Presidential Announcements v2.0

I had this really long, eloquent post written about how all the candidates are using the web to launch their political campaigns.  I hit the wrong button and the whole thing was lost.  I won’t try to reconstruct the entire thing, but let me try and summarize a couple of the key points.

John Edwards announced his campaign for the Presidency with a web video.  Barack Obama used a web video a few weeks later to do the same.  And now Hillary Clinton, who announced her intention to run for President on Saturday, has used a video on her Website to break the news.  It seems you can’t be a candidate for President - at least not a Democratic candidate - without launching your campaign on the web.  (Memo to Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, who announced their candidacy’s on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows — you might want to check to make sure your announcement registered at all, or consider posting the video of your appearance on YouTube to make sure people take it seriously).

Both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post used Senator Clinton’s announcement to analyze the role that the web will play in the upcoming campaign.  The LA Times offers a brief history of the highs and lows of internet campaigns over the past decade, writing:

The Internet’s power both to make and break politicians has been vividly demonstrated in recent years.

In 2004, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean jumped from political obscurity to grab the front-runner’s position in the initial stages of the Democratic race largely on the strength of the interest and fundraising he generated online.

Last year, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) watched his reelection campaign — and his hopes of emerging as a prime contender for the GOP presidential nomination — go down in flames after a video clip of him addressing a young man of Indian descent as “macaca” made the rounds on the Web.

Barely a factor in campaigning 11 years ago when Clinton’s husband won reelection as president, the Internet has become an integral part of the political landscape, with every major candidate fielding a website and seeking to create a virtual community around his — or her — campaign.

But with the recent advent of YouTube and other video-sharing sites, analysts said the most intriguing aspect of the evolving use of the Web may be as part of an immense game of political “gotcha,” in which campaigns seek to catch opposing candidates off-guard and off-message, as happened to Allen.

By contrast, the Washington Post took more of an editorial stance on what makes for good web video in politics, offering this comparison Clinton, Obama, and Edwards:

Unlike other candidates (coughBarack Obamacough), whose videos might have been produced by a guy with a cellphone camera, Clinton’s announcement was a veritable showpiece of Hollywood-style set design, lighting and cinematography. While Clinton, looking radiant in a red jacket and flattering makeup, affected the demeanor of a kaffe-klatching neighbor while speaking about the Iraq war, energy, Social Security and health care, the camera swung with pen dular subtlety between a background tableaux of framed family pictures and a fabulous table lamp exuding a warm glow. In fact, the background is so eye-catching, so crowded with totemic details, so bursting with semiotic potential, that I missed whole passages of Clinton’s statement the first time around. (And yes, I do want that lamp.)

The effect was one of breathtaking political shrewdness and brilliant staging, like a mash-up between “The West Wing” and Diane Keaton’s latest holiday heartwarmer. And for all its studied spontaneity, its air of having been pre-tested, choreographed, and managed to within a microfiber of Clinton’s mascara, it worked, if only to provide a little eye candy within a grainy sea of canned speeches and awkward iChats. The aesthetic sophistication suited Clinton, who, as a former first lady and a U.S. senator, would look hopelessly out of place in most other contexts (rocking the mom jeans in the Ninth Ward? Uh-uh. Maybe an ornate Senate office, but where’s the zazz in yet another wall of law books?), and the look and the script warmed up a woman portrayed as either an amoral ice queen or control-freaky dragon lady by her political opponents.

