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Archive for the 'Campaigns' Category

We’re Putting The Disband Back Together!

Published by William Beutler on September 14, 2006 in Campaigns, Online Fundraising, Primary fights and Republicans. 0 Comments
There may have been a time when the NRSC served a valuable function: accepting money from donors who believe generally in Republican principles, but don’t have the time or attention to determine which candidates are most worthy and/or needful of their support. This year’s debacle in Rhode Island, coupled with the ascendancy of the blogosphere, has convinced me that while the NRCC and RNC may yet have important roles to play, the time for the NRSC has come and gone.

The quote belongs to Leon H. Wolf of Red State, but the argument comes straight from the Matt Stoller school of “I don’t like it so it shouldn’t exist.” And with all due respect, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on the front page of the (handsomely redesigned) site. It’s one thing to criticize the NRSC’s decision to go negative on Laffey, as Dan McLaughlin does in the comments, but it’s another thing entirely to focus on one thing the NRSC does and argue that it’s all their good for. What’s more, it’s the sort of thing conservative bloggers would label “crazy” if they found it on MyDD.

The headline alone — “Disband the NRSC” — sounds like hyperbole, but reading further, it’s clearly not. What’s less clear is what Wolf thinks should replace it, and in the end he concludes, “the question still remains of whether the whole structure is even necessary.” Maybe I’m going too far here, but I think even Stoller — who has loudly and repeatedly criticized DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel — recognizes the need for a party committee to coordinate campaign efforts. Someone needs to coordinate the strategery — right? Wolf says no:

With the rise of organizations like ABC Pac, which have handy websites with a slate of candidates that you can evaluate on your own and make an individual contribution to, the justification for a “donate and let someone else decide where it goes” organization like the NRSC - especially given its activity over the last two years - is rather slim.

Heck, why even bother having a Republican party in the first place?

That is to say, I think Wolf is being more than a little too optimistic. The Army of Davids are great at short bursts of brilliance, but you still need a brain trust and someone to work the phones. For one thing, online efforts like Rightroots and ActBlue pull in a fraction of the dollars raised at traditional rubber chicken dinners and through the mail, and probably will for at least a generation. For another, does Wolf believe, say, Red State is prepared to recruit candidates to run for office? To pick up the slack on independent expenditures? To maintain voter rolls and carry out a GOTV effort Democrats would call “exquisite”?

Moreover, just because people can sit down and figure things out for themselves doesn’t mean they will. Nor necessarily should they. Parties require interests and factions to make common cause and fashion a governing majority. They also lower the cost of civic involvement, saving people the hassle of figuring it all out for themselves (or trying to). The wider choice enabled by new technologies and communities, from ABC PAC to Red State, is a positive development. But the aforementioned groups supplement, rather than replace the organizations preceding them.

I hesitate to accuse Wolf of “triumphalism” — but it’s down to that or “naivete.” And at this point even I’m feeling kind of ridiculous for carrying on, in part because one other thing is certain: If the NRSC was “disbanded,” an RNSC or RSCC would quickly replace it.

Caught In A Trap And I Can’t Back Out ‘Cause I Hate You Too Much, Baby

Published by Olly Ruff on September 5, 2006 in Campaigns, Lamont v. Lieberman and Website Design. 4 Comments

Atrios pointed out yesterday — for the purposes of warning people away from it, so without an accompanying link — the relaunch of the Lieberman campaign blog (or alleged blog), scheduled for today. (As of 4:30 PM EDT, the new Lieberman site is still completely dead. This is not the only respect in which the Lieberman campaign could learn from Phoenix Suns G Raja Bell, who at least managed a countdown timer.)

