For those who may not know, India is the largest and most democratic country in the world. Their form of democracy is actually more purely a democracy that ours, which is in the form of a representative-democracy. Perhaps, technology is changing the way our democratic systems will work - nationally something more akin to our State referendum system (direct-democracy) than the way national politics has been conducted in the past.
So, Andrew Sullivan in this past weekend's edition of the Sunday Times (U.K.) writes an article on social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) and their effect on this campaign season and the Obama campaign's extraordinary leveraging of this medium that Sullivan suggests will change campaigning for here-on-out.
A couple quick quotes:
It’s a new form of politics; it is likely to last beyond the Obama campaign and to change the shape of all campaigns to come. For Obama the new method was also bang on message. His liberalism is not a top-down, managerial variety; it’s more in line with progressive traditions of self-empowerment. A social network was the perfect medium...Maybe Obama’s model is a little before its time. If not, the online president of social-networking democracy is imminent.