Three quick points: First, the novelty of launching a campaign on the web should have worn off a long time ago.  The web is not even close to being the most dynamic vehicle for delivering information anymore, politics has just been slow to embrace what virtually every major consumer brand and entertainment company in the world has been doing for the past five years.  A really nice website, a blog, or even a web video announcement is not enough.  Its time you ran a fully funded, fully supported effort online to promote your campaign - and to engage the audience that chooses to get its information there instead of through traditional news or campaign events (which are still important as well).  Second, announcing your campaign online sets all of our expectations very high that you, as a candidate, will remain committed to using the web.  John Edwards, you have already created behind-the-scenes web videos about yourself, recorded podcast conversations about issues, and similar.  Are you going to keep doing that when you are visiting four states a day - so we can see what really happens to a person when they don’t sleep enough, eat healthy, or have complete control over their message?  Hillary Clinton, you are taking your web efforts to the next level already, inviting the audience to create the first guest blog post to be published on your site and hosting a series of live video chats with the web audience over the coming week.  Are you going to host live web-chats every week, about any topic?  Are you going to take on the large and vocal segment of the online audience who questions your policies, challenges your positions, and even insults you personally — or will your web campaign, like your offline efforts, be so highly managed and controlled that it fails to really engage people?  Finally, the media needs to find a better way to cover and express the value the web plays in this upcoming cycle than how they are currently doing it.  We have all read, time and time again, what a big impact the web is playing and will continue to play in politics.  Its time to assign a full time, daily reporter to cover each campaign’s online efforts.  It is time to hold the campaigns accountable for what they say will be an online, grassroots fueled effort and put the same scrutiny on their web efforts as you do on their fundraising, their television ads, their speeches, and — even in some cases, their clothing.  Just as you have pushed increasing resources into covering traditional news through the online medium, now its time to recognize that the online efforts of a presidential campaign are also news and cover them accordingly.

It should be an exciting couple of years for those of us who live, work, and love the online medium.  I will definitely be watching to see what happens.  I hope the political world realizes the potential that it has to reach and engage the audience before and lives up to its end of the bargain.

Update: I wasn’t totally fair to Bill Richardson.  He has a very nice website (here) and has posted his announcement video to YouTube and other places.  He has a MySpace page, a Facebook profile, etc.  He’s following the new media playbook pretty much to all the way.  We will have to wait and see how that works for him.

The Future of Newspapers

I have been thinking a lot about the future of newspapers lately. 

The topic is not a new one - the various threats to print newspapers have been debated publicly in media and technology circles for several years now (and probably for quite some time out of the public’s view).  Despite numerous articles, conventions, discussions and predictions, I don’t think that much has been decided or even made more clear in that time.  I certainly have more questions than answers.  I don’t think anybody really knows what is going to happen.

A full discussion of the future of newspapers would take up more than one post, and would need to include people with far greater knowledge and perspective on the subject than I have to offer.  That never stops me from offering my opinion though.  And while I will try to organize my thoughts more clearly in the future, and invite friends and colleagues who work in the newspaper business to weigh in, for now I just I wanted to share a couple of recent articles about this debate that I thought were really interesting.

First, The Week magazine, writes about The Decline of the American Newspaper.  The article is a well organized summary of the current state of newspapers - with a little bit of editorial perspective to round things out.  For someone who is new to this debate, or just needs a refresher, the article is organized around seven key questions about the newspaper industry.  The questions include:

1. Why are newspapers in deep trouble? 
2. Where did the readers go? 
3. What’s the problem? 
4. What is the newspaper doing about all this? 
5. Is that strategy succeeding? 
6. So are newspapers going broke? 
7. Can anything be done?

For me, the future of newspapers has to include some localization of content and expertise.  I am an avid newspaper reader and nothing bothers me more than the AP-ification of the world’s information, when all the articles pull from the same sources and not a single bit of additional perspective is added.  Don’t get me wrong, the AP provides a valuable service and I use it regularly to keep track of events happening around the globe.  But I don’t consider that to be the true value that newspapers can provide.  According to The Week, I’m not alone in thinking this:

Publishers are experimenting with generating several versions of the paper to target various market segments, such as young people. Some may start giving away their papers free, relying entirely on advertising revenue. One school of thought is that newspapers should become “hyper-local,” focusing intensely on community news not available on the Web or TV. But most industry experts believe that the era of print newspapers is nearing its end. Newspapers, says media analyst Ken Marlin, “have to either adapt to the new economics, or die.”

Next up is “A modest proposal for reinventing newspapers for the digital age” by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic Monthly.  The article begins with an overview of, EPIC 2014 (now apparently updated to EPIC 2015) an online movie that predicts the future of the media that results from technological innovation (or assimilation as the case may be) and continues through a discussion of the various models that newspapers might try to integrate to become profitable.  Hirschorn settles on this recommendation/thought:

The current Web-publishing model that newspapers are using isn’t likely to become financially viable anytime soon. With few exceptions, the media businesses thriving on the Web either are low-cost blog-like efforts or follow a many-to-many model, in which communities create, share, and consume content. Publishing an article on the Web gets you one click; getting your users to write the article for you gets you a thousand clicks, and costs less to boot. In other words, turning your users into contributors increases their engagement with your site—each click is, after all, also an “ad impression”—while simultaneously generating more content that you in turn can sell to advertisers.

