Howard Dean lost because he didn’t have a weblog.1
Hmmm, that’s an interesting, if unrealistic, concept. From Dave Winer:
In fact what happened is that in a virtual sense, the Internet was looking for a candidate, and Howard Dean fit the bill. He was bloggable. He was interesting. And get this, he was interesting if you were for the war, as well as if you were against it.
The man is interesting, like him or not, and that’s a rarity in US politics where candidates are as exciting as toothpaste or underarm deodorant, because that’s exactly how they want us to view them, as products, not people. Enter Howard Dean, person. Bloggable to the nth degree. But did Howard Dean know what a blog was? No. Does he know what one is today? No! Did he ever have a blog? He didn’t. (I don’t mean to ask, as some people misunderstand, did he write his own weblog. I mean did his campaign have a weblog.)
I’m sure the bloggers he hired to run his weblog will be surprised to hear they don’t exist. The body’s not even cold yet and the blogging’s biggest cheerleader is deflecting blame from blogs.
1 – In addition to the vast fourth estate conspiracy.
Was this guy being sarcastic? One would hope…
No, Dave actually thinks this. But realize that Winer lives in the world of software designers. It’s a world where a solution can be found. No matter what the problem is (software bug, losing in the polls) science/tech can find a solution. This ignores the real yet fuzzy world we live in where winning campaigns is more art than science. Chalk up this thinking (Dave’s not the only culprit) to the decline of liberal education.