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Archive for the 'Brick-and-mortar consultants' Category

If You Want Something Done Right…

Published by William Beutler on March 20, 2007 in Blog Consultants, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Online Campaigns, RedState, Republicans and White House '08. 2 Comments

A big story of the 2008 cycle will be how the GOP catches up to the Democrats in online organizing — or how it doesn’t. That the left has a more effective online infrastructure and activist network scarcely needs demonstrating, but whether the Republican party realizes that this matters is an open question. In fact, it’s not even clear that most conservative bloggers realize this. Since the beginning, conservative blogging has been marked more by punditry than activism — 9/11 was the starting point for the right-blogosphere, compared to Howard Dean for its counterpart — and most are content to keep on doing just that.

But there is a growing realization, in some quarters, that they need an answer to the Dem-leaning netroots, and that it won’t happen by itself. This is exemplified by a recent diary user-submitted blog entry — “The Difference Between Daily Kos and Red State (hint: Not favorable to Red State)” — asking whether conservative bloggers would organize to support a candidate for retiring Rep. Marty Meehan’s Massachusetts seat:

This is why the Left Netroots are killing us. They actually mobilize and work to get their candidates elected. Whereas on most Conservative sites, all you get is the same-o same-o. … The Dems and Left Netroots have no fear of supporting (quite strongly) candidates in the reddest of seats. We need to contest this special election.

The commenters were certainly responsive, and it’ll be interesting to see if they actually carry through. As of now, Republican bloggers have no game plan and few connections to state and local parties. Their predicament resembles that of the Democratic netroots circa 2003 — and they famously went oh-and-something before backing a slate of winning candidates in 2006.

All of which raises several interesting questions, most of which I’m not prepared to analyze here. But the thread following the post raises a few. One is whether the online right is willing to make ideological concessions in the name of winning seats. Here’s one comment to that effect, from the blogger behind My Election Analysis:

For all their many, many faults, Kossacks are actually willing to accept a significant amount of ideological diversity in their caucus to win these types of districts. This is actually one of Kos’s main points. Stephanie Herseth has a lifetime ACU of 49. That’s in the range of Arlen Specter’s rating, but they would never dream of primary-ing Herseth with someone from the far left of the party. Sure they primaried Lieberman in blue Connecticut, but they wisely let the Nelsons (lifetime ACU 53 (NE) and 41 (FL)) of the world have a pass. If a Republican is going to win this seat, he or she is going to have to be a fairly liberal Republican. There is simply no way that a pro-lifer or a candidate who isn’t pro-civil-unions at least is going to win a federal election here. And he or she will probably have to be a Christie Whitman wishy-washy personality overall. But are we really going to tolerate them, or are we going to have a Club For Growth candidate challenging them after their first term?

That is an excellent question; after all, it was only a few months ago they were going about unseating liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee (and hounding the NRSC for supporting him).

This leads to another question: The Dem-leaning netroots have a much more contentious relationship with their party’s existing operatives than do the nascent rightroots (aside: eventually today’s netroots should be called the “leftroots” and “netroots” can become a catch-all term for online political activists, but we’re not there yet). But if online Republicans do step up and ask for a bigger voice in their party’s campaigns, will there be similar acrimony to what happens on the left? Here’s R.E. Finch, in the thread:

I’ve harped. I’ve cajoled. Last January, I worked for a couple of weeks to develop a really sharp template proposal for a Conservative-based netroots program, then tailored it to the needs of some GOP candidates. I had it looked over by some of my more campaign-savvy associates, then tweaked it and pitched it. What happened? … [T]his idea was a non-starter. I sensed a strong aversion on the part of the GOP apparatus to engage any people-intensive tool over which it cannot exercise complete control. The thought of adding a netroots coordination section to a GOP campaign plan scares some of these people in a herding-cats sort of way. Maybe right now that isn’t an unreasonable position to take. … But for the long-term I doubt the GOP can shun coming up with its own ways to use this new medium’s people resources to its advantage.

Surprising? Not hardly, especially if you take Mike Turk’s experiences with Bush-Cheney ‘04 and the RNC into account. Maybe it won’t be acrimony per se — for example, it’s hard to imagine Erick Erickson and NR getting into it like Markos Moulitsas and TNR — but estrangement instead. That’s the status quo, and there are few signs of change ahead.

Ultimately, it may be up to Finch, the RedStaters and their allies to take on Internet party-building projects themselves; the Republican establishment will only “get it” once everything has been done for them. That seems to be David All’s conclusion:

I continue to read about the success of ActBlue, and I’m tired of waiting for something to emerge organically which will help our guys out in the field. If you’re interested in being a part of a Republican counter-part, send me an email. I will head up the development/implementation effort if you will financially support its development. Only serious replies. We don’t have much time.

It’s a start, maybe. Republican bloggers can build an infrastructure without Republican consultants. But that brings us to another question: Can they do it without Republican money?

Will Elizabeth Edwards Resign, Too?

