State of the Union, the Digital Party

If you have a television and you’re a civic-minded sort, you probably plonked down in front of CNN (or the networks, or Fox, or the like) last night and watched President Obama’s State of the Union address (and the Republican response, or maybe even the Tea Party response) old-school style--on the boob tube with a remote in one hand and a beer in the other. But if TV was your only game last night, you missed out. The real party was online. It was a massive demonstration of how the conversation in politics is shifting, from a one-way affair controlled jointly by politicians and the media, to both a two-way dialogue between pols and constituents and a many-to-many free-for-all between any and all who care to dive in.