Online right: Solving problems versus getting headlines

August 6, 2007 – 12:59 pm

Ultimately, politics comes done to winning two kinds of votes: elections and legislative votes. So when I see discussions about comparing the right and the left online, especially the current flavor du jour about a right’s YearlyKos, I want to make sure that a question is asked: what is it for? How are those structures going to effect winning votes?

Along a similar line, Patrick Ruffini argues a that the press focuses on the wrong questions:

When covering the netroots vs. the rightroots, reporters look at things through a particular frame that by definition excludes the vast majority of grassroots activity on the right. For something to be newsworthy in this space, it must be blog-based, it must have emerged in the last five years, and it must be focused on elections over legislative or policy outcomes.

There is an intuition that something is wrong. Patrick is right when he says that we have a real risk:

It would be one thing if we didn’t have any of these institutions, and could start from scratch just as the netroots did. My fear is that we have a bunch of institutions that still function somewhat well, but are long past their prime. With that, there is the danger we will slowly die without knowing it, as our techniques gradually lose effectiveness year after year. Just like newspaper circulation numbers. And there are a number of people on the right who are still complacent about this.

But what would actually solve the problems? And what are the problems? I see a couple:

  1. Our blogs are focused on pundity rather than politics. Punditry is important for eyeballs in interest, but they do not, necessarily, have a big impact on elections. (they probably do more on legislative votes at the federal level by moving information) This is a cultural thing, not an operational thing.
  2. We don’t have enough blogs with substantial local and state focus. Perhaps the best local political blog around is Gilford Grok in NH, and they are spinning off in NH. This will require finding bodies.
  3. As Patrick notes, we have eyeballs, but they are trapped in the wrong places (in the sense that they are not convertible to the activities that we think are important. (Perhaps the Ron Paul guys are like this too?) I don’t know if we have any ideas about how to address this.
  4. We don’t have tools to easily convert our grassroots energy. (such as it is, given my previous point) There are various approaches to working this out.
  5. We don’t have good information about the state of the races for focusing the attention of the media and activists. That is, there is information generated at one place, but needs to be consumed in another.
  6. Our state and local candidates and county parties, CR school chapter, and YR and Women county chapters may not have the know-how to do online credit card fulfillment. Clearly federal candidates do.

I am sure that there are other problems that are more specific (and I know of some that are still confidential) but we can start building these. Some of these are about building tools. Some of these are about finding bodies and educating. Some of these are about simply reorganizing currently existing information.

Let’s start solving the problems we have.

Tags: ,

By eye | Comments (0)

Romney, Paul, and the road to Ames

August 2, 2007 – 9:41 am

So Mitt Romney has won a number of straw polls by packing them. Reporters get the joke and have stopped covering them, but the Romney campaign knows that it can put these victories on mail pieces and ads. Normally, the question is whether the damage that occurs over the bad press is worth the result. For example, I only saw bad press, not Romney’s actual victory at the Young Republican straw poll.

Now Ames presents a difference. It will be covered by the press. Simply put it matters. But there’s something else different about Ames. Normally, you rig a straw poll by packing it with known supporters. But Ames is big enough that you probably can’t ID enough supporters, so the Romney campaign has been reduced to sending out mailers offering a free ride and a free registration to Ames. There are several problems with this.

First, the mailer gets posted on the internet. In other words, you get caught.

Second, the Ron Paul supporters may sign up for a ride on the Romney bus. Other campaigns will almost certainly place plants on the bus just to see what happens. Here’s what one Ron Paul supporter says:

Some say that then, after carefully weighing their options…..they may decide to vote Ron Paul at the Ames Straw Poll!

If interested, you could call Mitt for the free package at 866.505.2008 (details on flier below).

Now, it is not honest. But it is politics, which is rarely honest, and it wouldn’t be surprising.

And if Paul supporters had a conversion on the road to Ames, can Romney, who had a conversion on the road to Des Moines, really object?

Such are the dangers of the internet. This could be an interesting test of Ron Paul’s online army.

Tags: , , , ,

By eye | Comments (4)

YouTube debate splits elites and base. That’s good

July 27, 2007 – 9:56 am

Now, I was not a big fan of the CNN/YouTube debate. I largely agree with the criticism that CNN used their editorial ability to pick questions that they couldn’t ask as reporters. That said, I was struck by something this morning. Somehow this seemingly trivial debate managed to get Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to talk about a real difference of policy and philosophy, instead of a stylistic one: whether Presidents should talk to bad countries. This real policy question has been debated for a full week now between Hillary and Obama, making the front page of the Post.

Not only the front page of the Post, but two opinions today. And yesterday two candidates from the other party, John McCain and Mitt Romney, have even gotten in to the discussion.

I think this is a real philosophical debate about foreign policy that cuts to a real fracture in the Democratic Party between (responsible) foreign policy elites and one  part of the liberal faction of the party base. And it took real people to ask this question. Why? Probably because the press is part of the same elite opinion formation apparatus as everyone else. (incidentally, that’s why they didn’t ask questions about Iraq. Very few serious people were asking questions about Iraq, so the press didn’t either)

In hindsight, it appears that the debate teased out a real difference between the elites of the Democratic Party and the base. That’s exactly what this debate should have done. This gimmicky debate has resulted in the first real large-scale policy clash of the 2008 cycle. Something that 8(?) media sponsored debates couldn’t really achieve.

