How the Internet has democratized democracy, to Bernie Sanders’s benefit

The extent to which the Internet is powering 2016's outsider candidacies is the subject of two thoughtful explorations, one at the New Yorker and one on Twitter.

The Twitter one was offered by Clay Shirky, a writer who looks at how the Internet is affecting society. It's long, but the gist is this. The two-party system necessarily can't encompass every viewpoint. So, to hold parties together, some things became unmentionable. As media options broadened and the press wasn't acting as gatekeeper, candidates could talk to voters more directly. But they still largely needed the resources of the party in order to get elected, so they still hewed to the rules about what couldn't be mentioned. But the idea that the Internet has democratized democracy seems unavoidably correct. We've noted before that Donald Trump and Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) can ignore the established parties by talking directly to the voters (in ways that reflect their core politics). Shirky puts it into historical context.

As does Jill Lepore at the New Yorker. Lepore, a historian, notes the inescapability of the Internet on the campaign trail. Lepore argues that the two-party system itself was a creation of the press, American newspapers having black-or-white political arguments embedded in their DNA from birth. Each time a new way of reaching out to voters emerged, the political system reoriented itself. "When the press is in the throes of change," she writes, "so is the party system." We are now in the sixth iteration of the American political party system, and as Shirky makes obvious, it's not clear how it will evolve.