It will certainly be an accomplishment for the Lieberman campaign to have a presence in the ’sphere that (we devoutly hope) doesn’t use a default Blogger template, so this is already a big step forward from the L/L primary. However, this quote from Atrios deserves attention:

A reminder that the Lieberman blog is apparently going live tomorrow. It’s basically going to be a trap to entice people to say mean things about the Last Honest Man so they can go whine to the press about how mean everyone is unlike Stay the Course Joe.
Ah, yes. A “trap” to “entice” otherwise reasonable people to say “mean things” about Joe Lieberman. If there’s one thing the leftosphere has been short on this year, it’s people flying off the handle about Joe Lieberman. Were I working for Joe ‘06, the first thing I’d be looking for would be a cunning scheme to get bloggers to break cover and let their true feelings show.

Seriously, it could be argued that Lieberman has the worst profile in the leftosphere of anyone, ever, including George W. Bush. A trap designed to accomplish this goal would presumably resemble… a keyboard?

Update: Having given this some more thought, maybe a keyboard with a big neon sign pointing at it.

George Allen Takes Some Good Advice

Published by William Beutler on September 2, 2006 in Blog Consultants, Campaigns, George Allen and Midterms '06. 1 Comment

In the days after Sen. George Allen’s YouTube-preserved “macaca” moment, my erstwhile colleague Danny Glover recommended on his own blog that Allen shore up his online campaign, post-haste:

Engage like-minded bloggers to get them behind your campaign. Let them bash the Post for you. Hold conference calls with them. Grant interviews to bloggers. Write entries for their sites and respond to readers when you do. Hire a blog expert to connect with online activists. Those are the kinds of things smart candidates already are doing.

Consider the advice taken. On Friday morning, Richmond-based blogger and former radio personality Jon Henke announced he would be joining Allen’s re-election campaign as a Netroots coordinator:

Obviously, this will change my focus quite a bit, but I will continue to blog at QandO whenever possible, generally on the issues and stories in this very important Virginia Senate race.

As a right-libertarian, Henke generally supports Republicans, but he can’t be pegged an apologist, and has on occasion sided with liberal bloggers over conservatives. I haven’t met Henke in person, but in correspondence going back more than a year, he’s struck me as serious and thoughtful. He’s a good get for them.

As often is the case with newly-created positions related to the blogosphere, even Henke isn’t completely sure how he’ll spend his working hours, but his mission includes “helping to close the strategic blogosphere gap.” Says Henke, via e-mail:

The leftosphere is very good at getting their campaign message to bloggers, getting bloggers to talk about the campaigns and spreading the muck through back channels. The Allen campaign wants to establish some outreach to supportive bloggers and to make sure our side of heard when the Leftosphere is smearing us.

The hire is too late to be damage control, but it should be insurance against future controversies. Allen isn’t the only candidate hurt this year because their media consultants are unsuited to the strange new landscape of user-generated media. (How many have even heard the term “Web 2.0″?) The Allen camp’s multiple revisions of what “macaca” meant is a good example. The breakthrough, if there was one, came from Chad Dotson, a conservative blogger unafilliated with but sympathetic to the campaign. Henke too had Allen’s back, although either one could have ignored the situation. Now the Allen camp has a go-to guy in Henke, and that’s important.

Henke’s widely-read blog is certainly an asset, but that too raises new questions: Henke says he is not proscribed from writing about anything in particular, but he’s also in the odd position of having two co-equal bloggers at QandO. While Dale Franks and Bruce McQuain are supportive of his decision, the possibility exists that they will disagree about some campaign-related issue yet to arise. Henke tells me: “I will not — can not — tell them what to write and what not to write.”

The flip side is that it recalls the issue of whether Democrats Mark Warner and Sherrod Brown hiring Jerome Armstrong meant getting positive coverage from Armstrong pal Markos Moulitsas as well. Of course, there were never any serious allegation of quid pro quo there, only suspicions. Because Henke is the lone QandO contributor who actually lives in Virginia, my guess is that the other two will follow his lead a bit but largely focus on other matters — and you can be sure the lefty blogs in Old Dominion will keep an eye on it.

