The Blog-o-Sphere of Influence

Viewpoint Journal ^ | January 12, 2003 | David Flanagan

[dpflanagan]

Politics & Punditry On The Internet

Can the blogosphere really alter the tides of political campaigns? After Howard Dean's meteoric rise from the bottom of the Democratic presidential hopeful pack to its undisputed front-runner, the blogging community supporting his campaign was given a significant amount of credit for Dean's success.

Alexis Rice of Johns Hopkins states in his White Paper, The Use of Blogs in The 2004 Presidential Election that "Blogs have already become a power tool in the Democratic presidential nomination battle." Rice goes on to say that "the leading candidate in the blogging revolution is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who, through a network of websites and blogs, created a dedicated Internet following that helped him lead all Democratic candidates in fundraising over the past two quarters."

No doubt, campaign blogging is effective for:

1) Reaching out to potential voters
2) Enlisting others in supporting outreach efforts
3) Raising additional campaign funds

Having said this, its my humble opinion that we are we giving way too much credit to the blogging phenomenon. Yes, blogging continues to expand its sphere of influence, especially with the media; but there are as many problems with this new phenomenon as there are advantages. These limitations will quickly become apparent once the Democratic primary is concluded and the official 2004 election campaign begins.

Why do I say this? Let me ask a couple of questions first. Are Dean's blogging efforts the only reason he raised more money than any of his Democratic rivals? Are they even the primary (no pun intended) reason? We really don't know for sure, rather, this is all just conjecture. Perhaps Dean has raised more money than his rivals because he's managed to craft the right message for voters within his party.

In Rice's White Paper, he mentions that "The use of blogs has brought supporters together to form a new online community and reinvented campaign fundraising, shifting it from a few big donors to countless small donors." I have two problems with this statement.

First of all, this is only true of Democrats. The Republican Party has, for many years, received most of its campaign donations from a host of small donors while Democrats have long been overly reliant on very large donations from a few wealthy individuals. This is why campaign finance reform hurt the DNC far more than the GOP. So, if Rice's statement is true, it means only that Democratic candidates can finally do what Republican candidates have been doing for quite a long time.

Secondly, online political communities were already in existence well before blogging began its rise in popularity. As a matter of fact, these communities have been legion for several years now. The difference today, however, is that campaign sites are working harder to connect to those communities and harness their zeal to serve the needs of a campaign.

Furthermore, while it is true, as pointed out by Rice, that campaign blogs create an interactive and, often-times, unfiltered forum, this is not necessarily a good thing. If you visit Dean's campaign blog, BlogForAmerica.com, you will find that amongst the massive number of comments to each blog entry are plenty of examples of why you should not allow just any old person to post their comments.

Imagine for a second, if you will, a moderate voter who wants an "unfiltered" view of the Dean campaign who, upon visiting the site, reads a recent post such as this:

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"Would NOT want to see a Dean/Clark ticket for the simple reason that it still puts Clark a heartbeat away from the presidency... Like I said - he scares me and I don't want him standing by Dean's side ready to slip in the dagger."

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Now, I would not be surprised to see such a thing on a blog run by someone supporting Dean, but this is part of Deans official campaign site. Granted, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of BlogForAmerica.com, you will see:

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Paid for and maintained by Dean for America. Contributions to Dean for America are not tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes. Dean for America does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites linked to from this page.

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But, all things considered, how many people take the time to scroll down to the bottom of a web page just so they can read the fine print? Furthermore, the disclaimer does not disavow in any official way comments left by Dean supporters for each blog entry.

Which is why I believe strongly that allowing "unfiltered" posting directly on an official campaign site is a train wreck waiting to happen. There are just too many potential problems with allowing such a practice, including such things as turning off potential voters and firing up voters with the opposition party. I don't know about you, but the politically-oriented blogs and chat boards that I frequent post weird comments from opposition party blogs and boards all the time; its just a great way to make the other campaign look radical and out of the mainstream.