Just imagine what kinds of exciting questions could be asked in the GOP debate.

Is it any surprise that the people who are running essentially against party elites like John McCain and Ron Paul are interested and Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney aren’t? Is it any surprise that the self-identified arbiter of conservative elite opinion, Hugh Hewitt, is opposed?

I think that means I have changed my mind on this. Let the debate go on! I guess that I am with Patrick Ruffini on this.

Tags: , , , , , ,

By eye | Comments (4)

Who said conservatives can’t organize on facebook?

July 3, 2007 – 10:42 pm

Errr. Conservatives, as in the Conservative Party of Canada:

H/T to my friend Stephen, north of the border.

Tag:

By eye | Comments (0)

More on the Obama voter issue

June 25, 2007 – 5:56 pm

Remember all that blabber about Barack Obama getting so much Facebook support? Recall Patrick Ruffini’s recent discussions about who Obama’s voters are? He said this:

See, Barack Obama has mobilized people, even if he hasn’t mobilized the netroots. He’s brought in students, African Americans, and apparently, young females. These are groups that are relatively apolitical. That’s why when you loosen the likely voter screen just a little, Obama does a lot better.

In that context, I thought this from Mashable was interesting:

Danah Boyd, a social scientist engaged in ethnographic research, has published a piece on her findings regarding the socioeconomic effects we’ve seen play out on MySpace and Facebook. According to Boyd, those with more education tend to be on Facebook while those in the margins of nearly every aspect of our culture can be found on MySpace.

So, I went over to TechPresident and checked how Obama was comparing to others:

Funny. Obama does better than Clinton among the educated rich kids… Who would have thunk?

Tags: , ,

By eye | Comments (3)

Romney campaign official calls Brownback “bottom feeder”

June 15, 2007 – 5:10 pm

UPDATE: GOPProgress and Jim Geraghty have now written on this.

Earlier in the week, Mitt Romney released his National Faith and Values Steering Committee. In doing so, he entered a brave new world. Four of the people on the list are bloggers:

- David French, Senior Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund, Tennessee 
- Nancy French, Author, Red State of Mind, Tennessee 
- Justin Hart, Vice President of Communications, Lighted Candle Society
…
- Jason Bonham, Illinois State Director, Legacy Law Foundation, Illinois 

Nancy and David French write at Evangelicals for Mitt. And Justin and Jason founded and write for My Man Mitt. Now, my question is: will the campaign be held accountable for what these bloggers say? After all, they are now deputized by the campaign itself as spokesmen on "Faith and Values."

Well, Jason Bonham really classed it up today. He called Sam Brownback a "bottom feeding candidate" and posted a picture of a bottom feeding fish. If Jason were a campaign staffer, he would be fired.

So how will the Romney campaign respond? This isn’t quote Amanda Marcotte material. But this is pretty offensive. Presumably, if the Romney campaign has any decency, Jason will be removed and disavowed form the campaign.

Of course, these bloggers have said other deeply offensive things. Let’s see how the Romney experiment goes.

In any case, if this is the kind of "Faith and Values" that the Romney campaign has, I say, "no thanks."

Tags: , , ,

By eye | Comments (14)

Pressing the flesh versus enhancing contact with technology

June 7, 2007 – 4:20 pm

Justin Hart of MyManMitt makes an argument for why Fred Thompson is going nowhere if he uses the internet. This is, of course, correct, as far as he takes it… which isn’t very far. His position is a straw man.

First, Thompson could do what Mitt Romney is doing, which I have reviewed very positively. It is an axiom of politics that candidate-to-voter contact moves votes like nothing else. Romney is using technology to enhance that.

Second, Thompson will probably use technology to communicate regularly with his base. He is collecting a lot of information, as I noticed. Thompson has demonstrated that he can produce content on a pretty steady basis that some group of activists will consume. Imagine delivering issue content to his base once or twice a week, as he has been doing at ABC and NRO. That would be new. And, of course, they would hope people would forward it around.

Third, another axiom of politics is that voter-to-voter contact is very effective. It is clear from early results on the website that the Thompson online campaign team intends to emphasize voter-to-voter contact. Even the most obvious implementation collects that information. And it probably appends it to a voter list, so you have demographics and any other stuff you have about the volutneers, voters, etc.

Now, it is clear that in Iowa and New Hampshire, and to a lesser extent South Carolina, pressing the flesh is important. But you can’t press every piece of flesh. And you can have virtual contact in-between press-fleshing.  And that’s what the game is.