Also worth noting: Compared to the disclosure issues surrounding John McCain’s web consultants, Henke and the Allen campaign have handled the announcement in an entirely appropriate manner. Henke suspended his own blogging after the 28th, while discussions were ongoing with Allen’s camp, then announced the change in his first post back, and has since added a disclaimer to the bottom of each post:

“Jon Henke is the Netroots Coordinator for the George Allen Senate campaign.”

Interesting, then, that Pat Hynes and Nicco Mele are PR and campaign veterans — yet they were outed by reporters, and ended up looking less professional because of it. Hynes and Mele had certain imperatives from their other jobs that conflicted with their blogging disclosure, but as a hobbyist turned pro, Henke didn’t have to contend with the same issues. He also benefited from having so recently seen what not to do. And though it’s more a case of avoiding a pitfall than doing something especially brilliant, it bodes well enough for Henke that he passed this test.

Secret Hold, Secret Senator

Published by William Beutler on August 30, 2006 in Campaigns, Earned Media, Instapundit, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Midterms '06 and PorkBusters. 7 Comments

[Note: Updated below.]

Just shy of a year in existence, the blog-based PorkBusters campaign is making bigger waves than at any point intervening. The investigation into a secret hold on an earmark accountability bill by Sen. Tom Coburn (arguably the campaign’s best friend in Washington) and Sen. Barack Obama is reaching tidal/tsunamic proportions, and even made CNN this week. Danny Glover — who never gets too old for this — has the back story.

PorkBusters LogoAs of this morning, the coalition of mostly right-leaning bloggers have narrowed down the suspects to just a handful of candidates: at least as of now it depends on who you ask, but Ted Stevens is to this case as Richard Armitage was to Plamegate — no one will be shocked if/when the hold turns out to be his; in fact, a little-noticed Arkansas newspaper report from Aug. 18 quotes Coburn himself going all J’Accuse! on Stevens.

As of yesterday, PorkBusters’ Secret Hold page counted Stevens, Thomas Carper, Mel Martinez, Mike Crapo, Judd Gregg, Orrin Hatch, Robert Bennett and Jay Rockefeller, down from about 40 senators earlier in the week. If nothing else, this list may well comprise the senators with the most Internet-illiterate staffs.

Until now, the PorkBusters campaign has mostly sailed under the MSM radar screen, even during its previous high watermarks, killing the bridge to nowhere and helping derail Roy Blunt’s try for the majority leader position. Some of the attention is undoubtedly owed to the left-oriented TPM Muckraker for having just now joined the effort to unmask the holder, and for good or ill, the liberal blogs usually get more media play.

It’s a curious bipartisanship, and not just because TPMm’s Paul Kiel got PorkBusters co-founder NZ Bear’s name (handle, actually) wrong in one post [update: since corrected]. For one thing, this is the sort of thing TPM Muckraker and site overseer Josh Marshall do all the time — the right-blogosphere doesn’t pursue investigations quite so often (the most successful have been one-shots like the exposure of fraudulent Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj). Nor is it too closely coordinated, considering the differing opinions of who’s in and who’s out: As of just last night, Republican-leaning PorkBusters had given a pass to Robert Byrd, whereas Democratic-leaning TPMm had not.

While conservatives might bristle at the notion that they need liberals’ support to grow the PorkBusters effort, the theme of openness is a natural fit with the Democratic netroots’ disillusionment with the Beltway elite. Daily Kos front-pager SusanG wrote about this a couple weeks ago, but only linked PorkBusters in an update, apparently unaware of its existence until then.

TPMm has given the project a shot in the arm, but it remains to be seen if the partnership will persist after this pursuit has concluded. There’s really no reason why the PorkBusters effort shouldn’t be more bipartisan. It’s true that pork has historically been a libertarian/conservative concern (this largely explains the lopsided participation) but in an era where progressives have learned to stake out a fiscal position to the right of Republicans whenever possible, more should be climbing aboard.

