E’ con grandissimo piacere - nonch? orgoglio - che pubblichiamo l’email del politologo statunitense Theodore J. Lowi (Cornell University).

Dear Rosanna:

I was away for a family wedding this past weekend, and this is my first opportunity to reply. I congratulate you for your effort, “PoliticsMatters,” and will try to help by giving you a “forecast.” Use it as you wish, and shorten or edit it as you see fit.
The American presidential race is closer than we have probably ever seen. Bush is ahead 7-8 points in the “red states” he carried in 2000. Kerry is ahead by 10 points in the “blue states” Gore carried in 2000. Bush and Kerry are dead even at 48 percent each in the “swing states.” And the candidates and voters are more polarized than ever. Within that context we can make 5 wildly irresponsible forecasts:
(1) An “October surprise” – some real or invented threat attributable to the Bush-defined world terrorism.
(2) Serious allegations of voting frauds and intimidations, leading to extensive recounts in states where a few illegal or unaccounted votes can reverse the outcome of that state and thus the national election.
(3) Another resolution of the election in the Supreme Court – aborting the electoral process a second time, with still more damaging illegitimacy in the presidency.
(4) A Bush re-election.
(5) The only bright possibility (in the view of this observer) is a Democratic re-capture of the Senate, producing at least two years of “divided government.”
I also circulated your paragraph describing “PoliticsMatters” to a very active student group at Cornell, Democracy Matters. Hope you will hear from them.

Ted

Intervista con Joe Trippi, gi? manager della campagna Internet di Howard Dean – volutamente lasciata nell’originale inglese e per gentile concessione di NetPolitique.

Netpolitique: “There isn’t a single f…..g vote to be had on the internet!": according to a Joe Klein article in Time magazine this week, this was a quote by Jim Jordan (he denies it), former campaign manager of John Kerry, at the time the Kerry campaign was getting concerned about Howard Dean’s surge. I read this quote as I was halfway through your book. This is actually a pretty good summary of what most politicians and political consultants still think. What do you tell them?

Joe Trippi : They don’t know what they’re talking about… attitudes like that continue to keep the Democratic Party in the dark when it comes to the internet. This is why Republicans beat us on talk radio and cable television; they understand the importance of new technology and invest enormous amounts of money in it.
More and more people receive their political new exclusively from the internet. As that trend increases my hope is that no one will take the internet for granted… folks like Democrats.com are now even identifying likely voters through email. This is the future… anyone who does not recognize that is out of touch and will soon find themselves out of work. (continua…)

By Buzz Webster
– After reading campaign emails from Bush and Kerry, it is absolutely clear who won the Veep debate last night.
Bush email: “Vice President Cheney won the debate last night”
Kerry email: “We’re two for two”
Both campaigns are still heavily pushing supporters to take part in online polls.

– In an effort to kill Internet rumors House Republicans killed a draft bill Tuesday. The bill, HR163, would have required that all men and women ages 18 to 26 serve at least two years of military or civilian service.

“The reason we’re doing this is to expose the biggest hoax in show business,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, who chairs the House armed services committee.
“The hoax has been carried out through the Internet, where millions of young people are being scared by some anonymous tipster.”

– Italian ePolitics are fantastico
We recently told you about the Italian Twin of Matt Drudge Roberto D’Agostino- and his website Dagospia. While his site is quite the rumor mill, Italy has a serious side to ePolitics as well. PoliticsMatters a collective blog of PoliticaOnline launched yesterday. The blog focuses mainly on Italian politics, but will alos look at the U.S. and worldwide grassroots activism.

A collective blog (in Italian) launching October 5th on PoliticaOnline.it

The approaching US elections seem to promise a new push for political attention and participation as an affirmative answer to a polarized ideological battle. Not only because of its worldwide effects and high stakes, but also due to a resurgence of grassroots activism using new collaborative technologies.

It is therefore important to monitor these elections not only in their general aspects of campaign and news media coverage, but particularly to explore the different layers of ?latent? communication working at the intersection of politics, technology, culture, business and International strategies.

Mostly aimed at the Italian public, our monitoring project ("PoliticsMatters") will provide daily analysis, commentaries and reports by researchers from the Social and Political Sciences fields as well as by journalists, bloggers and citizens. Our team will take a close look at media outlets and other sources worldwide, while also exchanging stories with similar web-projects.

With its open-end and cross-discipline approach, ?PoliticsMatters? aims to go beyond the (often misleading) breaking news and reports of Big Media, in order to build a collective ?blog-lab? as a new tool for expressing and debating today?s political culture issues.

PoliticsMatters: Starting October 5th at http://www.politicaonline.it/politicsmatters

More info & contacts: info@politicaonline.it