Do you have a cite on the 65% don't watch broadcast TV?

The consultants in DC don't support the same candidates that we do.  Time and time again they won't work with us because we are on different sides.  

I live in MD and know plenty of inside the beltway types who were anti-Dean.

I can't get them to give Mfume the time of day.  Its like Dean all over again.

Agreed that the blogs have changed campaigning.

So. What's the next campaign? Make Hillary run as a Democrat in her primary?

Jerome,

Take a clue... Political Parties are top down political organizations.  They behave like all pyraminds do.

What is happening is that with the internet the people are chattering to each other and some brave sole decides to front for some issues and get enough people support that they demand entry into the party structure.  Gate crashers?

The party may take note at the vote potential of this new mode of getting people to participate.  But the top down pyramid always comesumes itself so the marriage of the new paradigm with the old is not likely to be a happy marriage.

Once inside the gate you MUST buy into many of the "myths of america" and cannot question MOST of the BS which props up our "democracy"... I mean corporatocracy.

There will always be compromising and pandering to  get more (enough) votes and you WILL have to lie down with people who have some very unaccaptable beliefs (think Herseth).  So what DO you get in the end?  Hardly a progressive movement.

Agreed. I actually coined a "law" about this are a result of some debate with Bob Brigham. Baker's Law of political blogging: the closer one gets to election day, the less effect blogs have on the outcome. This was sparked by what I saw during the special with the election day war room and last minute hype, all of which had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election. Blogs are most powerful in the quiet days when the initial storm is brewing. The fact that this is when your traffic is lowest makes it totally contrary to how internet people think.

I am totally amazed that the Beltway crew hasn't looked at the after effects of the Hackett special and been all over targetted blogging. Instead, they kind shrugged and got blindsided again with the Lamont campaign. Right now the landscape is still wide open, which is really exciting to me (and why I've started focusing on building tools.)

One thing that I'd like to add to the discussion is that local blogging is most effective if it's not just about one specific race. A local blog becomes the commons of knowledge for the district long after the politicial de jour has left and moved on with their lives. The fact that a blog can hammer away at issues over and over and build up that wealth of knowledge against an incumbant gives a real leg up for the next challenger. By saving multimedia it's possible to use that information against them the next time around.

I half joked to someone on the Hackett campaign that for less than a million dollars I could take over Congress. He laughed and asked me how. My answer:

Congress is incredibly unpopular yet Congress members get reelected by astounding numbers. The reason is that they are all but ignored by the media. Since people don't have any information about what their representatives are doing they don't equate what they see around them with the politicians they elect. Blogging can change that dramatically.

Create news syndication feeds of specific information about Republican Congressmen that is designed to be used by local bloggers. Bloggers are currently dependant upon what content is available in the main stream media and what they create themselves. The MSM all but ignores Congress so there's little to work with, and few have access to the premium beltway content designed for lobbyists and insiders. By making it as easy as possible for them to cover what their congressmen are doing it you assure that they will blog on the race and from a perspective that you create because you are creating the original content (ala Fox News).

Hire regional blogging reporters / nerds who's job it is to create fresh local content on hot spots and be evangelists for people being their own media. By creating this content you automatically for the media to give more attention to the stories since you are now creating competition to them.

With the right amount of hustle one could completely change the information landscape when it comes to Congress.

Hi,

Reading this article took me back to 2000. I worked as Internet Director for Maria Cantwell in a race that was won by about 2000 votes (the other recount of 2000). Stephen Clift asked me to write up my top ten lessons learned. I just dug them out and found them to be interesting/amusing in light of current events.

From December, 2000:

Top ten lessons I learned while campaigning online

1. The web will bring a new level of credibility to campaigning.

    In the past, the standards for a well-documented piece of political advertising were surprisingly weak. Example: "My opponent voted to allow school children to shoot each other with semi-automatic weapons at recess." Source CQ #167, 1982.
    Virtually nobody follows these kinds of citations to see what they actually say (and the citations often fly by on the TV screen in mouse type). 99% of voters don't even know how to verify such claims if they wanted to. But of course, merely placing an apparently authentic citation in an ad gives it credibility. Every voter thinks that someone is checking up on it and they would hear on the news if it was bogus. As it turns out, almost nobody is following up on these citations and even when they are somewhat suspect, it's not considered newsworthy because it happens all the time. If there's a grain of truth, it passes without comment.
    As webmaster for a Senate candidate, I had no problem providing a much higher level of citation when I wanted to get facts across. I developed the standard that a fact wasn't worth presenting unless it could be backed up by one or more of the following links: 1) a link to the Congressional record at thomas.loc.gov (or state-level equivalent), 2) a link to a major and credible news organization such as NBC, CNN, NY Times, etc., or 3) a link to materials publicly authorized by the opposing candidate or their party.

