The captive US voter has acquired a “get out of jail free” card and because of that, it’s over for the plutocracy – not just in this election, but for quite a time. The point I’m making here is not about Obama. Obama may be terrible news for the plutocracy or he may not – we’ll see. This is about the control of the democratic process both in the US and, by infection, everywhere else.

In a democracy, if you have a specific political agenda, you have two choices:

1. Persuade the electorate to support your agenda through honest argument.
2. Game the system and maneuver the electorate into voting for you.

The problem with the first of these two tactics is that it rarely succeeds when it is directly opposed by the second. The majority of voters do not “consider the facts” and determine who to vote for. The majority have a long term allegiance to one political party or another and they support that party with the same loyalty that they support their favorite sports team.

In a democracy, the independent voters determine the election results. Political triumphs are achieved by influencing such voters. The problem is that, in the modern capitalistic economy, it has become impossible to get an effective message to them without sufficient funding. Elections are bought, not by bribing the voters, but by heavy investments in advertising, marketing and data mining.

The game changers

Several trends have come together to make the current election different to all that preceded it. This is the first presidential election since the founding of YouTube and YouTube makes a difference. It’s pretty much impossible to censor YouTube – and the audience figures for some of the political videos on YouTube exceed the figures for most prime time television. (The Obama Girl video and the Will.i.am “Yes we can” video have attracted audiences above 7 million.) As for cable news – YouTube blows it away.

You cannot buy time on YouTube – it’s impartial. The YouTube audience is self-selected. YouTube destroyed the political career of Virginia Republican Senator George Allen with a single video clip. It severely damaged both Hillary Clinton (Bosnia comments) and Obama (ranting pastor). It will undoubtedly feature heavily in the November election.

For the plutocrats, this is a major political game changer. The media barons are losing their power to influence people because Internet media in general, not just YouTube, is self-selecting:

The Internet provides a freedom of the press that is far more difficult to influence or pervert than the mainstream media.

This is also the first election since the onset of Web 2.0. – by which I mean the proliferation of social networks including; MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Track the prevalence of Obama-related comment on any of these social networking sites and the presence of his political organization dwarfs that of his competition (whether you see that as Hillary Clinton or John McCain.) The advantage that this confers is twofold.

1. It constitutes effective word of mouth advertising to a demographic that can vote.
2. It enables the fast assembly of n effective political organization “on the ground”.

The second of these points is the important one. Obama has been able to issue real-time calls for volunteer assistance at short notice in a way that none of his competitors have. The social networks have created a virtual political organization for him, that can be made real very quickly. Think of the old political structures as “bricks and mortar” operations and the new ones as “dot com.” The telling differences are in cost and speed. What Obama has done, others can do.

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