Now we’re talking!

Last on the article list for this post is Michael Wolff’s Billionaires and Broasheets in this month’s Vanity Fair, a look at the recent push by various moguls to buy into the print newspaper business.  Wolff alludes to most of the reasons I can imagine a billionaire would want to buy a newspaper - boredom (as might be the case with Jack Welch who is rumored to be interested in buying the Globe), frustration with the perspectives of the editorial board on an issue that is close to them personally (as is the case with Hank Greenberg, who is rumored to be interested in buying the New York Times), or maybe even ego (as is the case with Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, who are rumored to be interested in the LA Times and who probably think their investment and management savvy might be able to reshape the media biz).  For what its worth, Wolff’s contribution to the debate is summarized at the end of his article as follows:

Of course, the Internet is a bitch. On the other hand, the Internet is an inefficient way for a big man to throw his weight around. A newspaper really is the much more effective bully pulpit.

What’s more, given a host of new papers—The Daily Geffen, The Welch Globe, The Greenberg Times, The Broad Journal, The Burkle Shopper—freed from the deadening template of the people who theoretically know how to run newspapers, maybe the people who know nothing at all about newspapers will stumble onto something that makes them shout and sing (Eli Broad recently offered that it might be a good idea if the L.A. Times had more pictures of donors at charity events … well … maybe).

Anyway, now is not the time to worry about the unknown. The unknown is the only hope. Make the deal.

I don’t know yet what the future of media looks like - I’m working on figuring that out right now.  I don’t believe that the demise of newspapers will come any time soon, and I don’t see that takeover of journalism by faceless and emotionless technology (as is suggested by EPIC) will be realized any sooner.  I know that profitability is the chief concern of any business, and as long as journalism is considered a business (instead of say an art, or a public service) then groups like the New York Times and the Tribune Company will look for ways to monetize their coverage of world events.  My hope is that someone in the middle of this debate will realize that one of, if not the primary value, that newspapers have always offered to the public is editorial perspective and journalistic excellence — a way to help all of us who consume news on a mass scale to understand what is relevant, important, and why.  That seems to have gotten lost in this debate, and in our news industry today as a whole, and needs to return to both.

The Times They Are A Changin’

Monday is the day when the media covers the media.  And yesterday did not disappoint.  What was making news?  Here is just a sampling:

- Time Magazine was delivered to newsstands on Friday and by Monday the industry was in a full fledged twitter.  The magazine is much thinner and puts a heavier emphasis than ever before on hard-core reporting and high-profile authors.  Gone are the days when Time tries to be everything to all people it seems.  As Richard Stengel, the managing editor explained it to readers in a letter that appeared in the latest issue, the new publication date “reflects the way the Internet is affecting pretty much everything about the news business.”  He notes:

The most immediate change is right in front of you. The issue you are holding in your hands — or perhaps you’re reading this online — is the first issue of TIME with our new on-sale day, Friday. In fact, it’s the first copy of TIME magazine to go on sale on Friday in more than 50 years. We’ve moved our publication schedule because the news environment has shifted and because we’ve been listening to you. Over and over, we’ve heard from subscribers that they get the magazine early in the week and then put it aside to read on the weekend. The solution was pretty simple: let’s get you the magazine on the weekend when you want it.

At the same time, I believe that getting the magazine on newsstands on Friday helps us set the news agenda, not just mirror it. The traditional newsmagazine was retrospective, looking back at what happened the previous week. But today’s TIME is much more forward-looking, offering you guidance on what’s essential to know going forward. Many news sources give you information; we provide knowledge and meaning.

You can read more here, here, and here.

- Kit Seelye writes in the New York Times about how Washington Bureaus for major print news organizations are shrinking.  She writes “Faced with declining advertising revenues and competition from the Web, midsize, regional dailies across the country have been retrenching in recent years to focus on local news. That has scaled back their Washington coverage, and their national ambitions.”

