Presidential campaigning is being swept into a new era by the Internet, which is emerging as a political power tool. Howard Dean, for example, has risen from obscurity to national recognition on the back of his Web-based grassroots fund-raising approach, and campaign supporters of all types have learned to use a social-networking site, Meetup.com, to arrange political gatherings. Meanwhile, candidates posting messages on campaign Web sites seems to have replaced kissing babies as a ritual.
These are encouraging developments because they share a grassroots, bottom-up approach to electing a president. But something crucial is missing because so far, electronic populism is still largely about getting out the vote. The candidates have excelled at using the Web to organize supporters and raise money in new ways, but the more tantalizing possibility—that ordinary people might collectively help shape the substance of what their candidate stands for—remains a dream.
