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Ask an Expert About Online Political Campaigning
Posted by
Roblimo
on Mon Dec 10, 2007 12:48 PM
from the Riding-the-Internet-into-the-White-House dept.
from the Riding-the-Internet-into-the-White-House dept.
Garrett M. Graff is an editor at Washingtonian Magazine, was the first blogger to get into a White House press briefing, and recently wrote a book called The First Campaign, in which he talks about how "...the emergence of the Web as a political tool has shaken up the campaign process, leaving front-runners vulnerable right up until Election Day." Besides all that, Garrett was Howard Dean's first webmaster and is a regular Slashdot reader. Here's a recent Washington Post article by Garrett about how shudderingly little our current elected officials know about the Internet, along with the transcript of a Post Chat on the same topic (noted here so that you don't ask the same questions by mistake). Usual Slashdot interview rules apply, of course. Ask away!
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Political Expert Garrett M. Graff Answers Your Questions 123 comments
Garrett M. Graff agreed to be a Slashdot interview victim... err... guest not just because he's promoting his book, The First Campaign, but because he's a long-time Slashdot reader. In fact, an inside source tells us he called his girlfriend to boast about this soon after we set up the interview -- and that she was no more impressed than most wives or girlfriends would be. But he gave us some fine answers to your questions anyway, and we hope he can grab a little time to jump into the discussion about his answers (hint, hint) with a follow-up or two.
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I'ma blogger! (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, you call someone up and say you have this Livejournal which somewhere between 1 and a million people read, and cross your fingers?
How important is the Internet in all this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How important is the Internet in all this? (Score:5, Informative)
The only failure of his campaign is the negative reporting done by mainstream news agencies - depicting him as a fringe candidate, associating him with morally-questionable supporters, treating him as though he's not a Congressman elected for ten! terms as a Republican, but rather some whacky Libertarian who holds no Republican views.
His campaign is doing exceptionally well, considering the bias these news organizations seem to have against him. And his support base is continuing to grow exponentially.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
The only failure of his campaign is the negative reporting done by mainstream news agencies - depicting him as a fringe candidate,
That and his poll numbers of likely primary voters are really low, perhaps it's gaining some, but he's still far from being competitive [pollingreport.com].
is campaign is doing exceptionally well, considering the bias these news organizations seem to have against him
If you consider that the hate of the televised media arm for the Republican party (Fox "News" Channel), not as a media problem, but as a Republican leadership issue, it's likely you would understand the issue a little better. Yes, I know that many Republicans have been trained from birth to blame the media for problems, but one should understand that media only regurgit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
one cannot gain power in the RNC or the DNC by bucking the leadership, ever....Fixed that for you.
No, you didn't. For example, Howard Dean might not have won the party nomination, and was regarded as a maverick during his campaign, but he did gain a lot of power and is now the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Ronald Reagan once said [ronaldreagan.com]:
The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It's a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.
Of course he was talking of personal attacks, such as those mounted by Rove and company against John McCain in the 2000 campaign, not the 'pretend we are perfect and punish those who disagree' mantra which has destroyed the Republican party these last doze
People are voting with their wallets. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Crowds aren't votes. Neither are poll numbers. And signs don't vote either. Of course he will need to GOTV when the time comes. If you look at the Meetup groups and how they are being used, that's what their primary function is - to GOTV. I'm from MA, and the group here sends people up to NH ever weekend to canvass.
He's ahead of Fred Thompson in N
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How is having more cash than most of the other Republican candidates "floundering"?
Re:How important is the Internet in all this? (Score:5, Interesting)
The pro-war Republicans keep rising to the top only to cut each other down. If they end up dividing the pro-war vote equally, Paul has an enormous chance of winning.
Analysts believe he could come in at least 3rd in Iowa and NH.
It's going to be exciting. We'll see. It's easy to be skeptical, but he definitely has enough money to stay in the game all the way to the convention (which is more than the other candidates can say).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If he makes a strong showing, it would signal to the Republicans that a change in national strategy is necessary to prevent further fracture.
