I was very interested to read Dave Johnson, writing for American Street, musing about what he calls The Arrogance of the Informed:
How many of you think you are too smart to fall for ads and blatant sales pitches? You probably are, and that is the problem that I am trying to write about today. The very fact that you are reading this means that you get your information online, and that you seek out alternative sources of deeper information than you get from your newspapers and TV. I am trying to say that you and I are informed and that blinds us to some realities. The very fact of OUR awareness can mislead us about most voters because most voters are NOT particularly informed at all. ... Our state of informedness causes us to lose sight of what it is like to only hear what I call the "surface" messages that circulate - messages like "Dean angry" and "Edwards nice."
And then I read this post by Josh Marshall, on the internet fundraising that helped out Kentucky congressman Ben Chandler, and something really clicked inside my brain:
Democrats have always lamented how Republicans just have far better direct-mail lists than they do, and how the Republicans are just plain better at it. And they do have better lists and they are better at it. But I've always thought that it wouldn't really matter all that much if the Democrats had high quality lists too. The truth is that direct-mail, for whatever reason, just works with folks who are apt to give money to Republican campaigns. And it just doesn't with Dems, or at least not nearly as well. It's a different demographic.
The Democrats are the "engineer types" Johnson describes: they want discursive argument and evidence based on the merits. Republicans want marketing spiel and emotionally persuasive rhetoric in bite-sized chunks. Democrats are taking sides on issues based on their relative merits; Repubs are "deciding" based on brand loyalty. Of course, there are thoughtful Republicans and passionate, emotionally-based Democrats. But I think this helps us understand not only the left/libertarian tilt of the blogosphere, but also the polarization between the two parties. It also points up the disproportionate representation of Democrats among academic and overeducated types, not to mention why Alan Colmes has such trouble being persuasive on Hannity's show. On television and radio, it's very difficult for long, evidentiary arguments to compete against sound bites from true believers, especially when the stage and the audience is constructed to favor the latter. But on the Internet, it's the opposite -- which is why Freerepublic.com is so dreadfully unreadable.
Between the two ways of thinking -- evidence and loyalty -- there's not a lot of common ground, and it's so very difficult to understand how the other side thinks and operates. My bias as a dyed-in-the-wool "issues person" colors my thinking on this, and probably slants how I'm presenting it. No doubt the Ann Coulters of the world would say "but we argue on merits, too -- you Democrats just don't have any!"
I think that it's the ONLINE Democrats who are the "engineer types." The rest of the population, including most Democrats, is less informed, and we lose site of that.I used to specialize in direct mail, and I think a difference between regular Dems and the Right's direct mail contributors is that they are in a constantly scared state, believing all kinds of urban myths, and the Right's direct mail specialists play on this. They all sound like the worst of Ann Coulter, and the ignorant mod sends cash.
I think that this election, and the state of the country under Bush, could open that up to Dems if they want to exploit their supporters like that.