Indeed, the campaign is not especially partisan in nature, but fundamentally anti-insider in nature. If the PorkBusters bloggers can keep its momentum going in the next several months, with conservative blogs challenging Republicans and liberal blogs going after Democrats, it will reinforce the presumed anti-incumbent tenor of the midterm elections.

P.S. Traffic-wise, porkbusters.org has been supported almost exclusively by co-founder Glenn Reynolds. To be fair, the real campaign lives not on its home site, but on those of its participatory bloggers, again primarily Instapundit, but also Hugh Hewitt, and now TPM Muckraker. The site’s main page is essentially an RSS aggregator reposting just about anything mentioning PorkBusters about the campaign (including those who are not so happy about having their articles republished).

Update: Well, that didn’t take very long: Sen. Stevens’ office has admitted the hold was theirs. On the other hand, wouldn’t it behoove the Palm Beach Post to mention that the “much speculation” occurred in the blogosphere? Especially considering the Post reported this on their blog? That duty is left to Stevens spokesperson, who also utters these famous last words:

Going to the blogs and the media with these concerns is not the way we have ever operated.

Update 2: TPMm confirms Robert Byrd in fact also placed a hold on the bill, has now released it, and his spokesperson has succeeded in not saying something the blogs would take badly.

So the left-right coalition can count this as win, like the Kos-Krempasky testimony before the FEC last year: a rare cross-ideology collaboration (and at least in these few cases, when they team up, they do win). And now, on to the questions about what happens next. TPMm again, asks an intriguing question: Are Even Porkbusting Projects Full of Pork?

The McCain/Mele Melee II: The Republican Underground & Nicco

Published by William Beutler on August 29, 2006 in Blog Consultants, Campaigns, Defections, John McCain and White House '08. 3 Comments

Yesterday Blog P.I. surveyed the leftosphere’s reaction to former Dean web guru Nicco Mele’s defection to the John McCain camp, taking exception to some bloggers’ condemnations of Mele’s firm, EchoDitto. In this post I survey the rightosphere’s reaction to the same, taking exception this time to Mele’s disclosure w/r/t his firm, EchoDitto. And away we go:

Actually, the news registered only a blip on conservative blogs, where McCain has never been a favorite and the association with Mele is unlikely to change anyone’s mind either way.

But the situation has caused one small headache for the McCain camp: NRO’s Jim Geraghty is sure that Craig Goldman, executive dir. of McCain’s Straight Talk America PAC, had deceived him about the extent of Mele’s involvement in a conversation predating the Hotline’s scoop:

Even a “no comment” or “I can’t talk about this because no decision on that has been made yet,” would have been fairer. Instead, I’m told that Mele is “offering free advice” when in fact it’s the other way around, that according to the Hotline account, McCain’s people “recruited” Mele. … I’ll let others remark about the irony of this coming from an organization with “Straight Talk” in its name.

Responding, McCain blog consultant Patrick Hynes argues there’s nothing wrong with what Goldman reported, and certainly compared to what Geraghty reported about Hynes’ own disclosure issues, he’s right.

Goldman told Geraghty that Mele has not been paid, and nobody has disputed the claim. Geraghty seems upset that Goldman didn’t inform him that Mele had been around for months, but the distinction between Mele offering and Goldman recruiting strikes me as inconsequential. “Offering advice” is a stock phrase in Washington and says nothing about who approached whom. And as far as I can tell, he never led Geraghty to believe their association was necessarily a recent one. Unless there’s more to it, Hynes is correct: There’s no there there.

But there is another aspect of the McCain/Mele cooperation that strikes me as troublesome: The current McCain/Mele relationship stretches back to last fall, yet Mele didn’t step aside until called out by Hotline just this week. So in the past year since they first hooked up, Mele has been doing paid work for Democrats in his primary job while doing unpaid work for a Republican in his free time. This is highly problematic for EchoDitto, but it doesn’t reflect all that well on the McCain camp, either.