Published by William Beutler on February 17, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blog Consultants, Blog Fights, Blogging Officials, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos, Democrats, Elizabeth Edwards, Hotline, Internecine Battles, John Edwards, Online Campaigns and White House '08. 42 Comments

Earlier this week, Blog P.I. posed a question: Who was responsible for hiring bloggers in Edwardsville? The logical answer was Matt Gross, Edwards’ chief Internet strategist, and considering the resignations of said controversial bloggers, we idly wondered if Gross would be tendering his resignation as well.

But as the headline above has already given away, we may have blogged too soon — after all, there is someone else at the campaign who is a longtime member of the blogosphere, and it is someone who wields much more power than Gross.

It’s Elizabeth Edwards.

We certainly don’t know for a fact that EE (as we’ll refer to her from here on) recommended Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan for the jobs of blogmaster and blog wrangler (respectively) but we can demonstrate that she would have been in a position to know about them and to make such recommendations. And if it ever did come out that EE was responsible for this mess, it would renew questions about how much control she has over John Edwards’ campaign — and whether it hurts more than it helps.

So let’s get demonstrating:

Going back to at least the 2004 campaign, EE has not just been a mere reader of the blogs but also a commenter at some of the biggest sites on the left.

In April 2005 she took to task several members of the Democratic Underground community for making fun of right-wing radio talker Laura Ingraham’s breast cancer — EE is a breast cancer survivor herself — earning thumbs up from Michelle Malkin and others in the rightosphere.

She may have only commented at Daily Kos eight times from 2004 to 2005, but she was nevertheless one of the earliest to sign up: going by the sequential user ID numbers, EE was the 3,454th person to register; the site now has well over 100,000 registered accounts (not the same as active users).

Now, how much involvement does she actually have with blogs? Last year she told Campus Progress:

I spend a lot of time on the internet. I get a lot of information from blogs, I have a whole list including Talking Points [Memo], Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and more. Sometimes I check out the right wing sites to see what they are talking about. I have a whole folder of sites and I open them all up every day and see what catches my eye. … Sometimes I would post on blogs not under my real name. … But I had to stop doing that after John started running. Now I sometimes participate under my own name. I participate in blogs and newsgroups – not just political ones but other issues too.

Make no mistake, EE knows a lot more about the blogosphere than the average consultant.

And we also know that while she holds no official position with the campaign, she has something of a reputation for usurping the paid consultants’ authority (or so goes the chatter). In December of last year, she appeared in the comments of Illinois-focused ArchPundit to defend herself against claims that she led the ouster of star consultant David Axelrod, who handled Edwards’ media in 2004 (but this time is advising Barack Obama). As ArchPundit’s Larry Handlin put it, during the previous campaign

her handling of consultants and staff was problematic because she tends to micromanage and many would say she cuts people out of the loop. That’s a management problem. It’s also what probably endears her to those who love her and so it’s a double edged sword.

If that’s the case here, then we owe an apology to Matt Gross. Obviously there is no smoking gun evidence that EE was the instigator of the blog hires, but she most certainly would have been in a position to advise (and even make decisions) on the matter. It’s also not unreasonable to think EE would be a more avid reader of pointedly feminist blogs than Gross (not to impugn his feminist credentials). At the very least, she didn’t step in and warn that Marcotte’s rhetoric might be a little too hot for her to serve in a communications role.

Without more information, we’ll file this one under “more than plausible.” But Blog P.I. is not the first to suggest that EE had more involvement here than has been reported. Take this bit from National Journal’s most recent Dem rankings — where Edwards is ranked number three, where he has been since Obama’s emergence:

The 24 hours that elapsed between the MSM’s Blogger-gate stories and Edwards’ nuanced response has become this cycle’s unexplained, awkward Jeanine Pirro gap. We’d blame this on consultants, except Edwards routinely brags he doesn’t listen to them. This one’s on him (or her?).

Commenters at Pandagon seem to think Elizabeth Edwards was behind the decision, too. And in a Feb. 8 diary at Daily Kos, New Hampshire-based MissLaura posted a recent (but pre-controversy) interview with EE on blogs, dKos and the campaign. As MissLaura suggested in that post:

Edwards returned several times to the question of how much control campaign staff would have over what she says publicly, focusing on her efforts to resist such control. However the behind-the-scenes debate over whether to fire or stand behind Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan played out days later, we have to assume that it was at least in part shaped by the presence of a powerful figure who understands blogs and who habitually works against excessive homogenizing.

Others, such as early Dean blogger Dan Conley, have predicted that her blog involvement could be a problem — although not quite like this:

There are two ways to view Mrs. Edwards’ posting on blogs. Some will wonder how wise it is for Edwards to enter this swamp. Every blogger has a sane/insane ratio for political posts … we come to accept it from our peers. But when an aspiring First Lady says something pointed, it’s not just typical Internet chatter, it’s potentially big news. Elizabeth Edwards is extremely smart and a terrific writer … but it’s an incredible high-wire act for someone so prominent to attempt.

Sure, it’s pretty neat that there’s a potential First Lady reading and writing on blogs (on her own, in her own words). It’s proof that whereas all the talk about the downfall of the MSM a couple years back proved false, the blogs certainly have delivered on some degree of democraticization of political media.

