The point of this essay seems to be opposition to an inference. If one says "the Internet made Barack Obama President," I suppose one could understand this to mean "Barack Obama didn't successfully campaign for and become President. The Internet did it." Against that meaning, this essay seems to me to stand as a competent and eloquent refutation.

But who would mean such a silly thing? It is obvious that Mr Obama (as well as Mr Alexander and Mr Ploufe, who also deserve credit for the political messaging on which you concentrate your attention) has brilliantly understood the moment and has campaigned successfully because he did so. His political brilliance and that of his colleagues, has taken by storm a barricade of power that most of us were pretty sure wouldn't fall in our lifetimes. So even those who opposed his election are not likely to deny him the credit of his achievement.

The statement's more likely meaning is either (a) for the first time, the Internet was the dominant medium of communication affecting the outcome of the campaign, and now elects presidents in the way that television used to do; or (b) without the changes in campaigning brought specifically about by the Net (that is, under 2004 conditions) Barack Obama--despite his extraordinary skill in messaging and presentation--would not now be President-Elect.

The weak form of the statement, (a), seems to me pretty much unquestionable, and at any rate you do not question it. A responsive objection would be, for example, "No, TV is still the dominant medium, because...." Or, "Well, the McCain campaign doesn't seem to have been much hurt by the total inadequacy of its use of the network either for messaging or organization, or by the candidate's obvious absence of understanding of the way we live now." Come to think of it, that last response probably won't work. Right? So I don't think you are denying meaning (a), or are even in any position to deny it.

The strong form of the statement, (b), that the change from 2004 conditions brought about by the Net is a but-for cause of the presidency, seems to me interesting but highly arguable. Here, then, is where one might have expected you to direct your argument. But you pass instead like ships in the night.

The essence of the case for this statement, it seems to me, is found on two points: (1) That Sen. Obama won the nomination because he piled up delegates inexpensively in early caucus states by using a Net-based organization that was the only way to compete against Sen. Clinton's overwhelming advantage at every level of organization within the Democratic Party; and (2) That Sen. Obama was able to avoid being defined by the other side, as had happened twice consecutively to Mr Bush's opponents, because he found in the Net a scale of donor support greater than the Republicans' direct-mail empire.

I think both of these arguments could be successfully countered, but this draft concentrates on messaging, which is not likely to be the subject in dispute. Sen. Obama, as the campaign showed, would have been a great candidate on television, if television had still been the dominant medium, so the quality of the message is not where the "but-for" case lies. And the successes in the early caucus states might well be said to have less to do with the Obama forces organizing through the Net, and more to do with Sen. Clinton's decision to triumph early in the large states that held primaries, sealing the appearance of inevitability. She won the big states, but it turned into a long two-person race instead of the coronation of an inevitable, and in a two-person race she needed to make up the delegate lead he cobbled together while losing many big primaries, and she couldn't do it. On that account, the nomination was lost by her errors rather than won by his message, his money, or his network organization, and the Net was not a but-for cause of the nomination, in which case, I think everyone would be forced to agree that it is not a but-for cause of the victory in the general. Sen. McCain would have lost that campaign if it had been conducted with 2004 technology; I think everyone would probably agree.

So the route to improvement here, in my opinion, is to decide first whether you are really trying to disprove something, and if so to disprove something that someone might actually be trying to assert. If you are opposing something, the best essay is as always the one that deals fairly with more than one point of view on a complicated question.

-- EbenMoglen - 19 Nov 2008