Yesterday I contacted both Mele and interim EchoDitto CEO Harish Rao to determine precisely when the firm became aware of Mele’s after hours freelancing, but still today, I haven’t heard back from either, and assume that I won’t.

But if the first sentence from Rao’s post on the 25th is any indication, then we already know:

Nicco’s recent post about his support for Senator John McCain has caused quite a lot of ruckus.

In the last post, I argued that EchoDitto could survive if they cut all ties with Mele, and I still think that is possible. But if the firm’s clients believe their projects have been compromised by having a secret McCain adviser overseeing said projects, well, this aspect of the Dean campaign legacy will probably be forfeited.

And for a supposed frontrunner, it sounds like McCain’s highest-profile blogger allies are a little reticent about the association being known.

The McCain/Mele Melee I: Embargoed Until Kos Gets Around To It

Published by William Beutler on August 28, 2006 in Blog Consultants, Campaigns, Daily Kos, Defections, John McCain and White House '08. 2 Comments

Last Wednesday at Hotline’s On Call blog, Marc Ambinder and Shira Toeplitz dropped a bombshell on the Democratic netroots the likes unseen since Jerome Armstrong was revealed a stock tout in a past life: Nicco Mele, the web strategist second only to Joe Trippi in credit received for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run, has been informally advising 2008 presidential candidate John McCain. Not to get too pedantic, but Dean is an anti-war Democrat and McCain is a pro-war Republican. Mele’s McCain affinity seems largely based on his efforts, however symbolic, to get money out of politics.

After Dean, Mele went on to found the Democratic-oriented website building firm EchoDitto, which has built a solid reputation for itself. This revelation, however, is causing trouble not just for consultant Mele himself but for his consulting firm as well. And as we’ll get to below, some snap judgments about the announcement have yet to be revised.

Soon after the news broke, and while the leftosphere was scrambling to react, Mele confirmed at his own sporadically-updated blog:

While I currently don’t know what role I’d like to have in 2008, if Sen. McCain runs I hope to be helpful. This is a personal decision for me based on my own first-hand experience. I like Sen. McCain - I think he should be president!

Make no mistake about it — this is conduct unbecoming of a progressive blogger. In one comment section at Daily Kos, he got nicked “Anakin Mele,” and despite emphatic statements that he is not on the McCain payroll, more than a few assumed he’d been bought off.

But among bloggers who know Mele personally, fellow Dean alum Rick Klau stood up for him and identified as a concerned friend:

To those who’ve suggested he’s abandoned his principles to support John McCain, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Misguided? Maybe. A sell-out? No way.

Anonyblogger Vermonter noted in an entry cross-posted on more than one lefty blog that the original Deaniacs weren’t always motivated by partisanship:

One of the things that most people wouldn’t know is that quite a few of the main Dean web people were not at all sharply partisan about Dean and would often say favorable things about his opponents. And had very nuanced opinions about a number of topics. Meaning, well, they were very reasonable, non-dogmatic people. But, McCain, Nicco? Really?

Vermont NPR commentator Philip Baruth saw it as the “latest sign of the netroots migrating” rightward, conflating the episode with former Kerry hand Peter Daou going to work for Hillary Clinton — hardly a move of the same order, especially as Hillary has begun inching away from the Lieberman/Bush position on Iraq.

Most consequentially, however, lead Kossack Markos Moulitsas revealed in his take nothing we didn’t know already, namely that he can’t be friends with people whose political beliefs he doesn’t share:

I used to consider Nicco Mele, a top former Dean webhand, a friend until his rabid desire for regulating the blogosphere led me to write him off.

And he didn’t call for anything he hasn’t called for before, namely Mele’s exile from the left, which MoveOn’s Zack Exley proposed (in another dKos diary) in a considerably more thoughtful manner:

McCain has a credible chance of convincing large numbers of uninformed liberals that he is compatible with a progressive agenda. What he’s got going for him is his association with campaign finance reform, and a personal demeanor full of cultural liberal signifiers. … If he can swing a handful of defections of high-profile progressives, then he’s got a real chance of adding the phrase “McCain Democrats” to the lexicon in ‘08. … Democratic consultants and figureheads need to know that going off to work for McCain means losing their place in the rising Democratic tide.

