Here is a guess about politics in the new media world.
In an age where adverts have failed, endorsements matter again, but the size of the social network is what matters. By social networking I do NOT mean faddish things like Facebook, but the number of people who actually engage with a person or institution.
Who cares what you say enough to to argue with it or think about it even if it cuts against previous opinions? That is is the size of your effective social network.
In that sense, newspaper endorsements may have mattered more this year than recently to the benefit of John McCain.
Even though they have faded, newspapers still have huge social networks, just not enough to support their present infrastructures which are top heavy by new media standards. Web sites like Townhall are simply editorial pages without the costly infrastructure.
Hugh Hewitt was a huge “get” for Mitt Romney. He has a giant social network, much larger than most politicians. His support was a major influence on me in making my own decision. I respect Hewitt’s acumen.
In that sense the measure of the influence of a social network is what matters in considering the value of an endorsment. How many folk will stop and think about the endorsers ideas, even if they run contrary to the first opinions of the one listening?
Joe Carter is one of those people for me.
I am a Romney guy, but Joe Carter’s opposition to him made me pause. I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, who can say the same.
That is power in the new media world and means Carter matters politically to the extent that his social network of trust exists.
I suspect more people care on a daily basis about what Joe Carter thinks, than what Tom Coburn may say. Coburn may be a fine conservative sitting Senator, the most conservative out there, but he is pretty invisible in the new media.
I suspect the estimable Coburn has a smaller social network than Carter, so his “weight” in the new politics is less. He is a smaller “get” for McCain than Carter was for Huckabee.
(Of course, the snow ball of all those government officials together, with their social networks, coming to McCain are cumulatively greater than Carter.)
Obama-mania is cleverly fed by this very sort of social networking. He is the master of it.
The same thing happens in churches, but less obviously.
I think the best example of the power of this may have been Nevada where Mormons and Evangelicals must have signed off on Mitt under the radar in their assorted parishes and in years of internal conversations at a party level. . . but this is off the screen of the opinion makers, since churches are one of the last places left where this social networking is live and not on a screen.
What happens to Huck and Mitt this Sunday in conversations in church in California may matter more than the endorsement of the governor . . . whose social network is fairly weak amongst those who vote in Republican primaries in the state.
