Blog P.I.

Much as the rightosphere disdains Markos Moulitsas, conservative bloggers do pay attention to what he says. But if they leap on him when he’s in the wrong, they can also give him credit when he gets something right. If you know the scene, you’ve probably already seen this from dKos last week:

Videotape everything they do All it takes is one “Macaca” incident to transform a race or create one where one didn’t exist. … And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It’s about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events. … The more material we amass today, the better we’ll able to use that video to support our efforts next year.

Little Green Footballs, among the few blogs from either side to warrant its own adversarial watchdog site, considered it perhaps better advice than he knew:

Excellent advice. To which I would add, don’t forget to take screenshots of everything the Kos Kidz do.

Dean Barnett — Hugh Hewitt’s right-hand man — was more complimentary and, in a trend that would be repeated, took it seriously enough to build on the idea:

First of all, to give credit where it’s due, this is an excellent idea. Because I’m not really the call-to-action type, I’ll leave it to some other enterprising right wing pundit to market a similar effort for conservative activists. We really should get busy on this because Democrats are at least as tongue-tied and prone to blunders as Republicans. Need I remind you, John Kerry is up for re-election in ’08. His race alone should keep a half-dozen Republican digital camcorders busy.

Matt Margolis from GOP Bloggers (and the late Blogs for Bush) found the strategy wanting, a distraction from the ideas that win campaigns:

I’m sorry. I just don’t agree. We should be above the sick game of gotcha politics. If there’s anything we should have learned from 1994 is that Americans respond to an agenda, and Republicans shouldn’t need to sink down to Kos’s level. I’d much rather see Republicans win on ideas than see Democrats lose because of some video showing an unflattering moment they’d sooner forget.

Perhaps noble, but in a follow-up post, Barnett took the realist position:

Politics ain’t beanbag; I would prefer our candidates and operatives knew as much.

And the good work of building on the idea continued. From the non-aligned John Stoddard:

Calling for an accumulation of “gotcha” moments is a strategy about nothing, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld. It’s not about persuading or inspiring voters. It merely reminds them that we are governed by two-faced narcissistic jerks. That’s why negative campaigning’s most notable effect is to suppress voter turnout. It doesn’t make voters say, ”Aha! Now I prefer X over Y.” It makes them say, “I was going to vote for Y, but now, ew.” Kos is right. If you turn off more Republicans than Democrats, you’ve improved your chances of winning. But no matter how much video you capture, you can’t depend on coming out ahead in the gotcha race. It only works if the other side lets its guard down and lets you off the hook when you make your own blunders. In the YouTube era, that’s basically an assumption that your opponents will commit professional suicide. Good luck with that.

More good advice from the Larry Sabato of GOP online consultants, David All:

The bottom line is that any serious campaign effort - from City Council to POTUS - should have a two camera strategy — one on the opponent and one on their own guy to help add context to a “macaca” moment and “flood the zone” to deflate organic YouTube search results.

And some unavoidable longer term questions from Bivings Group’s leading voice, Todd Zeigler:

So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments. It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.

Kos may not much impress ideo-journalistic Washington, but when he talks campaign strategy politico-journalistic Washington listens.