It’s certainly an appropriate strategy; in national politics, you can switch allegiances exactly once, and as Mele is finding out, even that comes at a price. Of course, if McCain wins the presidency, McCain Democrats won’t be wanting for work. And even if McCain loses, there are worse fates than taking on corporate accounts.

But Kos went further, giving the impression that EchoDitto itself had a material connection to the campaign, because the “expertise and intelligence he is gathering from the following clients can and will end up as part of the McCain arsenal in 2008.” No one can argue with this excerpt, but it implies no organizational responsibility on the part of EchoDitto. The firm’s initial public statement was inadequate, but nevertheless made clear it would have no part in a Republican campaign.

If EchoDitto had remained silent, he might’ve had a point. But I’m still waiting for Kos and a host of others to acknowledge that one evening later EchoDitto New York dir. Harish Rao announced that Mele was stepping aside as CEO:

Nicco’s recent post about his support for Senator John McCain has caused quite a lot of ruckus. We at EchoDitto disagree with his decision. While Nicco does not work for Senator McCain, his support for a possible McCain candidacy runs contrary to many of our core beliefs at EchoDitto. … Everyone in this world has to follow their own heart. Nicco has agreed to, effective immediately, take a leave of absence from our company. We hope he takes some time to re-consider his position. I am assuming Nicco’s responsibilities for the duration of his leave of absence.

Somehow, I expect Rao will be losing the modifier from his “interim CEO” title before long.

Yet the Kos-imposed embargo remains in place. And so does the one from Steve Gilliard. More suprisingly — at least based on my own impression — so does the one from DavidNYC at Swing State Project, and he’d even allowed that the perfect solution would be for McCain Mele to go.

All of which provides an interesting coda to the offensive ally renouncement wars (we really need a better name for that phenomenon) earlier this summer. It is surely too much to ask that bloggers distance themselves from every awful thing said by someone on their own side. But is it really too much to ask that they unrenounce after the key circumstances have changed? As renunciation warrior Glenn Greenwald once memorably asked, when does the “self-correcting” blogosphere start to self-correct?

Update: DavidNYC follows up, and asks some good questions that didn’t occur to me:

I recognize that political consulting isn’t bound by the same rules of professional responsibility, though perhaps it ought to be. So does this leave of absence satisfy me? I can’t say that it does, in part because we haven’t been told what it means. Does Nicco still have access to firm resources? To client information? Is he still drawing a salary or otherwise receiving money from the firm? If Nicco straight-out left the firm, these questions wouldn’t exist. But even if EchoDitto answered them, I’d still be unsatisfied. How long will this leave last? Until Nicco changes his mind and admits his grave mistake? Until the end of the presidential election? Hell, what if - heaven forbid - McCain wins? Do we give Nicco a four-year or eight-year extension? And what if Nicco does come back - and then says he wants to support another Republican? What do we do then?

In an email to me this afternoon, DavidNYC pointed out that considering the degree of controversy, EchoDitto should have contacted its critics to alert them to Nicco’s leave of absence, something it apparently has not done. And as I said earlier, I don’t think Mele’s time with EchoDitto has long to go; they’ve revised their position once already, and I’d bet another is coming. If they don’t do this within another week or two, however, I think their critics would be correct.

Updated again: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Don’t miss the follow-up post, The Republican Underground & Nicco, which points out that either Mele alone or EchoDitto concomitantly concealed his moonlighting from their clients.

Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With This One?

