[Politech] The Internet built up Howard Dean -- now it will destroy him

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Wed Jan 14 2004 - 11:01:05 PST

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "[Politech] Russ Roberts on Apple iTunes and "the economics of invention""

    http://rogerlsimon.com/archives/00000606.htm
    
    01/14/2004: The Wrong Men for the Internet 
    
    At the present moment, the Democratic Party seems to be headed over a
    cliff at ninety miles an hour. With Bush already sitting on extremely
    high poll numbers and the domestic and foreign situations breaking his
    way, the Democrats have two of their worst candidates in recent memory
    in the frontrunner positions.Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. They are
    particularly bad in the Internet Age.
    
    What, you say, Howard Dean is bad on the Internet? He was and is the
    master of online fundraising and the first to recognize the power of
    blogs. Yes, indeed! But that.s only part of the story. And it.s not
    the more important part. The Internet is the greatest memory device we
    have ever had. It stores virtually everything for instant access -- it.s
    very difficult to hide what you have said. Bloggers and others will
    dig it out and force the media to publicize it.
    
    This is exceptionally dangerous for Dean who has defined himself and
    staked his nomination on being the Most Antiwar Candidate, when, among
    other things, quite a short time ago he was not. Today we see via
    Instapundit that Dean wrote a letter to Clinton advocating Milosevic
    be forcibly removed for humanitarian reasons, something he appears to
    have rejected for Saddam, even though the Iraqi leader was vastly more
    awful. Dean even advocated, in the case of Milosevic, going it alone
    without the United Nations.
    
    Normal political hypocrisy? Well, sure. But it is worse. Because this
    is Mr. Tell-It-Like It-Is and he isn.t. And he can.t. There.s too much
    information already on record. The Internet will be his great
    undoing. This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Wait until
    summer. The same is true for Clark. In a sea of a million
    fact-checkers, his idiot vacillations seem all the more ridiculous. If
    he gets nominated, it is going to be a donnybrook.
    
    ....
    _______________________________________________
    Politech mailing list
    Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jan 14 2004 - 10:28:48 PST