What Justin’s post probably tells us is that the Romney campaign intends to push the "Fred is lazy" meme. It also tells us that they are a little worried that they might be facing an innovative campaign. They could lose all their lame process stories to a more clever campaign…

Tags: ,

By eye | Comments (4)

Fred’s collecting different information

June 6, 2007 – 9:48 am

So, I went to sign in to Fred Thompson’s new website so see what was going on. And I was struck by this:

They want my cell phone provider. With my phone number and my provider, they can send me free, for them, text messages. And they asked for my IM username. They want to talk to me. The Thompson campaign is the first campaign to ask me for that information. They can send me targeted messages.

That is very cool. And very, very important. This is the first glimpse of how they will use technology differently.

Tags: ,

By eye | Comments (3)

Romney’s tele-townhall’s and moving numbers

June 5, 2007 – 3:31 pm

Marc Ambinder has an interesting post about Romney’s performance in Iowa. He argues that voter contact is what is moving the numbers. I have made a similar argument in the past. InMuscatine recently participated in one of the tele-townhalls in which Romney answers questions for about a while. After talking to some people in Iowa recently, I was struck by this part of his post:

Thanks to all who joined the call.

Press 1 to help out at the straw poll. Romney’s son will visit all 99 Iowa counties this Summer. Have a good evening.

My understanding is that they also ask this at the beginning of the call. This is a phenomenal way to build lists, introduce voters to the candidates, etc.

There are discussions about Fred Thompson running a campaign with lots of conference calls. I imagine that it would look like this. You actually wonder why other candidates aren’t doing things like this.

Tags: , ,

By eye | Comments (1)

Campaigns versus movements 2

May 29, 2007 – 11:38 pm

Patrick Ruffini wrote an interesting post about, what he called, different modes of activism. I thought that he was arguing that the online left was unfocused, and that it was hard to convert to GOTV, which was where the rubber really meets the road. I responded and argued that there was a real disconnect on the left between the "movement," which the netroots are pushing, and the party, which is much more static.

Patrick responded that this criticism was too campaign-focused was a little unfair:

Actually, I don’t. My objective in the original post was to lay out a framework in which winning campaigns could build and sustain a movement beyond Election Day. Campaigns should be cumulative. We don’t have time to relearn all the lessons from cycle to cycle, nor to reactivate our volunteers.

And, indeed, he is right that these are great ideas. His story about the President demanding a strategy that "leaves something behind" is a little inspiring. And I was in Ohio for a couple of weeks. A nuclear bomb was dropped on the Ohio GOP, and it faced minimal legislative losses and even picked up a seat on the state high court. There is no question that BC04 left "something behind" there.

But the party also did something else. It centralized an enormous amount of information. I don’t know what all I know is covered by some sort of confidentiality agreement, but there were a lot of data-appends from a lot of sources. And that applies to voter lists, volunteer lists, etc.  In some sense, the party is capable of mobilizing the current coalition without going to the groups.

It seems that Patrick and I agree that this coalition, the "movement", and the party is probably not enough. And the question for us is going to be where we go:

Even then, the question is what does a new conservative movement look like? We’ve been running on low taxes, social conservatism, strong defense for thirty years. Are there new issues to rally around? Usually, movements arise because of needs unmet by the establishment. Right now, that’s immigration and spending (though on the latter, the leadership pays lip service to the cause).

As recent readers will notice, I don’t think that immigration is going to be the issue that gets us to a majority. The real point that Patrick makes is:

So, the movement will probably have to be outside the current campaigns.

And that’s really the point. And that’s what the netroots have been doing. They weren’t happy with the party or the campaigns. And so they started to rejigger the coalition. They didn’t need the party’s permission to kick its butt.

The original point that I tried to make is that there is a fundamental difference that "we" have been pursuing and what they are. They are rebuilding their coalition. In some sense, I think it is easier for them because the main component of their coalition that they are adding and activating is middle and upper-middle class "liberals", as opposed to the parts of the coalition that are interest group related. These people have been entering the Democratic coalition for a while. The netroots have been consolidating them.  In 2004, we consolidated the coalition. The problem is that now, that consolidation may be for naught.

If there is no consensus on where the party goes, then this will probably be decided by a series of experiments involving primaries, national elections, and evolving coalitions in Congress. One upshot of the Goldwater/Reagan model was that the party agreed where to go from there. That’s what Reagan running in 1968, 1976, and 1980 did.

The question for us is going to be what constituencies or ideas we can add, in a coherent way. And we need to figure out who we have been bleeding and why. There are several ideas floating. One is anti-immigration, which is both wrong and small ball. One is David Brooks’ recent musings. One is Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s "Sam’s Club Republicans". The Bush answer is that we expand the current coalition beyond its white base. It is becoming entirely clear that some nostalgic returning to Reagan will not do it. That is why the Fred Thompson candidacy is both soothing and ultimately losing. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have other answers. Another answer is Mitt Romney’s, which would resemble the Thompson/Reagan strategy with a new image on health care. It is hard to know who he would add, except at the margins. No ideas, just image.

Returning to the question of comparing the use of technology on the right and the left, we may have to offer tools to make building this new coalition easier. But, again, this is a secondary question to actually having a coalition. Alternatively, we might just need to make the existing coalition more effective, while the political problem is resolved.

Tags: ,

By eye | Comments (2)