- In another story by Kit Seelye, the curtain is pulled back at The Politico, the new hard-core political news organization led by former Washington Post writers Jim VanderHei and John Harris (more recently a contributor to Time) and graced with the talents of columnists like Roger Simon.  According to Seelye, “The Politico is planning its own regular half-hour program on Allbritton’s 24-hour cable news service, Channel 8, which reaches 1.1 million viewers in the region. Its reporters are to appear on CBS News programs. And The Politico is planning a five-minute daily segment in the late afternoon on WTOP, Washington’s all-news radio station.”  Does this signal some kind of major change in political news coverage - or the media industy all together?  The article suggests it might, though it gives the doubters their due as well:

If The Politico succeeds, it could signal that the Web has become a more plausible alternative for mainstream journalists. (Most bloggers offer their Web logs free, and rare is the site that pays reporters to create original content.) But there are skeptics who say that the focus of The Politico is too narrow and that the marketplace too crowded with sources of political news, from sites like RealClearPolitics.com to scores of other publications, including newspapers and their Web sites. Partisans, especially, feast on sites that affirm their views; The Politico says it will be nonpartisan.

What I find most interesting is that this whole discussion about the shift in the media, political or otherwise, is coming the same week that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is taking place out in Las Vegas.  CES is the glitzy, crazy party of the year for gadget junkies as well as the platform that every major technology company in the world uses to launch their new initiatives.  What are people talking about at CES this week?  Based on the coverage I have read, 2007 will be the year of the networked consumer — in other words, it is the year that the industry will finally figure out that different people have different preferences when it comes to getting, sharing, and experiencing information and deliver the technologies and services to satisfy the demand.  Rather than try to force one format on people, technology folks are promoting devices, and services, that do it all.  The consumer will have their choice of content and method of delivery (they always have really), but more importantly, the variety and the quality of the experience will finally begin to rise to meet expectations. 

The changes at Time Magazine and the launch of The Politico reflect a recognition by those in journalism that people don’t get their news one way anymore.  Its not a run and hide strategy that suggests people aren’t interested in the news, or aren’t satisfied with the quality of the content (though that may come in time) - its a evolution of both the delivery method and the content strategy to adapt to changing times.  By contrast, the shrinking of the Washington Bureaus does the opposite - it will further limit the choices that consumers have when it comes to news and will serve only to increase frustration.  As distribution methods become more micro-focused and consumers are able to pick what information they want to receive, when, and how, the media companies that pulled their reporters should be doing the opposite — hiring more, training better, and assigning differently so that more things are covered, more thoughtful insights are provided, and more options exist for people to consume the news they find most interesting or relevant.

Political Ads on iPods?

From Washington Whispers…

The Future of Politics in an iPod
It wasn’t long ago that we told you of how the Democrats and Republicans were preparing a new way to reach voters in 2008 through their mobile technology and iPods. Well, now we know why. Republican pollster David Winston tells us that new research found that 40 percent of 2006 voters ages 18 to 34 own iPods. And many don’t make time to watch lots of tv, choosing instead to TiVo their faves or record podcasts. So what will be the best way to reach those critical voters in 2008? Through their iPods, he says, especially when the mp3s go wireless. “That’s the next environment,” he predicts, “where people will get their information.” His tip to the pols: Make the ads riveting. The best example: losing Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele’s family-focused tv ads, some of which featured a cute Boston terrier.

I think he’s on the right track.  The big question, at least for me, is whether political advertisers will recognize the difference between the message and the medium.  An iPod, like any other piece of technology, is simply a delivery mechanism for content.  People like watching TV, listening to music, and playing games on their handheld devices because they are away from home or don’t have access to other forms of technology where they usually get that stuff.  Will political ads be compelling enough to get people to watch, simply becuase they are available for an iPod or similar?  its not about the content of the ads alone - as he suggests.  Its about the political process as a whole as well.

Old Media Scare Tactic… About New Media

This week’s issue of U.S. News and World Report features a blurb about the future of political communications.  It reads:

Political Ads: From Bad to Worse

Sorry if you hated all those candidate calls at dinnertime during the last two weeks of the midterm elections, but it’s only going to get worse in 2008. Both parties plan to invade your computer with instant messages and pop-up ads, and your cellphone and BlackBerry will get zapped with text advertisements. But there is good news. They plan to cut back on TV advertising because it just isn’t as effective as the Internet.