Republicans are already stealing some of his rhetoric. Example: Giuliani's talk on abortion, Huckabee's talk on eliminating the IRS, etc.
But from where I sit, Ron Paul and his supporters look more like Ross Perot and his supporters. A large enough bloc to throw the election away from the main alternative candidate (Romney) and toss the balance to a sure National loser (Guiliani).
Republicans like to complain about Ross Perot, but he stole just as much from the Democrats as he did the Republicans. It's these "fringe" candidates that get the apathetic and disaffected voters out. And you know what? If Republicans feel like this is a real threat, they should vote for Ron Paul since he actually has a chance of beating Democrats. All of the other
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPpCvF7N3Vg [youtube.com]
Straw polls also tell a different story
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/straw-poll-results/ [ronpaul2008.com]
And then you might want ask yourself it the officials (as well as the Main Stream Media/Corporate Controlled Media) have ulterior motives to censor Ron Paul:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiM10StfyBA [youtube.com]
And what about CNN on the NAFTA / NAU superhighway that se
Difficulties of Info Control (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Difficulties of Info Control (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
The Effect on the Party System (Score:5, Interesting)
Learning and using (Score:3, Interesting)
1 - From your vantage point, do you believe that more use of the Internet in political campaigns will slowly cause the skill and knowledge about using the Internet to be more widespread in legislative circles? Will politicians knowledge of the Internet be more skilled than their knowledge of mainstream media: something to be used and abused for political ends?
2 - Do you see the candidates treatment of the Internet changing? Do you believe that they will continue to create bad laws, and laws that are not aligned with the best interests of the Internet as a whole, and US Internet users in specific.
Unity08 (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you determine if you have the votes, and your candidate isn't mostly hype without the vote potential (Dean in '04 and Paul in '08)? How do you turn it into real votes?
Hi, first time caller (Score:2)
Avoiding the FEC and long-term implications (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a fan of the Ron Paul Blimp beyond my support of that candidate's message, because I hate the FEC with a passion. While I think that this particular organization will skate past the FEC for the current election, I wonder what sort of future regulations and restrictions the FEC will find to cover these outlays of cash by "sponsors/advertisers" who are obviously plugging a campaign through a loophole.
If you consider one aspect of online advertising and promotion: the fact that websites don't die and tend to stay around as long as the domain name is paid for and the web hosting costs are covered, I wonder if the FEC will pass new regulations to try to cover any sort of advertising for a candidate as a process within the FEC's domain of control.
If that is the case, it could have very negative consequences. Someone who promotes a candidate today, before any new regulations, may find themselves breaking a future rule because the site they created will still exist. Imagine making a website, or a blimp, or even a banner ad, promoting a candidate in 2007, only to see new FEC regulations pop up in 2008 that make that advertisement regulated and therefor illegal after the regulation. Because the website still exists, and because the candidate may run again in a future election, it will put an undue burden on people who may have to go back, edit a blog, remove a forum post, or find all the places their banner ad or product has been promoted through.
The gist of my question can be read as follows: Do you feel that it is time for the FEC to expand its reach of regulatory powers to the privately-funded advertising and promotional market?
How can we help? (Score:5, Interesting)
Politics and First Amendment Issues Online (Score:3, Interesting)
Campaign Fundraising (Score:3, Interesting)
I am curious about the economic aspects of conducting a campaign. The conventional wisdom is that you need to raise millions of dollars so you can fly around in jets, stay in hotels, fund TV ads, and generally spread the word about your candidacy so as many people as possible get your message.
With the internet, there are many free avenues of spreading your message through websites and other services. Is it feasible to use Google services such as YouTube and Blogger to conduct a campaign? It seems that no Presidential candidate could succeed from internet ads alone, but would such a feat be manageable on the congressional level? What are some good and bad examples of candidates who have conducted internet campaigns to reduce costs of campaigning?
Only reaching the converted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you concur that new media is almost exclusively reaching the converted? Thus the "web 2.0" applications that are going to have the big impact are the web based CRMs rather than blogger and youtube?