2. Digital voting is closer than we think.

    I actually learned this after the election. While I have always believed that digital voting is clearly in our future, I assumed it would take another three or four presidential election cycles to really happen. The fiasco in Florida has made it clear that we need to update the process immediately.
    I believe digital voting should proceed in two phases 1. Digital onsite voting, 2. Networked voting.
    There are relatively few risks with onsite digital voting. Only the machines need to be replaced. The digital record can be supported by regular printouts and in the case of a recount, failure or other disruption, officials could easily revert to the old way and do a hand recount of the paper record.
    It will take improvements in digital security to make networked digital voting viable, but these are coming. As soon as people are used to voting on computer terminals, the step to online voting will seem less risky.

3. Many-to-many communication is a tricky proposition.

    Coming into the election we were very excited about our wide-open listserv. It was moderated, but the standard for publishing messages was very open: no mean-spirited messages, no repetitive messages, and no off-topic messages. We allowed and published highly negative messages about our candidate and we were able to respond positively with information refuting the negativity...all of which was fine and as we expected.
    What we didn't really anticipate was that the quality of a truly open forum can be very low. Towards the end of the campaign, a number of really sub-standard messages came through and threatened to degrade the relevance of the forum altogether. This phenomenon spiked immediately after the election when we were barraged with bizarre and very poorly thought-out messages (no doubt as a consequence of increased publicity). The list happened to be in limbo at this point because our election took three weeks to call. This flood of weirdness forced me to quietly shut down the list and say a prayer of thanks that this situation hadn't developed earlier in the campaign when I would have been obligated to distribute these messages.
    I still believe strongly in the open forum concept...this has the potential to be the most valuable improvement the Internet can bring to politics. I just haven't figured out exactly how to moderate a high-visibility open forum. Every message withheld will be viewed as a case of censorship, yet publishing every message received will result in an unacceptable signal-to-noise ratio.
    My best guess is that the answer is to create numerous forums dedicated to special topics (taxation, transportation, campaign finance reform, etc). This will reduce the amount of chaff on each list and provide a more tightly defined standard for what is on-topic.

4. Televised political advertising as we know it will die, and campaign finance reform is a natural consequence
    This is a corollary of point number one above. People will slowly over the course of the next decade come to see the dishonest political attack ad as an outdated sham. People will come to expect a much higher level of authenticity in political communication.
    Taking the place of TV as the dominant medium influencing elections will be third-party political sites, online news organizations, official government resources, party sites and candidate sites (in that order). The web will probably merge with TV-style content to become much more media rich.
    Right now, huge sums of money are required to broadcast messages because the channels of communication are limited, creating a case of near monopoly. (In Washington state, I estimate that 90% of the TV dollars in politics are spent with six television stations in two metropolitan areas--which are owned by 4 media conglomerates). This means that the money spent is largely dedicated to funding expensive broadcast operations and paying near-monopoly rents. In a web-based mediascape, campaigning will still be expensive, but it will be much more labor intensive than capital intensive. It will take dedicated volunteers to create and promote an Internet campaign, and not truckloads of cash.
    This will bring us much closer to the ideal: "Of the people, for the people, by the people."

5. We still haven't had an "Internet Election"

    Just in case it isn't obvious, we are still waiting for the election where the Internet is a major force. We are still in a novelty phase with respect to the Internet. I'll be the first to admit that our candidate won primarly because she had the resources to buy massive TV time.
    (Of course I should offer a clarification on that last statement She was an outstanding candidate, and this comment is not intended to suggest TV alone got her elected. She was by far the best-qualified candidate running. However, she could never have withstood the barrage of old-style negative TV advertising if she hadn't been equipped to fire back with the heavy artillery. The Internet certainly helped, but it could not have played a lead role in deflected the assault that came at us over the airwaves.)

6. How to tell when the Internet revolution is here

    I suspect that the Internet will continue to be viewed primarily as a fundraising tool in the near future. And it's very well-suited to this purpose. But consider the irony of using an extremely inexpensive and flexible communications medium primarily to raise money to fund the use of an extremely expensive and highly limited communications medium. The Internet revolution will be here when fund-raising falls behind the following activities in relevance: providing detailed candidate information, volunteer recruitment, discussion forums, GOTV, supporter networking, and truth-squading.

