Anti-Climacus

WELL: Kevin Yaroch, part of the small but highly influential Ann Arbor blog scene, makes some comments about my comments to his post on whether Dean is a centrist, and the possible effects of the internet. Everything he says is spot-on, I think, and I maybe don't give the internet enough credit as a vehicle to connect politically active people.

I do disagree, however, that the internet makes possible a more off-center candidate. All elections are about getting 51% of the people to back you. If you believe in single-peaked preferences*, then it sort of logically follows that the closer candidates are to the center, the more likely they are to win. I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing, but it seems to be a structurally reinforcing aspect of the American political system. The exception is, of course, if you believe (as I think Kevin does, though I don't wish to speak for him) that what the internet uniquely makes possible in the injection of a large number of non-centrist voters into the political scene. But, I generally contend that people who are on the internet and utilizing it for, say, the purposes of talking about politics are already the sort of people who get involved in electoral politics anyway.

I do think, though, that it is possible that the internet might be able to allow smaller interest groups within a party to wield outsize power, but that seems to me to be a policy issue, not an electoral politics one.

*The idea that my ordering of preferences amongst candidates must be rational... that is, my ordering cannot go Liberman, Kucinich, Gephardt, because if I'm consistent about what political issues matter to me, there's no way that someone further off on those issues can be higher ranked than someone close on those issues.