I don’t disagree with the facts — political campaigns will absolutely adapt to meet the changing communications needs of the audicence.  I do, however, take issue with the presentation.  The tone of this little blurb is a sad example of how old media — the stodgy magazine writer in this case – has to scare traditional political folks into believing that more focused, more personalized communications is somehow bad. Campaigns will not recklessly send text messages or use pop-ups (nobody uses pop-ups anymore!  c’mon!) to reach voters. 

Puhlease. 

Why Candidates Watch What You Buy

AdWeek has an article about micro-targeting - the political strategy of using lifestyle data (magazine subscriptions, shopping habits, etc.) to target and communicate with voters.  I am quoted.

My first quote is about the value of micro-targeting:

“You are now targeting based on behavior,” says Brian Reich, a senior strategic consultant at Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, a Washington public affairs shop that handles lobbying and ballot initiatives. “You understand a lot more about a person based on how they spend their time and money, rather than on how they identify themselves.”

My second quote is about the difference in approach to elections demonstrated by the Republicans and the Democrats:

The Democrats’ data-gathering strategy pales in comparison. Prior to this year, some states lost or discarded voter data between elections, according to the DNC. And unlike Republicans, who handpick candidates early on and develop corresponding campaign messages before the upcoming race, Democrats often find themselves playing catchup— waiting until a candidate gets the party nomination, then figuring out how to sell him or her to the voters.

The disparity between these arrangements is obvious. “If you wait until [a nomination] to tell people you have to mobilize, you have a problem,” argued Reich. The Democrats are now in a scramble—and the stakes are high. Many political observers are predicting that the GOP may lose its lock on both houses of Congress. But for that to happen, the Democrats must win 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

I have never tried hid my frustration with the Democratic Party and its use of technology.  I wrote an article for Personal Democracy after the 2004 cycle about the mistakes I felt the Democrats had made in developing their database for example.  And while the Democrats have made a much larger commitment than many expected over the past two years, I think the Republicans are are still far ahead of the Democrats, and have a more practical approach to the use of technology to support their election activities. 

The Democrats will probably win big next week — take control of the House, maybe the Senate as well.  Still, the Democrats will lose some close seats because the Republican message and turnout machines are using technology in a more focused and efficient way.  They have identified the most important political activities and found ways to use technology to support their efforts - whether its targeting and message delivery, opposition research, Get-Out-The-Vote or similar.  In other words, technology is not the story. 

If the Democrats do win big, the message that more needs to be done will likely be lost… the focus will be on the President’s failures in Iraq or the corrupt practices of the Republican leadership in Congress.  Political experts and the media give credit to liberal bloggers, or the few candidates who found a way to tap MySpace or YouTube with changing the face of politics.  And while there is some truth to that, and they all deserve some credit for pushing this discussion forward, there is more to the conversation.

Democrats continue to invest in technology, and I believe they are closing the gap that exists between them and the Republicans in this area.  But, there is still a fundamental difference in the philsophies of the two parties — and until Democrats position technology as an element of the campaign, and not the story itself, the Republicans will continue to have an advantage.

Candidates Click Into Interactive Tactics

My CEO, Dan Solomon, has an op-ed in today’s Media Daily News.  It begins:

SINCE THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, we have seen a seismic shift in the online world–a transition that took political campaigns and advocacy organizations from a dependence on text-heavy, “static” Web sites and vaulted them into the dynamic world of blogs and vlogs, RSS feeds and news aggregators, social networks, video and photo-sharing, mashups and video e-mail.

Political campaigns, both issue- and candidate-based, are experimenting with the new interactive tools, and trying to figure out how to turn clicks into loyal followers and convert energy into action. Not every technology that is available to candidates is a good fit–and campaigns and other issue-oriented groups traditionally trail the consumer marketing world when it comes to trying new things. But, with the communications landscape changing and audience expectations rising, the need to adapt is clear.

Four of these new technologies seem to hold the greatest promise and deserve a closer look for those wishing to have their message in the mainstream–or even a small rivulet of community thought: social networks, video, mobile and mapping.

Read the whole essay…

Am I an Angry Nerd?

