The Party of the Establishment

[Onlooker]

I get the feeling more and more that the Democratic Party is operating like a stodgy old party, and refusing to adapt to the fast-paced realities around them. The Republicans have been making inroads into the media for years, while the Democrats did nothing. Now that Republicans clearly dominate talk radio and cable tv, they are starting to make inroads into the internet. This very much feels like the 1980s when Newt Gingrich's Contract on America was defeating Democrats right and left. Part of the problem, I think, is that the liberal left is not nearly as organized and monolothic as the conservative right.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/20/study-mccain-is-a-social-media-genius/#more-118715

New York University professor Scott Galloway and George Washington University School of Business dean Doug Guthrie ranked all 100 U.S. senators based on what they call the lawmakers' "digital IQ." The score is derived from a combination of metrics culled from each senator's activity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, political blogs and their own congressional website.


Republican Sens. Jim DeMint and Scott Brown took a close second and third behind McCain, with Sen. Al Franken–the Senate's most social media-savvy Democrat–coming in at number four.
...

Republicans average 5.5 points higher than Democrats, according to the study. Their IQs also grew faster, as members of the GOP saw 6.7 percent month-over-month growth on Facebook versus just 3.6 percent for Democrats.

"President Obama pioneered the social media trail. However, Republicans are blazing it," the headline of the study's introduction says.

The analysis found that the 10 most conservative Republicans–according to their voting records–have a higher average digital IQ than the rest of their party, while the 14 most liberal Democrats lag behind their party.

"If social media is the temperature of the digital domain, it may be an especially cold fall for Democrats," the study's authors write in the report.