Found this great post over at MyDD about the inherent weakness of the conservative "blogosphere", which is something I've been thinking and writing about lately. I went off on a rant a few weeks ago on Newsvine about all of the thinks I was sick of with conservatives, and then asked any conservatives readers to make their own list.
I thought at worst it would be amusing, though it might provide some valuable insight into what conservative voters didn't like about the way things are done in this country, something that would help us adjust our campaign messages and strategies to shore up conservative support and fulfill the commitment of elected politicians to serve the people, not serve only the people in their own party.
Not surprisingly, not one of them took the opportunity, but it got me thinking, how often did do you see conservatives reach out in any given community and tussle around? I know on Newsvine in particular, it's very common for liberals to show up in the comments of articles written by conservatives to keep them honest, but you basically never see the opposite.
I suppose it's just a fundamental difference between the two groups of personalities, where liberals to a degree are simply more interested in affecting change in the world for the better while conservatives are mostly content to sit still and cry about it louder than most everyone else.
That theme seems to match up with what Chris Bowers wrote yesterday, and I suppose there's nothing of real value there, but it's still interesting.
Moving from theory into practice, the Googlebomb campaign took place in the final weeks of the 2006 elections, and resulted in successful a search engine optimization project targeting 52 of the closest House and Senate races in the country. Over the final two weeks of the 2006 election, the Googlebomb campaign allowed negative information on the local Republican candidate--all from trusted local news sources--to reach 700,000 voters inside each relevant district (or, about 5% of the electorate in those districts). The total cost of the campaign was a piddling $350.
Predictably, the right-wing blogosphere freaked out when we did this, and the hate mail poured through my indox. However, it was a perfect example of what I predicted would happen sixteen months earlier. The greater size of the left-wing blogosphere, its far more pronounced bent toward direct activism, its independent, bottom-up communities, and its superior internal communication networks made a project like the Googlebomb campaign an incredible success. Utilizing Scoop platforms and private emails lists for volunteer recruitment and article research (click here to see how it all happened), progressive bloggers around the country were able to put the plan into motion in just three days. Then our vast size simply took over, once again with a huge assist from community building tools like personal signatures on Dailykos. By way of contrast, lacking both widespread implementation of effective community blogging software and a readership heavily engaged in direct online activism, there was no conceivable means for the smaller conservative blogosphere to match our efforts. As such, their counter Googlebomb was, in the vernacular of search engine optimization, a miserable failure (and a rip-off to boot).
Sorry for the large blockquote, but there's still plenty to read over there. I just wanted to point out that what I noted a few weeks ago is endemic of the GOP as a whole, where they simply are not interested in doing the grunt work to get what they want out of politics. If you take away the significant money advantage and the tendency to be sensationalistic little hate mongers, they'd probably have no national party either.
I keep hearing about this vaunted GOP technology machine that is decades ahead of what Democrats have but perhaps the reason for that disparity is the money involved, not really it's necessity or our lack of trying. And what has that machine gotten them recently other than a blow out in 2006?
You can argue, and I think I would argue, that the losses that Democrats were racking up before '06 were due more to the state of the country and the pervasive unfounded fear of terrorism and a casual complacency amongst Democrats with eight good years under Clinton than they ever did better organizational skills and activism interests.
Chris Bowers thinks the Democratic campaigns are blurring their messages intentionally to avoid having to answer tough questions, or at least I think that's the gist of it.
I dug up this quote as a way to expand upon Matt's question from Saturday, where he asked why Clinton seemed to be gaining support within the progressive blogosphere and open left. Matt's instincts are the same as mine, that "all the campaigns are blurring their messaging," and so "if everyone is pretending to be the standard wordprocessor, why not just choose Microsoft Office?" Blurring is very much a problem other candidates are facing right now, and the Mark Penn quote shows that blurring is actually a key component of Clinton's strategy.
Hillary of all people should be losing ground instead of gaining it with progressives, since she steadfastly refuses to admit her vote for the war was wrong. There is precious little integrity in Washington and most of it starts with the inability to admit errors in judgement.
Part of that is the media having turned from news broadcasters into 24/7 entertainment channels, and there just isn't enough news to fill the air 24 hours a day. So they find a nugget and blow it up until it's roughly the size of Ralph Nader's ego, and then play it until people can't stand it anymore.
Politicians aren't afraid of the people (they should be) they are afraid of the media, so they've morphed from honest people who make mistakes to jerks who can't ever admit being wrong.
Let's be absolutely clear: this country got to where it is today because people ran on the GOP side that weren't shaped by this culture, but were born to it and thrive in it. Bush has probably never taken responsibility for anything in his entire life, so this who deal is second nature.
We don't need more of those people, we need less. Hillary strikes me as someone who doesn't want to be that, but is exactly that anyway.
Democrats have the advantage and all they can do between now and 2008 is blow it themselves. Let's not hand this one away by playing typical beltway games with the truth and reality.
*
Funny how people like taking shots at John Edwards for being wealthy, but not any of the other millionaire candidates (virtually all of them on both sides)
The Politico's Ben Smith is obsessed with John Edwards' hair cut. Maybe Edwards isn't the one you should worry about, Ann.
AmericanThinker writes a cheap hit piece of Edwards using his 2004 campaign staff to create the Center for Promise & Opportunity, the exact same thing Gov. Howard Dean did after his failed presidential bid when he created Democracy for America. Leave it to wingnuts to try to paint creating a center to fight poverty as a bad thing.
Take a look at John Edwards' education policy plan. There are some things more important that war, you know?
Edwards is doing a webcast tomorrow (23rd) to talk about U.S. foreign policy.
I commend the Senator for his plans to protest the illegal Iraq war on Memorial Day, and unlike others, I could think of nothing more apropos. What better way to remember service members of past who have given their lives to protection this nation than to demand we bring home todays service members who are stuck in an unwinnable foreign civil war?
First of all, national polling this far out doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. Forget the embarrassing moments on TV that can take a campaign that was dominating everything in sight to a bow out in about 24 hours, we're simply talking about how sentiment can change over the course of god knows how many moneys until the first primaries.
Still, if any polls out there matter, it's still (like it or not) Iowa and New Hampshire. Other states (tons) have moved their primary dates up (good) but these states still get the first crack. A win in any other early states can take a national candidate running third to the front in a hurry, and can likewise destroy a front runner that has a poor early showing.
So where is John Edwards in Iowa's most recent poll? Leading the pack of course. He's also a regular winner of the DKos straw polls as well, which means he's got staying power with both early voters in IA and NH, and the netroots base.
Presidential candidate John Edwards leads rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a new Des Moines Register poll of Iowans likely to take part in the Democratic caucuses.
The Iowa Poll shows Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina, is the first choice of 29 percent of those who say they definitely or probably will attend the January caucuses, which kick off the nominating process for the nation.
Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, edges out Clinton for second place in the poll — 23 percent to 21 percent.
Former Governor Mitt Romney is leading the Republican field by an ever larger margin, 30% to second place Senator John McCain's 18%. Poor Ron Paul, probably the best guy in the entire field all around doesn't even register.
It'll be interesting to see how long Edwards can keep his lead, since I'm pretty sure he's had it ever since he announced his candidacy. He spent a lot of time in Iowa after the 2004 loss building this thing, it's no surprise it's paying dividends already.
