Election 2.0

So here we go. The 2010 General election. Something to keep the bookies busy in the run up to the World Cup.
Whilst my own voting intentions are already made up (I don't like tax evaders at the best of times, more so when they have the audacity to ask for responsibility for spending HMRC income, so I will be voting Lib Dem in Richmond in a hope it keeps Blue/Green nom dom Goldsmith out of Westminister), many appear to be undecided and an unprecedented many also appear to have levels of disillusion with the political system in its entirety.
There has been much talk about how this will be the first Social Networked Election 2.0, and there has been much coverage of how, in particular, the Tories will be using social media to help there campaign. It's not been entirely successful so far, and I fear that there is something more intrinsically outdated with our political process that means that we are seeing a clash of eras.
Adversarial politics appears to be stuck in a timewarp where leaders are expected to know all the right answers, live flawless lives, and tell us all what we should do (either in terms of government intervention on the left, or go out and get yourself a job to support yourself on the right). There is no conversation (that would be derided as focus-group politics), just black and white platitudes providing a veneer over plodding status quo.
The explosion of the Internet has often been described as democratising (well, for those who can afford to be on it). But democracy in election terms happens in old-media time frames whilst Web 2.0 is real time and two-way.
Don't get me wrong- I'm not advocating the sort of web-enabled rolling referenda that some talk of. Some of the decisions that need to be made need to be considered, and quite frankly the wisdom of crowds is sometimes just plain stupid (capital punishment is one example of note). However, move to a more consensual form of political debate could be facilitated by elements of technology. I'm sure, though, that the 'yah boo!' form is going to prevail for some time to come…