Nomination Process Reveals A Fractured America

By Kathy Gill, UW senior lecturer in the Master of Communication in Digital Media Program

Who knows if it's the result of campaign weariness, campaign rhetoric or social media technologies, but today's America seems the most divided that I have seen in my lifetime.

The Democratic Party still has no clear nominee (set super delegates aside for the moment). Supporters of each candidate (Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama) would feel disenfranchised should their candidate lose in Denver. So much so, in fact, that some say they would vote for the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, in November.

The Republican Party seems no less divided. It's just that they aren't hanging their dirty laundry in public. If the Republicans picked their nominee like the Democrats (no winner-take-all caucuses or primaries), then it's likely they'd not have a winner yet, either. Remember, even with the other big guns out of the race, and with McCain as the presumed nominee, Rep. Ron Paul took 16 percent of the Pennsylvania vote.

And then there's the disintermediation facilitated by Web technologies.

Ah, don't let your eyes glaze over! Disintermediation is a fancy way of saying Web technologies help cut out the middleman. This is disruptive for existing institutions, like newspapers that are losing advertisers to firms like eBay and craigslist.com. It's also disruptive for software firms like Microsoft, which competes with Google for information customers, and television networks  and cable firms which face competition from YouTube, Amazon UnBox and iTunes.

Why should political parties be immune from competition?

The short answer: they shouldn't be and aren't.

Candidates like Sen. Obama and Rep. Paul have done an excellent job of marshaling social media technologies to raise money and generate grassroots support. But the ultimate change might be that these technologies make it easy for ordinary people to connect with people who "think like me." Thus, the technologies enable fragmentation; in this way, social media technologies are the polar opposite of broadcast (one way) media technologies.

Is the two-party system on deathbed? Should it be?