Published by Olly Ruff on August 24, 2006 in Campaigns, Daily Kos, Lamont v. Lieberman, National Politics and RNC. 3 Comments

Unintended amusement abounds at this GOP press release, which is either an attempt to damage the Lamont CT SEN campaign by linking it to Daily Kos or vice versa. To a devotee of attack journalism and smear campaigns, it’s a rather unsatisfying document; we carry no brief for Kos here, but when the slings and arrows are this poor — or this poor — it’s hard not to remark upon it.

After a puzzling focus on the fact that Markos Moulitsas apparently went on holiday this summer and has recently returned, the release warms up by collecting a few of Kos’ pricklier comments — the infamous “Screw ‘em,” etc — and chides him for calling Joe Lieberman a “sore loser.” If you recall the “Sore Loserman” meme from 2000, they’re not really on very firm ground here.

As is typical of the form, the sourcing varies from overzealous to non-existent: the Las Vegas Review-Journal is invoked to establish that there might just be some kind of a connection between the blog “Daily Kos” and the convention “Yearly Kos” — or, possibly, to establish the unthinkably controversial statement that dKos is “left-leaning” — whereas the statement

MOULITSAS’ NEW JOB: CO-CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
just sort of hangs there in space. At best, we get deft mischaracterization, whereby
“I know it’s not the most popular thing to say, but the French are right. You don’t win wars against terrorism on the battlefield.”
is summarized as:
Moulitsas On Fighting Terrorism: “The French Are Right.”
and the fun game — good for any high-traffic site of any political affiliation — in which the site’s proprietor is criticized for the ridiculous or offensive statements of their commenters or diarists. The rest of the time we’re left with their amusingly obstinate refusal to say “Democratic Party,” the assertion that two thirds of the “Democrat” leadership “fled to” Yearly Kos, and the off-message allegation that dKos is an “out-of-the-mainstream blog,” which is less defensible even than it is comprehensible. As far as the leftosphere is concerned, dKos built the mainstream — and that’s exactly the criticism the RNC would presumably wish to wield against blogs of the left.

Of course, the point is not that the RNC shouldn’t be trying to drum up bad publicity about Kos and his blog. The point is that they really should be doing a much, much better job than this. What’s more, if they really are intending this as the first shot in an ongoing campaign (see “Lieberman v. Lamont” halfway down the page, see also here) then it’s especially alarming. One assumes their next salvo will include an informative paragraph explaining what “web log” means.

Revisiting The YouTube Election

Published by William Beutler on August 20, 2006 in Blogging Officials, Campaigns, George Allen, Lamont v. Lieberman, MSM and YouTube. 1 Comment

I was a bit grumpy when Slate’s John Dickerson covered the rising prominence of YouTube in political campaigns as if he was the first person to think of it, but now that it’s Ryan Lizza’s turn to remark upon same for the New York Times, I think it’s time to accept that it’s conventional wisdom already (fast, maybe even faster than YouTube’s own meteoric rise). After all, the Times is nothing if not a lagging indicator.

Lizza doesn’t add a whole lot to the discussion, though he does wring his hands in a manner of which previous commentators have declined:

Some political analysts say that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. “It will favor a kind of authenticity and directness and honesty that is frankly going to be good,” said Carter Eskew, a media consultant who worked for Senator Lieberman’s primary campaign. “People will say what they really think rather than what they think people want to hear.” But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever. Matthew Dowd, a longtime strategist for President Bush who is now a partner in a social networking Internet venture, Hot Soup, looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the death of spontaneity.

I don’t know the answer to this question; my fallback response is: Some of both. More interesting, I think, is why the two consultants split on the question. Some might guess that Democrats are quicker to embrace new campaign techniques whereas Republicans are slower to deem them necessary, and there may be some truth to that. The GOP had no GOTV strategy to speak of until 2002, although they’ve more than caught up since.

But I think it has less to do with party ideology than recent party (or factional) fortunes, and you’re more likely to embrace (and talk up) a new technology if you need it to deliver for you. In 2004, Dowd helped fend off an unprecedented new media assault on President Bush, so he’s got all the more reason to downplay its positive effects. But there’s also iconoclasts like John McCain, who face uphill battles inside the Republican party, and as of late has been courting conservative online activists to that end.

