O ne of the most common clichés in Washington–up there with, say, now-nauseating references to "game-changers" and Barack Obama’s "team of rivals"–is that the Internet has suddenly transformed our politics. This isn’t really true. Rather, over the last decade, the Internet has transformed just about everything in American life. Ordinary Americans of all ages increasingly do their banking online, buy their cars online, shop for groceries and medications online, pay their taxes online, conduct meetings online, rent movies online, even meet their spouses online. And politics, which is always sluggish to adapt to larger cultural trends–we still wear ties to work in the Capitol, you know–is simply the last of our institutions to be slowly pulled along.