Edwards Campaign Hires Joe Trippi
Friday, April 20, 2007 -    reddit
Joe Trippi was the campaign manager for Governor Howard Dean, and was pretty much responsible for being the first in turning the Internet into a fund raising machine. Unfortunately, he also has the distinction of being blamed for Dean's poor showing in New Hampshire and Iowa for not spending enough money and other resources on the ground game. Either way I don't think it matters what it comes to fund raising because everyone is sucking the 'net dry these days.
According to the Times, Trippi is coming out of retirement because he believes there is too much at stake to fail now.
Mr. Trippi has worked in presidential politics nearly every four years since his first campaign in 1980, when he was an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. But his rise to prominence, particularly among Democratic loyalists in the blogosphere, came during the Dean campaign, where he developed something of a cult following.
For Mr. Edwards, Mr. Trippi will be an adviser on media strategy and the Internet.
By integrating social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.com with traditional political campaigns, he said, the Web is shaping the 2008 race in far greater ways than it did four years ago.
Well, that's debatable. Having 1,000,000 friends on MySpace (50% of them are spammers, 25% are girls, the rest are guys pretending to be girls) doesn't mean anything unless you are converting them into voters first, and campaign volunteers second.
If that's all Trippi does, then I'm sure he'll be a great help the campaign. However, if there was a lesson to be learned from 2004 above all else, it's that the established practice of say nothing at all rather than the wrong thing is not something people want to get from their leaders. I suppose you could say that for nearly every race, but maybe this time they are finally getting a clue.
The Hotline has some quotes from the team on Trippi's arrival.
Other posts from this blog: 2008 Elections, Campaign News
Like this post? Subscribe to RSS, or get daily e-mails.
Got something to say? . Got a question or info? Send it to me. If all else fails, you can return to the home page.
|
