Matt Bai reflects on this event, taking place next week. His conclusion: the new politics of the "netroots" will come to resemble the old politics. Its not so much that all politics is local as it is that all politics must become tactile.
Politicians know that politics is, by its nature, a tactile business. New technology may change the way partisans organize and debate, and it may even spawn an entirely new political culture. But at the end of the day, partisans will inevitably be drawn to sit across the table from the candidates they support or oppose, just as votes will still be won and lost in banquet halls and airport hangars and all the other seedy, sweaty stalls of the political marketplace. Online politics cant flourish in the virtual realm alone, any more than an online romance can be consummated through instant messaging.
He must, then, be hopeful about the domestication of the Kossacks, or indifferent to the effects of "disinhibition" on our political life.
Bai is right. But more importantly, the KOSsacks and others represent the same old, unreformed, unreformable Democratic party.
And yet, the Net is an excellent way to communicate ideas, which at the moment, favors Conservatives.