Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit links to this quote from political consultant Joe Trippi, basically another assertion of how the Internet is going to change everything in politics. It isn't.

America's two political parties may not realise it yet, but in their current form they are nearing obsolescence. As technological advancements continue to bring more and better tools for communication, citizens are increasingly empowered to come together in common purpose and reject the current political system that seems designed by the two parties to keep us apart.

There was a time when to have any hope of winning office a candidate needed to run within either the Republican or Democratic party. To come from one of the major parties meant that a candidate inherited a dedicated donor base and an organisational base as well.

The 2004 presidential campaign proved that those days are nearing an end - and it is the ability of hundreds of thousands using the internet to connect with each other that makes it so.

Trippi is a political consultant, and it seems he's thinking of political parties solely in terms of campaigns. But the influence of the two party system doesn't end on election day. It is entrenched in the whole system of legislating and governing. A candidate doesn't just have to win election, he then has to govern.

The advent of a new means of communication is not going to change fundamentally the building blocks of our political system. The invention of radio didn't do it, the invention of television didn't do it, the invention of the Internet (insert Al Gore joke here) won't do it either.

Imagine an independent candidate won election to the presidency in 2008. How would he get any agenda through Congress? A president works with members of his party in Congress to get an agenda implemented. You might think that, partisanship overcome, the new independent president would bring together a coalition of House and Senate Democrats and Republicans to set aside their own party agendas and hold hands, sing Kumbayah, and implement the will of the American people rather than "the special interests." (Which are of course usually just interests the person using the term "special interests" disagrees with) That's a fantasy. Congressional rules, procedures, committee assignments, horse-trading on the floor - everything is tailored to the two party system. Look at the experience of Jim Jeffords of Vermont in 2001 - on paper he switched from Republican to independent, but in practice he aligned himself with the Democrats. You can't be a loner in the Senate or the House, or the White House.

Or imagine the Unity '08 dream becomes a reality and we get a president and vice president from two different parties. The vice president has no real power or duties other than to break tie votes in the Senate, do what the president lets him do, and wait for the president to die or resign.

If say, a Democrat won the presidency and a Republican the vice presidency, do you think that vice president would have the same power and influence of, for example, Dick Cheney? Maybe we don't want the vice president to have that much power and influence, maybe we do, but the ultimate impact of having a "unity ticket" is obviously diminished to the extent that power is stripped from the lower half of the ticket after the election.

Reynolds also links to the Unity '08 project, and opines, "while I like the idea, I found the execution somewhat unappealing."

What's not to like about the idea? If of a couple of former Carter administration officials, a former Howard Dean campaign strategist, and a bunch of college students don't represent the center-right majority in America, who does?

The plain fact is, there's partisanship in America because there's a real cultural divide in America. Real disagreements about real issues aren't going away because there's a new way to communicate about them.