I was quoted in an article in the New York Observer today: Angry Data Nerds Rain on Democratic Parade.  The focus of the story is the battle between the Democrats and Republics around voter files and database technology.  My contribution to the story as follows: 

The perception of Democrats working at odds with each other has left some tech-savvy Democrats shaking their heads.
 
“If we don’t win back Congress, we’re unbelievably dumb,” said Brian Reich, senior strategy consultant with Mindshare Interactive Campaigns and a former briefing director for Vice President Al Gore. “But we are not, in fact, going to be winning back Congress: We are inheriting the results of the Republican Congress’ failure to keep a majority.
 
“The Democrats are only going to take the House by a seat or two,” he continued, “because the Republicans have picked out the critical districts that they need to keep the majority, and know how to get voters to come out.” 

My quote prompted an email from a political friend of mine: 

From: XXXXXX [mailto:xxxxx@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 12:29 AM
To: Brian Reich
Subject: stoking the flames of the db wars 

 

Why is there so much trash-talking going on?  I can’t figure it out.  So there are two databases?  So what?

Any thoughts? 

I wrote (essentially) the following back:

It shouldn’t be a story, you are right. Micro-targeting and all that stuff are important, but like anything else in politics represent only one element of the overall strategy needed.  The Democrats have a message advantage this year because of the President’s failures on the war, the lack of anything constructive out of the Republican Congress, the general unease around the economy and similar.  But the Republicans still have their machines - they have had it in place for longer, it is more finely tuned, and I think in a lot of ways they are utilizing technology more effectively to make that machine hum.  It is a challenge that the Democrats have to overcome – finding, identifying, and mobilizing voters year after year so that we can get more refined in what we do and take the guess work out of the politics.  We have started, but are still playing catchup.  Of course,  we also have to think about long term infrastructure, because we are weak there by comparison – hence the 50-state strategy (which I don’t think is not designed to pay big dividends this year, but that point has not been made really clear by the DNC). I think the Dean folks have a good balance going, are investing in a lot of the right ways, but they have let the story get away from them.  The Blue State Digital and DNC data folks sound defensive about their strategy because the Catalist folks are making them sound like they aren’t inclusive. I think the fact that this has become the central focus of the dialogue is the problem.

Just wanted to add a few more cents.

Must Read NY Times Magazine Article

The New York Times Sunday Magazine published a must-read article this past weekend about Ken Mehlman, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and his efforts to keep control of Congress (and looking ahead, the White House) in Republican hands.  On its face, it seems like a pretty basic bio article, but dig a little deeper and you will see some key signs of the Republican strength and sophistication with regard to the use of technology to support their politics.

Some choice excerpts:

When Mehlman talks about politics, he doesn’t talk about Machiavelli; he talks about “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis’s book about how the Oakland A’s employed statistical modeling to assemble a powerhouse baseball team, sending to pasture the old-line scouts with their years of calling it from their guts. “We are the party of ‘Moneyball!”’ Mehlman proclaimed, practically shouting and bouncing on the balls of his feet, talking to a room of slightly bewildered Republicans in California last year. “They measured everything. We are doing the same thing in politics.”

And this…

Back when Mehlman took the job of party chairman, Republican command of the technologies of winning elections seemed the icing on the cake. Now it seems more like the cake itself. If there is one defining question in this campaign, it is whether the two big Republican Party weapons in this age of Bush — voter turnout and national security in the post-9/11 era — can be wheeled out again to overcome a political environment that has curdled for the Republican Party. As in 2002 and 2004, the White House has been hitting Democrats on national security and terror in a choreographed way, with a rollout that began, predictably, around Labor Day. But Democrats are pushing back this time, arguing that Bush’s policies have if anything made the world a less safe place, an argument reinforced by the continued images of turmoil from Iraq. Polls show that the Republican advantage on the issue is not what it once was, and even some Republicans worry about how many times the White House can credibly go back to this same well.

