Internet watershed?

Is the fight over Obamacare another milestone in online connection?

I'm an editorial page editor. I get paid to look this stuff up. But I strongly doubt whether, pre-Internet, I could have accessed HR 3200 so easily.

And, until you look at the whole thing, you don't really grasp how all-encompassing it is. No summary or comment can convey that; but once you at least look at the whole thing, then and only then can you grasp how this will completely overwhelm any "private" aspect of health care. Everything, everything, will be run by the government. Any "private" aspect will be private in name only; doctors and hospitals and insurance companies will be mere proxies for Big Bro. And they can't last long anyway -- as we said in edit, any more than a tropical bird can last long in Antarctica.

More important, online info (from e-mails and on the Web) helped me navigate this monster bill better than I ever could have done on my own.

Perhaps most important, I was able to get a sense of how others felt, and that this was a winnable fight.

I'm old enough to remember the Great Society. I was only a teenager, but there was no sense of any debate or opposition, with this kind of scale or intensity. Maybe it was there, but now you can see it.

And, of course, we're no longer just throwing words out there on page, but connecting back.

So this is not only an important moment in politics, it's important in communications and political action.