You still disagree with me? Well then, let me just remind you of the recent Moveon.org ad campaign fiasco. Moveon.org has received quite a bit of money recently to run campaign ads for Democratic candidates. In the spirit of openness and creativity, the Moveon.org staff decided they would run a contest and allow members to create and post 30 second ads for review and possible airing on television. Unfortunately, two of the ads posted to Moveon.org compared President Bush to Hitler, a fact which was quickly noted by Republicans, who have made, appropriately, much political hay over this incident. Were the ads created and/or endorsed by Moveon.org and/or the DNC? Nope! But, their appearance on the site became a huge black eye for Moveon.org, damaging the credibility of this increasingly influential organization and gives Republicans an additional bit of ammunition for the upcoming 2004 presidential elections.

Let me remind anyone who takes the time to read this long-winded article that, in the late 90's, conventional wisdom was that traditional brick and mortar companies were going to be driven out of business by new competitors on the Internet. The Amazons of the world were supposed to lay waste to all rivals, and everyone would get all their products and services via the Internet.

Now, Amazon does still exist today, but only because they have diversified way beyond selling books and only because they formed partnerships with those "out-dated" brick and mortar companies they were supposed to replace. Unfortunately, hundreds of other Internet-based businesses were not so lucky. What happened? Retail stores across the country simply took their products online to augment their existing business structure, which gave customers the option to shop online or in-store. Not too long ago, my wife and I ordered a new base to our daughter's car seat using the Toysrus.com so that we could have a base in each of our vehicles, only to have the wrong product shipped to us. We ordered the base using their online store in the first place because our local store did not have what we wanted. However, when we discovered that we had been shipped the wrong base, we just drove the few miles to our local store, showed them our Internet receipt, and got our money back immediately.

And that is just one of many reasons why brick and mortar companies with good eCommerce models are not likely to be beaten by companies based purely on the Internet. We all learned that lesson when the dot com craze became the "dot bomb" in 2000. Now, less than four years later, we need to apply the lessons learned then to this new Internet craze called "blogging."

The fact of the matter is, blogs are not going to give any one Democratic candidate the unbeatable weapon that they've hoped for in the upcoming primary and the 2004 presidential election. Yes, they did give Dean an edge when his enthusiastic supporters saw to it that he became an early-adopter of this new fad, but that edge is all but gone now that his other major rivals, as well as President Bush, have established all the same innovations.

Blogs can help raise funds, they can help spread a candidate's message, they can even help get people to the voting booths, but they won't ever become a dominant factor in election-year politics. In the end, the best campaigns will still be those that employ traditional as well as cutting edge strategies and which have the discipline to know where to draw the line with technology. The trick is to do everything well, not just one or two things, when running a campaign, and to make sure that everything you are doing will win votes, not lose them.

Unrestricted use of campaign blogs, with visitors posting nearly anything they wish will, in my opinion, quickly become a liability for any campaign that allows such a thing. The best strategy for a campaign blog is to allow bloggers to visit the site and respond privately for any given message, as well as to easily link to any article so that visitors may post comments on their own blog. But, to allow visitors and other bloggers to leave public comments, the way you do in a traditional blog, is a bad idea.

No doubt, blogs are here to stay, and the Blogosphere will continue to increase in popularity and influence. At the same time, lets not go overboard by saying that this new craze is anything more than what it is, just one more way of spreading a campaign's message.

A candidate may have the best blog strategy in the world, but they'll still get killed at the polls if they think that this is all that is necessary. Blogging, like the Internet, is just a new way to communicate and, for some, to sell something. The revolution is not the technology itself, its the people behind the technology who understand the value of communication. But people who understand the value of communication also understand the necessity of balance. No one way is the perfect way to communicate with all people. The Blogosphere is merely one new way of reaching out to other human beings, not the new way.

Think about it.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com