By contrast, the intricate political machine that Mehlman has built to identify and turn out Republicans is growing, and if the election in November is close, it could provide the Republican Party with the fire wall it needs. Democrats have, if belatedly, learned lessons from what the Republican Party has done and are adopting many of the same techniques. Still, no one thinks the Democrats have caught up on get-out-the-vote, or even can catch up before Election Day. Harold Ickes, a long-term national Democratic leader and one of the smartest strategists in either party, didn’t hesitate when asked if he thought the Republican Party had lapped the Democrats in the area of targeting and turnout. “Yes — there’s no question about it,” he said. Ickes’s response was revealing because he has embarked on a private effort to build a national database of registered voters, an implicit rebuke of the slower pace of Howard Dean, the Democratic Party leader, in this area. And Ickes was warm in his appraisal of Mehlman. “The general view is, he’s very good,” Ickes said. “They have good systems and he’s a good system person.”

 And this…

Mehlman has for this election taken what the Republican Party assembled in Ohio in 2004 — a database of every voting-age resident that includes voting history, party registration, demographic data and consumer history — and expanded it, he said, to include every voting-age American in the country. “In Ohio, in ’04, we got the tip of the iceberg,” Mehlman said. “What we did over the last two years is we got the entire iceberg.” With that kind of data, Republican campaign workers in every state in the country can identify potential Republicans who may never have voted before and bring them to the polls. To help neighborhood organizers plot their door-to-door visits — and to make what might be a dreary exercise at least interesting — the Republican Party uses satellite pictures from Google Earth to chart the routes for house-to-house canvassing.

There have been two early tests of this machine already in this election cycle, and both were encouraging for Mehlman. The most recent was in Rhode Island earlier this month, where Republicans dispatched 72-hour teams to help Senator Lincoln Chafee beat back what had seemed to be a very threatening conservative challenge by Steve Laffey, the mayor of Cranston. (Mehlman and other top Republicans concluded that they had no chance of keeping the seat in this Democratic state if Laffey won.) Turnout shattered the Republican primary record for the state, set in 1994: 62,099 people voted, a 38 percent increase. Republicans said their 86 get-out-the-vote volunteers made 198,921 contacts with prospective voters in the final 11 days of the campaign. As Chafee declared victory, Democrats could not help taking note of these numbers. And earlier, on June 6 in California’s 50th Congressional District, in San Diego, in a special election to replace Duke Cunningham, the Republican congressman from San Diego who quit in scandal, the Republican Party put the full press of a 72-hour plan to work. The Republican, Brian Bilbray, squeaked out a victory with 49 percent of the vote over the Democrat, Francine Busby. That was a race, Mehlman said, in which turnout was able to overcome a very challenging environment.

Why is this a must-read?  Too many Democrats, too many liberal bloggers, too many people in the media have already written the Republican party off this cycle.  If Democrats take either and/or both the House or Senate, the blame will go to the President, the credit to a small group of consultants, etc.  The story is practically written already.  But elections aren’t that simple.  The Republicans’ numbers are bad, the issues are not breaking in their favor, and their leadership is about as unpopular as any group of people ever to grace the political stage.  But behind all of those problems remains a very solid system for mobilizing political action when and how it matters most.  If the Democrats fail to gain a majority in the House or Senate (and my personal prediction is that the Democrats will come close, maybe win 13-14 seats in the House and 2-3 key Senate races, but ultimately fall short), the reason will be clear - at least to people who read this article. 

Turnout wins elections. And the Republicans have a system in place to ensure strong turnout even in the most dire of times. The Democrats have struggled for years to catch up in terms of technology and strategy on this front.  There is no evidence to suggest that will change this year.  But no matter the outcome, political professionals (and particularly those Democrats, bloggers and media folks) should be watching to see how this technology gets deployed and the impact it has.

Public Looking for Political Information Online

There is lots of news today to suggest that a growing number of people in the United States are looking for political news and information online.

The Pew Internet & American Life released a memo/study saying the number of people looking online for political information is at its highest point ever, a big deal given we are in a non-presidential year election with voter turnout in many places coming in at depressingly low levels.  They write:

On a typical day in August, 26 million Americans were using the internet for news or information about politics and the upcoming mid-term elections. That corresponds to 19% of adult internet users, or 13% of all Americans over the age of 18.

This is a high-point in the number of internet users turning to cyberspace on the average day for political news or information, exceeding the 21 million figure registered in a Pew Internet Project survey during the November 2004 general election campaign.

