Time looks at partisan politics and the Internet in Blue Truth, Red Truth (Available via Time Canada):
But some Kerry advisers think he has missed an opportunity to rally voters to his cause using the Net. “I don’t think this campaign really understands the new technology,” says one. “Yes, they raised money with it, but they don’t see it as an organizational tool.” The reason, he says, is that the team still steers by the stars of the New York Times and the TV networks. Senior adviser Mike McCurry reads the Daily Kos and a few other blogs, but most Kerry aides don’t and instead rely on one staff member to provide an overnight summary. The Internet is not their medium. “It’s not where they live. It’s not how they talk to each other,” says the adviser. “The Kerry camp hasn’t moved. It’s where campaigns were 20 years ago. They are going to do it the way they did it in ’88 for Michael Dukakis. They are going to do it on TV, but broadcast television is damned near irrelevant for the rest of the cycle. Things move too fast now.”
Last month I was on a political panel at JournalCon DC and I made the assertion to a mostly liberal audience that the Kerry campaign took only the money raising portion of the Howard Dean legacy, and that they did away with the rest. I got lots of head nods that day and it looks like Time magazine agrees.
More on the article at from Allah.
…and it could be that the people that are smart enough to use the internet are smart enough NOT to be fooled by the Kerry campaign.
SSSSHHHHHH
“The Internet is not their medium.”
Are they saying that Algore should have been the cadidate?
I think after the latest Rathergate, along with some of the blogosphere’s gems like elevating awareness of the genocide in Sudan, refusing the submersion of the Trent Lott statement, several political strategist should be paying attention. And who says the good ones aren’t.
I guarantee Karl Rove was taking a lot of notes on Joe Trippi and Dean’s run in Internet political strategy. Afterall, you don’t have be directly in the medium to use it effectively.
Not to go to “Conspiracy Theory” on the audience here, but what if… Maybe just as the Conservative attack was on fire against Kerry’s Vietnam War record and Rove was certain of a vicious counterpunch on Bush’s service record. Rove calls up an operative to craft an obvious forgery of a memorandum for record by Bush’s former Commander and supply it to the mainstream media and anticipate the Democrats to grab on early to the softball opportunity to attack. Then, knowing the effectiveness of this new technology called the blog, let them do the rest to question, research, and discredit the story and the popular liberal media.
Maybe there is not only lessons in communication, organization, and activism, but also strategy to be learned with this new technology.
Kevin, Wizbang’s a firecracker of a blog–keep it coming!
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but the evidence is good that Trippi didn’t understand the Internet as a political tool, either. It can’t create votes out of thin air…if it could, Dean would be the Democratic candidate today.