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The untapped political power of the Web just got tapped—big-time.
In late September, two Bay Area computer professionals set up a Web site (www.moveon.org) calling for Congress to immediately censure President Bill Clinton and move on to more important issues. Their plan was to spread the word through e-mail to friends, who would then further spread the word over the Internet.
They didn't have long to wait. Censure and Move On got 350 petition signers the first day, 1,500 the second, 10,000 the third, 25,000 the fourth—100,000 within a week.
Like many Web projects, this was an effort to reach out and find like-minded individuals. Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, a married couple and founders of Berkeley Systems (creators of the After Dark screen savers), were disgusted with l'affaire Lewinsky and favored a quick censure for the president and early retirement for Washington, DC's sex police. Discussing the issue with friends, they found universal agreement; even while the scandal-hungry media seemed Starry-eyed at the prospect of impeachment. "We figured if there's this broad opinion out there, maybe we can use the Internet to help catalyze that," says Boyd. After deciding to separate petition signers by congressional district and present them to their representatives before the House vote, Move On sent a group e-mail to ask for volunteers; 3,000 people responded. By the time the House approved impeachment with a mostly party-line vote December 19, approximately 300,000 people had signed the Move On petition. Now, after a post-impeachment flurry of new signers, the number is at 470,000 and counting.
Although treated by political professionals as more of a curiosity than a trend, a nationwide e-mail database of almost half a million like-minded voters can't be ignored. After the House vote, notes Boyd, "we turned our sights to the election and did a Get Out the Vote campaign. We were able—through e-mail and word of mouth—to contact about 4 million voters." The effects of the moveon.org effort can't be accurately measured, but they shouldn't be minimized in an election where Democratic gains came largely through getting voters to the polls, when those gains were all but unprecedented in history, and when they are linked with successes outside cyberspace—like the December 16 anti-impeachment rally in Westlake Park, organized by four Move On members. "We were hoping for 50 people to show up—we got 2,000 to 3,000," says Drew Emery, a rally organizer and the 7th Congressional District Move On spokesperson. Emery, who until the event had never done political organizing or spoken at a rally, is typical of the Move On recruits—as is Edmonds resident Teresa Wippel, a freelance writer and editor, who considers herself more an independent than a Democrat and says her involvement is unrelated to party politics. "Concentrating on [the Lewinsky scandal] is getting us so far away from the issues we need to focus on in this country," she says. "I really believe if this had happened to George Bush, I would not have felt any different."
Although Move On organizers are easily stereotyped as political naifs, they realize that e-mail alone won't force political change, and they have widened their focus to include the most important force in politics—money. After the impeachment vote, Boyd and Blades posted a request for pledges for the campaigns of office seekers challenging pro-impeachment House (and potentially Senate) members in 2000. Already, more than 18,000 voters have pledged to donate $12.6 million. For once, transitory throw-the-bums-out passion might translate into something real and sustaining.
Boyd plans to help direct the money in typical Internet fashion. The Web site will provide information about which pro-impeachment incumbents might be most vulnerable, but make no recommendations as to where people should apply their money. "They can make their own choices," says Boyd. "We're an information source, not a conduit."
WILL THE INTERNET be the new electoral battleground? Might it become a potent political weapon that can counteract the formidable power of incumbency? Let's not forget that there are numerous impeachment Web sites, both pro and con, that didn't cause a national sensation. The Enough Is Enough Web site petition, for example, got just 15,000 signees; a host of anti-Clinton sites also managed to maintain their obscurity in the face of almost constant hype about the Internet.
In any event, Boyd hopes that Move On's successes can dispel the image of the Web as being the domain solely of the passive nerd hacker (even though people do get involved in this effort while sitting at their computers). And in an era when rabidly partisan Republicans such as Henry Hyde and Trent Lott are considered moderates, he wanted to stress the moderate face of anti-impeachment feeling. Impeachment, in Boyd's mind, is not so much a question of two opposite extremes as of sanity vs. insanity.
One possible factor in Move On's success is a dramatic, if still largely unperceived, shift in the Web's demographics. Before every business decided it was imperative to have an Internet presence, the Web was inhabited in large part by obsessives and extremists. Factor in the libertarian nature of the medium, the basic financial requirements of owning a Web-compatible computer, and a lot of free time, and you end up with an image of the average Web user as being more conservative than his unwired counterpart. And there is no question that online discussions on impeachment issues tend to be dominated by Clinton haters, and the instant polls used by new organizations such as MSNBC also skew anti-Clintonward.