In addition, the Wall Street Journal has two articles this morning about new ways that the public can access political information online.  The first article highlights how social networking sites devoted to politics are popping up, focusing on a handful of relatively new projects like HotSoup, Essembly, and MorePerfect.  They also note a shift among the big players in the space towards political topics.  They write:

This month, Facebook, a social networking site with more than 9.5 million members, launched an Election 2006 network, creating stock profiles of around 1,400 candidates with basic information like their name, office, state and party. Facebook, of Palo Alto, Calif., then reached out to the Democratic and Republican National Committees to encourage candidates to expand on them. The site also launched an election “Pulse” feature that ranks candidates in various races according to how many Facebook members who have elected to support at least one politician support that candidate.

And a number of political candidates already have pages on MySpace.com, a unit of News Corp. Len Munsil, the Republican running for Arizona governor, recently asked his 19-year-old son to create a profile for him. “You have to find every way possible to communicate inexpensively with voters, especially younger ones,” says Mr. Munsil, who checks his profile — which features a background photo of supporters waving placards, a head shot and a campaign video — every few days. Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is running for re-election, was pleasantly surprised to find he had a MySpace presence. “We have no idea who put up the MySpace profile,” says a campaign spokesman. “But we would like to be in touch since it is so supportive.” Facebook and MySpace accept political advertising.

The second article discussed how political ads, and other video, are starting to appear on video sharing networks.  They posit this as both an effective way to bypass traditional television (which, in some markets, will compete with the upcoming baseball playoffs, or just may be too expensive for most campaigns) as well as present a candidate’s case to some different audience groups.  They write:

The technology that’s been flooding the Internet with videos produced by everyone from teenage skateboarders to major entertainment companies also is beginning to affect the political process. Sites like YouTube.com, Google Video and Blinkx.com already are filling up with candidate commercials, news clips, interviews and even amateur satirical videos.

This new medium naturally opens up new possibilities for negative campaigning and for gaffes to be magnified into major campaign issues. For example, an amateur video on YouTube.com about Montana Sen. Conrad Burns shows him falling asleep at a hearing. Numerous Web sites carried footage of Sen. George Allen, of Virginia, calling an aide to his Democratic challenger “macaca,” considered by some to be a racial slur.

But video on the Web is going beyond mudslinging. It’s also beginning to help inform voters. Numerous TV stations that televise debates are for the first time posting them on their Web sites so they can be watched at any time. Some civic groups are putting short video interviews with candidates on the Internet so voters can make side-by-side comparisons. Startup sites like thepeoplechoose2006.org and election.tv are trying to create video-rich sites that provide information on races throughout the country.

The fact that people are looking to the internet for political information should come as no surprise.  There are still not enough campaigns and candidates waging effective campaigns online, but there are some very encouraging signs from both sides of the aisle.  Still, there is still more work that needs to be done - by candidates and campaigns, technology gurus, and voters/audiences if the online medium is going to truly revolutionize the political process. 

Right now, the net is mostly being used to push existing content — position papers, television ads, etc. — to new audiences.  While important, and in some cases effective, this is not full utilization of the medium.  Online presents opportunities to make the political process interactive – candidates and campaigns have to think about new and different ways to present their content, or better yet, create content that exists only online and recognizes the opportunities for a different interaction. 

Technology gurus, like those building social networks, have to accommodate conversations about serious issues — and embrace the fact that political conversations are different than conversations about music, movies, consumer package goods, or life (dating, etc.) that typically drive social networks.  Simply putting people in an online space together and suggesting a political interaction does not a productive discussion make.  Social networks dabbling in the political space need to program aggressively, support networking activities with relevant, timely, and compelling information, and tie those conversations to voting and other actions.  For example — where is the section on YouTube that allows users to search for political videos by category?  Where is the area of MySpace that allows you to find charitable, advocacy, or political organizations to join and become involved with?  There is so much potential out there that is not being realized.

Finally, the audience needs to demand more.  The consensus is that voter turnout and engagement in the political process is low because the campaigns don’t reflect the voters interests.  Maybe so.  But the public shouldn’t stand for recycled position papers and empty-headed rhetoric online.  The public shouldn’t bark at the moon simply because some blogger says that is what they should do.  If you are looking online for information and you want to have your issues addressed, demand more from both your candidates and the technology gurus.  Tell them what you want.

I am encouraged by the growth in interest of political spaces online.  I just want more.