2004 Election Fallout

Great Debates
1

With the election now over and done with, what will be some of the long-term changes that we can expect to see by the time 2008 rolls around? I know there are already threads throwing out ideas regarding who the candidates will be, so that can probably be avoided. But what about:

  1. The role of 527’s
    George Soros, Moveon.org, Swift Boat Vets, etc clearly played a pretty powerful role in this election, perhaps more powerful than any could have guessed when McCain-Feingold went into effect. Will legislation be passed to limit the reach of 527s? If not, will they have an even bigger influence next time around.

  2. The role of the celebrity culture.
    This could cover things like the Springsteen musical tour, Fahrenheit 911, Puff Daddy, Rock the Vote. There were a lot of unprecedented efforts by celebrities/pop culture to excite the youth vote, predominantly towards the Democratic side. While the total numbers of youth voting increased, their percentage was the same. Will the efforts still be made to bring them to the polls or will people change their focus to a more middle-aged slant.

  3. How will the Republicans react to the extremely effective Democratic money machine. The Dems really opened up a whole new world with using the internet to bring in lots of small donations that add up to some powerful totals. The Republicans missed the boat on this in a major way. Do they simply react and try to duplicate what the Dems already did or do they try to figure out a way to take it to the next level.

  4. Where does MoveOn.org go from here? This is a group that had a pretty hefty role and would have clearly been a golden child showing how to win an election in the technological age. Now, are they marginalized. Considering a lot of money was brought in via donations in small amounts, can they hope to have the same type of success considering the 2008 opponent is likely to inspire much less dislike in the apathetic portion of the left wing.

  5. Whither mainstream media? I’d be inclined to say a majority of the American public would say that the mainstream media skews left in coverage. With incidents like CBS and the National Guard memos, has the mainstream media gone beyond it’s glory days to be fully supplanted by blogs, cable news, and other forms of information spreading?