But let us observe, as if it even needs pointing out, this development has not always proved beneficial for politicians and political campaigns. No matter what, that’s been the case here. As my former colleague Marc Ambinder points out at Hotline On Call, the controversy

stepped on his health care rollout and has been the dominant theme of his campaign for a week.

Make that two weeks. The Edwards campaign did itself enough damage by waiting too long to decide what to do with their problematic bloggers, and the drawn-out hiring, firing, rehiring and resigning just made it worse. Not to mention, Marcotte’s blog-and-tell for Salon can only delay the Edwards camp from getting back on message. Alas, Edwards will not be on the Sunday shows this week.

Elizabeth Edwards may be the most powerful blog expert advising her husband’s campaign, but assuming this reasoning is on target, she also may not be expert enough.

Note: Additional links and analysis provided by Not Paul Begala.

Update: NPB adds a worthwhile clarification in the comments:

[Marcotte an McEwan] were not vetted and the communications staff was not prepared for the broadside against them. As a former communications guy myself, I can’t tell you how much incomplete information pisses us off. … It’s a legit question that Democrats should be asking of one of their own potential nominees: Why weren’t you ready for a hit job from the right?

Update, Wednesday: Thank you, everyone who commented. Thank you especially, everyone who commented on something other than “good people” and “hit job.” I have approved several comments that are redundant at best, and I will certainly approve others (even on this very post). However, please read through the comments before adding your own, and please only do so if it’s a unique thought. Bonus points if it’s actually about this post, and not the aforementioned comment.

Why I Deserve Your Money*

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 26, 2007 in Brick-and-mortar consultants, Campaigns, Democrats, Netroots and Online Fundraising. 0 Comments

Chris seems to have a problem with people like me getting money from the blogosphere:

[T]he same Democratic political consultant structure that the netroots seek to reform… is actually being funded, reinforced, and strengthened by the netroots.

Like I’ve argued before, I think I’m pretty good at this. My full-time job is helping Democrats win. I love politics, I work hard, I’m pretty good at figuring people out and the clients I help elect support most of your agenda. Where we differ is that I think Mark Pryor should get some leeway. He’s from a red state after all; he needs to vote the way his constituents want (he does, after all, represent them). I do a little more top-down management than bottom-up, but I fully support both methods. I also see flaws in both methods. And, we agree more often then you would think, e.g. Joe Lieberman should get a swift kick in the junk for undermining the Democratic party.

Bloggers see overall numbers like $1.85 billion and get mad that political professionals get all that money. Hey, I do it, too. Ever see a piece of crap car commercial on TV and think about the money wasted on that advertising firm? Ever say to yourself, “I could do better than that!”?

There’s one problem with that kind of armchair quarterbacking: it’s a selective view. You need to judge the entire body of work a firm produces, what actually went into the production (clients drastically ruin (and improve) work all the time), the amount of material to work with and a whole host of other factors.

The point is this, Chris: we get paid well because that’s what the market has dictated. Nobody gets forced into using a particular pollster, mail firm or TV firm. We have to go pitch clients, cold call people that qualify for the ballot, and we face some pretty fierce competition in the industry every day. Lots of new firms have been opening up because there is a ton of business at the state and local level that was never there before (by the way, that’s where the real money is). And the Internet is making more information available all the time. More information equals more informed decisions.

Do people make money and viability decisions based on which firm you pick? Absolutely. Anyone who’s a consistent giver knows brand name firms. Just like you know Miller Lite but you might not know the Dead Guy.

Experience, name and reputation mean something in this world. That’s why the big firms have big market share and that’s why they make big money. And this notion that we don’t support the same principles and goals is just bullshit. We just don’t listen to everything you and the so-called netroots say (something which I don’t even think really has a good definition yet).

That said, I do agree with you on a major point. I think you deserve a lot more money than you guys are getting for your work:

Matt Stoller, has previously written about examples of full-time progressive movement activists who receive little or no compensation for their work. … local progressive bloggers typically lose money on blogging every year, even as they help transform local media and activist scenes. … As a handful of progressive bloggers are criticized for picking up the occasional establishment consulting job, the progressive netroots as a whole funnels exponentially more money into the establishment while receiving virtually no help in return when it comes to building our movement. … I am also pissed off at the Democratic and progressive establishment that is funded with our dollars, but which refuses to fund us in return.

I’ve said before, you deserve better because you provide a service (the part about leaked polling numbers). We politico/consultant types love politics and you provide us with discussion material all the time. Before, we had to wait for Meet the Press to air, or catch our updates from Inside Poltics. We had to subscribe to Roll Call, the Evans-Novak Report or (those of us that worked for rich lobbyists or big NGO’s) National Journal and CQ.

You’re providing most of this stuff for free and we should find a way to support good advertisers that are catering to what we want. I promise you this: when I start my own political consulting firm, I’ll buy a Blogad. And I have a feeling that one day, when you get a pitch from my firm for a race you may be running, you may just think I deserve a buck or two for my services.

*And, to be fair, why you deserve mine.