Transformations

In the New York Times, Republican operative Mark McKinnon is quoted:

I think we’ll be analyzing this election for years as a seminal, transformative race. The year campaigns leveraged the Internet in ways never imagined. The year we went to warp speed. The year the paradigm got turned upside down and truly became bottom up instead of top down.

I hear a scriptural echo here, though it's not the scripture we might expect.

It was the year of fire... the year of destruction... the year we took back what was ours. It was the year of rebirth... the year of great sadness... the year of pain... and the year of joy. It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed

(A correspondent, worrying already about the potential for Republican gains in the election of 2014, worried about the danger of Nehemiah Scudder. What's a little science fiction among friends?)

What is most interesting about netroots and politics in this election, I think, is that we’ve achieved a sort of balance. In 2004, we had pockets of large-scale success — the Dean operation and Drudge. In 2008, everyone was reading the net, and perhaps that’s helped keep everyone honest. Truth is the antidote for truthiness, and knowledge the antidote to smears.