Tech Savvy Becoming Key in DNC Battle

The Las Vegas Sun/AP ^ | January 13, 2005 at 6:55:07 PST | By BETH FOUHY

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Love him or hate him, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's upstart presidential campaign left the Democratic Party two important and lasting legacies: the empowerment of younger activists and the pioneering use of the Internet for fund-raising. Those new realities now are at play in the battle for Democratic National Committee chairman, which Democrats will vote on in February.

While Dean announced his candidacy on Tuesday, two younger political operatives with strong connections to Silicon Valley also have joined the race: Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network and Donnie Fowler, who recently headed political outreach for the high-tech lobby TechNet.

Others looking to replace outgoing chairman Terry McAuliffe include former Reps. Martin Frost and Tim Roemer, and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. They and Dean may be better known, but Fowler and Rosenberg are campaigning actively and are considered serious candidates.

Despite their similar backgrounds in the high-tech world, Fowler and Rosenberg offer different visions for transforming the beleaguered party. Rosenberg largely focuses on "modernizing" the party through technical improvements, while Fowler is stressing a return to more state control and changes in how the party communicates its message.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Talk about repeating a lie until it becomes a legend - WTF is it about Howard Dean's steaming turd failure of a campaign that still has the press interpreting it as technical genius? Joe Trippi is hailed as a campaign guru! Unbelievable.

I looked at the Dean Campaign websites on a regular basis in late 2003 and early 2004 - primarily because I kept hearing comments like "revolutionary" and 'leading edge" elsewhere in the press. Nothing about their use of the internet was revolutionary. The fact that this misimpression has become the standard interpretation of what Dean's brief, failed campaign was all about merely points out how out of touch reporters, particularly political reporters are. The kinds of technology and communications that Dean was using are used in other campaigns and in thousands of businesses daily (this at the time of Dean's campaign). His campaign wanted to convey a hip, tech savvy image, way beyond what was actually there and they have left the press totally hypnotized.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

They must've missed the news from the last 6 months. Big internet-generated youth turnout ?
Dean sank like a stone.

[Wristpin]

I agree. At the end of the day, a turd on a vast computer network is still merely a turd.

[OldFriend]

Thanks for verbalizing (posting) the truth. I cannot for the life of me see how Dean's campaign accomplished anything but a massive amount of spin (bullship) about it's internet accomplishments.

Dubya raised a huge amount of money on the internet in small dollar amounts for his 2000 campaign. AND WON THE ELECTION TOO

[starfish923]

I hope Dean wins.
It's a win for all conservatives, Democrat or Republican.

[EagleUSA]

This is the damning testimony against the far-left Dems. There is no way you can sugar-coat them, put them in sheep's clothing, or in any way take them for exactly what they are. It is so bad, their Marxism and monolithic quest for power and control, that they cannot hide from it.

A rose (dem) by any other name.....

[daviddennis]

Okay, I have to laugh at this:

Rosenberg, 41, was one of a handful of Democratic activists who saw the political potential of Silicon Valley during the Clinton-Gore years. He worked with industry leaders, including venture capitalist John Doerr, to nurture the then money-rich community into a Democratic Party stronghold.

"The then money-rich community ..."?

The new poverty in Silicon Valley appears to have escaped me.

I just checked realtor.com and the cheapest home in Woodside is $849,000. Four bedroom, two bath, 1,560 square feet. For the uninitiated, Woodside is where Silicon Valley's richest people live, so if we saw them selling their homes for $3.78, we'd know Silicon Valley was no longer money-rich :-).

Nope.

D

[Dog Gone]

Real estate prices in California astound me.

[Paleo Conservative]

They've got to be kidding. They're a party that doesn't even understand typewriters.

[woofer]

They're a party that doesn't even understand typewriters.

Not only that, but these as well:

The time-lines of contemporaneous fonts, their uses in typewriters and word processing.
The average American political junkie's use of the internet to both expand his/her political knowledge and to use the technologies in communicating with like minded others.
Their utter lack of the knowledge that not all of the military branches use the same slang/verbage, the same equipment or the same format for printed material.

Dean's internet guru may have tapped a latent ability in the newly interested and monied source with an easy way to donate to a cause, but it hasn't been proven that this will always be the case in every election cycle. The same donors lost interest as soon as it was clear that Dean's candidacy was sinking like a millstone was tied around his neck and sKerry couldn't tap into it.

[woodb01]

Yep, and Republicans aren't far behind. Tech Savvy and Internet Technologies will forever change the two party system.

I'm currently in the middle of a radical replumbing of the back end technology of my own ANTI-DNC site. Will be able to allow free web space, e-mail, online petitions, fundraising, coordination, selective MEMBERSHIP levels of content (that are totally hidden, kind of like "hidden communities), etc.

And all of this when it is soon complete will be made totally and completely freely available to conservative groups and Republican Campaigns.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re-Designed ANTI-DNC Web Portal at --->
http://www.noDNC.com