7. A skeleton Internet crew requires three people

    The bare minimum staffing for an effective Internet operation would be as follows
    Internet Director. This person manages the Internet team, plans budgets, plans messaging, plans promotion, communicates with the press on Internet and technology issues, handles security and other technical problems, hires outside contractors and consultants, and co-ordinates the Internet program within the campaign. The Internet director should be a member of the campaign's steering committee and/or war team.
    Designer/HTML. This person is responsible for managing the web site content and also for the quality of all digital communications. This may include videotaping the candidate in the field, making digital images and other press materials available to the press, creating banner ads to promote the site, etc. This individual might also take on responsibilities for all communication materials generated by the campaign, but the Internet responsibilities will be full-time in the final weeks of the campaign.
    Writer/Researcher. This person is responsible for developing written content for the site, moderating any Internet forums that the campaign may be hosting, all e-mail communications, verifying claims by the candidate and by the candidate's opponents, and keeping the site fresh and relevant. This person might also have additional responsibilities within the campaign, but will be engaged full time in the final weeks.
    (IT management should be a separate operation altogether...)

8. The last two weeks before an election are as important as the rest of the campaign
    Traffic on a political site spikes significantly in the days before a primary or general election. In our case, traffic on the day before both elections was approximately 8 times higher than it was 14 days prior. If you don't have your act together in the last two weeks, your Internet effort can be largely wasted.
    For the time being, the Internet is most useful for tilting thoughtful undecided voters--and these are the people who show up in the last two weeks. Avoid strident messages, avoid preaching to the choir. Focus on providing complete and accurate information designed to help independent or middle-of-the-road undecided voters reach the right decision.

9. Be ready to truth squad online
    This lesson may or may not be universal, but in our case we were the target of an astonishing blast of false and highly negative TV advertising. We improvised our Internet response rather successfully, but in retrospect, the best bit of advice I could have received in advance was to be better prepared for it.
    Here is how to be prepared: Have the equipment, staff and procedures in place to digitize attack ads the instant they appear. This includes digital screen shots and written transcripts. (Streaming media versions are optional.) While preparing the traditional press release setting the record straight, there should be a corresponding web page under development. Whoever prepares the rebuttal should also be collecting web links for supporting citations (this is a higher standard that usually found in press releases).
    Be ready to create a high profile "rebuttal zone" on the web site. We called ours "Attacks vs. Facts" and put a link at the top of the home page. Promote this feature whenever practical, so that voters know where to go for the truth the instant they spot a negative ad.
    Use e-mail as a two-way street. Encourage supporters to alert the campaign to negative advertising the instant they see it. And communicate the facts to supporters so that they can spread the truth.
    This proved to be a very labor-intensive process and eclipsed virtually all other Internet activity in the final weeks of our campaign.

10. There is a whole new universe of dirty tricks waiting to be exploited

    There are a couple of ways to look at Internet dirty tricks...either as an opportunity or as a threat.
    First, there are ethical "dirty tricks." For example, supporters of our opponent created two attack sites and promoted them in television ads. For some reason, neither site had a .com address. (One was a .net and one was a .org.) From my experience working on the Internet, I know that half of the people instructed to go to a .org site will type in the .com address. Same with .net. Incredibly, they had failed to register the .com versions of their web addresses. We grabbed these domain names immediately and put up our own web pages, which tastefully deflected the accusations made by our opponents. The result: half of the people who saw the attack ads ended up visiting sites that we controlled. This was a very satisfying (and highly ethical) form of "dirty trick".
    Second, there are numerous opportunities for malevolent and highly unethical dirty tricks. For example, both the DNC and the RNC sites were cracked in the final days of this election cycle. Although we weren't cracked, our web logs indicate that it was not for lack of trying. Nobody is invulnerable, but we had great partners--our ISP and our security consultants worked together very effectively to prevent known means of attack--and we were able to get through without incident. (One vulnerability that we were not aware of was actually pointed out to us by a group of friendly hackers...)
    Bottom line: if you are running a high-profile Internet campaign, you MUST have access to high level Internet expertise. This will accomplish two things: it will reduce your exposure to malicious attacks and it will get you into the game as far as ethical web pranks are concerned.

John Beezer
beezer@nwlink.com

But they can't watch 2 TV channels at the same time. That's all I was saying.

Poll results -> Positive media -> Donations -> Poll results -> Positive media -> Donations -> etc.

The Netroots fit into all three of these categories, which makes it very worthwhile for candidates to embrace.

Getting people to participate in their government is no small task.  Few here vote, fewer write letters or call their congres critters.

The net thing has given some a feeling that they ARE participating and it may inspire some to get off their asses and do something.  But we have a long way to go to reach enough people for the electoral process to represent the people.

I'm 16, and I'd like to increase my knowledge of campaign infrastructure incase I ever volunteer for a local candidate. I know a bit of stuff - more than the average 16-year-old for sure, but I'd like to expand my knowledge some; particularly on targetting.

Would some of the experienced people who have posted in this thread such as Steve Olson or Texas Nate please help explain it to me?

(By the way, just reading this diary and the comments within has helped a lot.)

Challenging Queen Bee would generate more interest and money from reform minded people.