What interesting things Lizza does have to say about YouTube’s impact is arguably just as true about mere text-based blogging:

These days journalists are concerned not just about being cut out, but about being part of the show. Reporters often suffer the wrath of bloggers in the same way politicians do. At a recent conference of political bloggers in Las Vegas, reporters more than once reminded one another to be discreet in their conversations because anything overheard was fair game for bloggers to post. Now, as the campaign trail turns into a 24-hour live set, members of the press corps may find themselves starring on YouTube. “At least one big-time journalist will have their career or life ruined because some element of their behavior that was heretofore private will be exposed publicly,” predicted a senior adviser to a potential 2008 presidential candidate.

If you think YouTube is necessary for that, well, tell that to Dan Rather.

And Lizza’s “to be sure” section is particularly weak:

Then again, YouTube’s impact on politics may be exaggerated. For one, the site’s users are generally young and not highly engaged politically. “Most social networking sites cater to younger audiences, 18 to 24,” says Michael Bassik, vice president of Internet advertising at MSHC Partners, which advises candidates on media strategies. “For the most part, it’s not political conversations taking place there.” And maybe the Allen video wasn’t all that shocking after all. Jeff Jarvis, author of the BuzzMachine blog and an Internet consultant to The New York Times Company, doesn’t think all that much has changed. “Is it news that politicians say stupid things?” he asks. “Of course not.”

As for the former point, arguing that just because political videos don’t draw the same traffic as, say, that especially compelling video where a young woman took one picture of herself each day for three years is a straw man if I’ve ever seen one (and I suspect Lizza has quoted Bassik out of context). All such a video has to do is be “out there,” and YouTube undoubtedly accomplishes that.

As for the latter, well, tell that to Senator Allen.

P.S. Ohio’s Psychobilly Democrat makes a similar argument to that of my penultimate paragraph, noting: “The networked natured of blogs, that one links to another’s content, makes the blunders more accessible to more people across greater ranges of space.” To which I would add, it’s more evidence that all politics is national.

Hakuna Macaca, What A Wonderful Phrase…

Published by William Beutler on August 16, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM, Campaigns, Earned Media, George Allen and Midterms '06. 5 Comments

The George Allen “Macaca” controversy continues to reverberate around the blogosphere, but as yet I haven’t seen anybody focus on the Virginia bloggers — the ones who will actually be voting to retain or boot him from office, and who first pushed the story into the national media’s consciousness. So I have.

Not all of the Virginia bloggers offered intelligent commentary, but that was certainly no impediment to being included in Blog P.I.’s latest round-up. This is a long, long, long post — and it’s all below the jump. Follow me:

Continue reading ‘Hakuna Macaca, What A Wonderful Phrase…’

Today, Blog P.I.; Tomorrow, Slate

Published by William Beutler on August 15, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM, Campaigns, Earned Media, Lamont v. Lieberman and YouTube. 1 Comment

On Monday afternoon John Dickerson covered the extensive use of YouTube by anti-Lieberman bloggers, territory that Blog P.I. happened to cover over a week ago.

This illustrates a problem for writers in the era of the web: It’s incredibly difficult to be the first person to write about something. The sheer number of worthwhile blogs out there also reduces the chances that whomever really was first gets any credit for it at all. And I am absolutely not referring to myself: In fact, more than a week before I wrote about the YouTube-ing ways of the so-called Lamontsters, a non-partisan Conn. blog had already discussed the phenomenon.

And you know who else beat us, this time by only a matter of hours? One of Dickerson’s own colleagues, who didn’t get a hat tip from him, either.

Update: Rolling Stone, somehow completely oblivious of the Lamont-Lieberman primary, is declaring the Va. Senate general election “The First YouTube Election,” on account of Sen. George Allen’s YouTelevised “Macaca” gaffe (about which more later).