and volunteer, and have to interact with everyday folks. Hell, they can barely stand interacting with EACH OTHER. You think it got ugly here during the primary campaign? Go back and look at some of the posts on freerepublic or redstate from early February.
Also, they are certainly not willing to spend their own money on political contributions. These people are selfish to an astonishing degree. "Why should I have to pay for your kid to go to school?" Is that the kind of person who is going to be willing to cut John McCain a $25 check each month? Ha!
And they certainly have no ideas of their own to add to the conversation. All the talk of "Hillbots" and "Obama cultists" we've had on the left these past few months have been pretty silly, because we don't worship our idealogues the way Republicans do. "Dittoheads" is a label they affix to themselves - i.e., THEY PROUDLY ADVERTISE THE FACT THAT THEY HAVE NO USEFUL OPINIONS OF THEIR OWN. The most "active" of Republican "activists" is in fact little more than a parrot. Or a tape recorder.
So they won't organize, and they won't contribute. What do they do? Nothing. Not a god damn thing. They just log onto their favorite hate site and spew venom at Democrats, women, minorities, each other - anyone who isn't them. You're average Republican voter/grassroots "activist" is simply too stupid, lazy, anti-social, and selfish to help their Party in any meaningful way.
This is curtains for them. And they know it. The Repubs are in full-fledged panic mode now, at least, the ones who are smart enough to see what is coming (which, of course, means the Party higher-ups, not the jackass voters, many of whom remain convinced that the Repubs are going to win big in '08). Here, For example, here is an article where Tom Delay talks about a "long rebuilding process" for the GOP.
But what are they going to do? Their entire Party-building plan over the last 40 years has been about keeping voters as poorly informed and lazy as possible. It has served them well up until this point, but now that left-wing activists have an apparatus to make organization and communication easy, the whole strategy is going to bite them right in the ass. In fact, it's going to eat them whole.
And things are only going to get worse for them. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, 2008 will be much worse for the Republicans than 2006. And 2010 will be worse than '08. 2012 will undoubtedly be worse than 2010. And so on and so forth. The Republicans are not fixing this anytime soon. And their short-sightedness is going to put them on the wrong end of the real "permanent majority".
Now, what happens? This country isn't going banana republic anytime soon. Either the Republicans will reinvent themselves completely, or they will be replaced as the Whigs were about two centuries ago. Either way, the beast that has largely controlled Washington since 1968 is on its way out, for good. It almost makes the Bush Administration seem worthwhile.