The underpants gnomes theory of Internet politics

Seth Masket makes a useful point about the reasoning used by the third party hypesters at Americans Elect:

This whole endeavor seems rather enamored of the idea that American Elect can change American politics by harnessing the power of the Internet. Or as the organization promises, "We’re using the Internet to give every single voter... the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012." Look, I love the Internet as much as anyone, but its transformative power in politics has been way overstated. Political activists use the Internet to fundraise, to contact voters, to spread information, and to debate issues. News flash: we were doing all those things before the Internet was invented. We may do those things differently -- sometimes more easily, sometimes more effectively, but not always -- but it's still the same basic tasks of politics.

This is the same specious reasoning we saw in predictions of an "Internet candidate" for president or the so-called "party-in-a-laptop". In almost every case, the people who make these sorts of claims fail to explain how, exactly, the Internet will make a third party feasible. The whole enterprise has an underpants gnomes quality to it:

1. Internet
2. ???
3. Third parties!

The Internet may reduce the costs of organization or communication in important ways for political activists, but fundamental barriers to third party success - most notably, strategic voting and the Electoral College - haven't changed.

Comments

[Xpostfactoid1]

Never mind the Internet - could the GOP be splitting in two? Just a little fantasy of the moment...

[David in Cal]

Peggy Noonen doesn't see the GOP splitting in two, although she thinks it could have happened:

The Republican establishment...was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledge reality, respect it, and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of—careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens. They were mostly led by men and women who had never been foreclosed on and who assumed good luck, especially unearned good luck, would continue. They were fools, and they lost control of their party when the tea party rose up, rebuking and embarrassing them. Then the tea party saved them by not going third party in 2009-10. And now the establishment has come forward to save the tea party, by inching it away from the cliff and reminding it the true battles are in 2012, and after.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904800304576474620336602248.html