Could the Internet do for the left what talk radio has done for the right?
Until recently, the question might have seemed absurd. For about 15 years, a nationwide constellation of right-leaning talk-radio hosts has provided conservatives a powerful means of mobilizing their grass-roots supporters to enlist in causes and campaigns. The left has never been able to establish a competing galaxy of liberal gabbers -- or to find an alternative mechanism that can persuade and activate as many voters as talk radio.
That alternative may have arrived last week. History may record former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's unprecedented success at raising money online for his Democratic presidential campaign as the moment when the Internet emerged as a political tool comparable in strength to talk radio.
Over the last three months, Dean raised $3.6 million on the Internet from nearly 45,000 donors; last Monday alone, in a kind of electronic telethon, Dean collected a breathtaking $820,000 as supporters rushed to pad his total on the final day of the second-quarter fund-raising reporting period.
"This was a historic week, where you had for the first time an unbelievably profound use of the Internet to mobilize regular people to participate in politics again," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, an alliance of centrist Democrats. "It has changed American politics forever."
Dean's success doesn't mean the left will dominate the Internet. But unlike talk radio, the Internet isn't dominated by the right -- it offers both sides a chance to mobilize support. And right now, the left may be ahead of the right in seizing this tool's potential.
It's difficult to compare the audience of talk radio and the Internet. The largest talk-radio shows, like Rush Limbaugh's, almost certainly still reach more people every day than any Internet site dedicated to political persuasion. And the Internet still isn't available as widely as radio, which is present in nearly every American home.
But the Internet has also become a genuine mass medium. A recent study by Arbitron, the commercial rating service, found that three-fourths of Americans have access to it, nearly two-thirds in their homes.
Surprisingly, it appears about the same number of Americans regularly obtain information from the Internet and talk radio. The best data on this come from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, an independent polling organization. Its latest surveys show that 17% of Americans listen regularly to talk radio, while 15% go online every day for news.
