Simon Poelchau writes in Neues Deutschland about the how the internet is already playing a major role in 2008 presidential politics:
"Nie zuvor hat das Internet im Wahlkampf eine so große Rolle gespielt wie bei den jetzt anlaufenden Präsidentschaftswahlen in den USA. Die Webseiten der Kandidaten haben sich von Nebensächlichkeiten zu virtuellen Knotenpunkten des Wahlkampfes gewandelt. Vor allem die Demokraten Edwards, Clinton und Obama stürzen sich unerschrocken in den virtuellen Wahlkampf, während konservative Kandidaten ihre Internetseiten zurückhaltender gestalten. Edwards’ Homepage ist zu einer Schaltzentrale geworden."
And, so far, Barack Obama has gone further than his opponents in exploiting the Web 2.0 functionality of the Web:
"Würde tatsächlich der Präsident, der im Internet am erfolgreichsten ist, dann zöge Barak Obama mit haushohem Abstand als erster Farbiger ins Weiße Haus ein. Er dominiert die beliebten Internetplattformen YouTube und Myspace, die spezielle Bereiche für den Wahlkampf eingerichtet haben."
On Saturday I attended an Obama event at a neighbor’s house – one of 5 thousand home events taking place simultaneously across the country for Obama. About 15 of us gathered around a computer screen to watch a streaming video live event broadcast from a school library in Iowa. I found about about this event through the Web site www.barackobama.com where I was able to create my own personal page: My Barack Obama. Through this page I can raise funds and be contacted by Barack supporters across the country and just down the street. I can upload videos of local Obama events or of personal statements about why I support Barack Obama; these videos are then linked to Obama’s YouTube site and can be accessed by millions.
Using the Web 2.0 social networking capabilities, Obama has been able to tap into campaign donations from over 83,000 individuals and raised over $20 million in the first quarter of the campaign season, and astonishing achievement from one who has been in the US Senate for just two years. Watch out, Hillary!
UPDATE: Amazing! The Chicago Tribune reports that Obama raised $25 million for the quarter. Obama has more online donors (100,000) than Hillary Clinton has in total donors.
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Just why do people fall for this nonsense. You say it even yourself, the “candidate” has to collect as much money as possible. Thats in short the “political process”.
And why do – of all things – Americans fall for the foolish idea that one person would be better suited than another for a particular post. This very idea seems like the antithesis of real Democracy which is about moderation through parliament and sharing of powers, to prevent the kind of “leaders” that the anglophones are so obedient to.
And a parliament is meant to represent all polital opinion, not just one (split) party, too. Are there any political parties in the US (except the One party) that are more than a curiosity at all? At best it’s going to be libertarian nuts or LaRouche.
@name
You obviously don’t know much about American politics (btw we are not a parliamentary system).
Parliament = Democracy
political parties = democracy
no parliament = pseudo-democracy
one-party system = pseudo-democracy
You describe this Obama as a beggar who has to collect money from business, quite fitting. The US really isn’t a democracy in the European sense at all, there once was the chance it could have become one. Now you’ll have to live a long time with gerrymandering, all this legalized bribing, ballotstuffing.
I only wish Americans would stop being such loudmouths about how their “democracy” is the best in the world or whatever, because right now they don’t even have a democracy.