Okay but just so we are clear, I never made the presumption you said I did. I think there are still gatekeepers, though they are less powerful in the digital age. I'm just trying to work out what change is a function of the infrastructure of the web and what is caused by other factors. Or what part of the power of Trump derives from something the web has facilitated. (Or Sanders, for example? Who bucks the trend and is thriving in the polls despite getting very limited exposure from all sorts of gatekeepers, relative to Trump.)

And I'm trying to point out that while the web may facilitate such things (though I think that is questionable), it also facilitates other things.

I don't think it's quite as straightforward as you suggest above. Democracy can be a messy business and there will always be politicking and some degree of bureaucratic rules which inhibit it. I suppose it's a matter of trying to limit those latter phenomena.

-Lizzie