Lessig

Nice indeed. A good bit of meat there, and notable food for thought talking about those "ambivalent about Dean and the rest of the Democrat field."

I've been wondering if Gore's endorsement of Dean is his way of saying to the party establishment "Time to *line-up* behind Dean, because we've all got to hang together now or we'll all hang separately".

Speaking of Nixon, there *will* be Republican dirty tricks come high gear campaign time, especially if Dean looks like he even has a chance to win. I suspect it'll be very Nixonian.

Oh well, I didn't really want to write critically of Howard Dean anyway.

Let's not expect him to be Internet Made Man (in many senses of the word). He's not going to undo the DMCA or repeal copyright extensions.

But we could do worse. A lot worse.

I had a word or two to say about the false Dean/McGovern comparison on my weblog: JZip: A Choice, Not An Echo Of Clinton.

Those with long memories for right-wing political literature might guess from the title what I think is the proper comparison, and here's a special Bob Dylan quote to help: "In the final end, he won the war, after losing every battle."

I'm not sanguine about any Democrat's chances to defeat Bush in 2004--the only person well-positioned to beat Bush is Bush himself (always a possibility)--but Dean is doing exactly the right thing in building a Democratic Party for the twenty-first century.

By the way, there was an interesting article in the Washington Post applying Coasian theory to political organization over the internet, and an on-line discussion with the author. Here's the money quote (with which I do not necessarily fully agree): " For all Dean's talk about wanting to represent the truly 'Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,' the paradox is that he is a third-party candidate using modern technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party."