Archive for: April, 2007

Napoleon Dynamite Gone Wild

Apr 18 2007 Published by under Craziness, Crime, Movies

The incident on Monday at Virginia Tech was horrible. The capacity for the human animal to commit savagery on its fellow man is astounding. I feel terrible for the families and friends of those affected by what happened.

However, when I watched Cho Seung-Hui’s video tonight, I broke up laughing. I couldn’t help but think of how much this guy reminded me of a really pissed off Napoleon Dynamite. I kept waiting for him to say Tina, you fat lard, come get some dinner. Tina, Eat. Eat the food. Eat the food!

Does that make me a bad person?

Update: Had to drop the picture of Cho from this post, I, and apparently others were getting tired of looking at it…

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GOPTeamLeader, Semantics, and Taking Back the Party

Apr 18 2007 Published by under Politics, Republicans, The Internet, Web 2.0

A comment left in response to a post by David All on TechPresident, caused me to reply. That reply became a much longer post that, I think, bears repeating here. The essence of the original comment was that the RNC had ‘given up’ on Team Leader. My reply follows…

Having been the guy to officially ‘pull the plug’ on Team Leader, I can tell you it was not a matter of ‘giving up’ on it. It was, in the end, a tragic loss due to my overestimation of how much support I actually had for creating a Republican destination through GOP.com.

The idea was to build a bigger and better program that was more open, more engaging and a true online community – something akin to a cross between RedState and Townhall. The difference would be the connection to a voter file to register, ID and turnout voters, inviting self-mobilization through volunteer activities, and syndication of the system across state party, candidate and activist websites.

We had two problems with the Team Leader program and attempted to address both as part of the rebranding and retooling.

Our first problem was the name. The name of the program actually ended up limiting its success. When you focus group things before you release them, you discover issues like this. As it turned out, a lot of people were afraid of the “Team Leader” title because, while they wanted to be involved, they felt intimidated by the idea of “being in charge” of anything. We actually saw this on the Bush campaign and changed the name from Bush Team Leaders to Bush Volunteers. When we did, our take rate exploded.

The other problem was the disconnect between the Team Leader effort and GOP.com. As in a lot of places, the RNC had different divisions doing different (and often competing) things online. GOP.com had been run out of Communications while GOPTeamLeader was run out of Political. They competed for budget dollars and eyeballs. In redesigning GOP.com after the 2004 elections, we combined all those efforts under one roof. We changed the name to GOP Teams, and the verbiage to being ‘a part of the team’.

As I said, a much broader social networking program and more options for true involvement were to be the foundation of the effort. This ultimately ended up being the MyGOP tool – and was a faint shadow of the original idea.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the opposition to open systems that I encountered. The aversion to letting go of the message and allowing individual supporters to grab and run with it proved to great. With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I would not have dismantled a relatively successful if top-heavy system like Team Leader to end up with what exists now.

This is illustrative of a larger problem the GOP has. This is where I part with David on his belief that a party-sponsored web 2.0 infrastructure will bridge the digital divide. I believe that divide is a function of a much deeper distrust of letting the message go. If the GOP is going to be successful online, we cannot wait for the party to do it.

As the Democrats have shown, this will need to be organized by those in the party who get it. We will have to drag the party apparatus, kicking and screaming, to the dance.

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David All On The GOP And Web 2.0

Apr 18 2007 Published by under Bloggers, Operatives, Politics, Republicans, The Internet, Web 2.0

Elevating the discussion that has been going on regarding the state of the GOP in online politics to more mainstream media, David All writes on his blog, and in The Politico that the GOP’s problems are more a function of not having a sufficient tech strategy.

Republicans are getting trounced by Democrats…

Some attribute this disparity to activist energy on the left, a hatred of President Bush or even dissatisfaction among Republican supporters with their own stable of candidates.

But I offer another reason: Republicans have failed to place a premium on an effective Internet strategy. While the Internet’s transformational shift has emerged and has been dubbed Web 2.0, Republicans still operate in a world of Web 0.5.

As Democrats rally, connect and urge activism with their base through coordinated nationwide town hall meetings hosted by MoveOn.org, Republican presidential candidates are still considering whether or not they should even blog on their sites.

This gets back to the heart of the discussion Ruffini and I were having last week. Patrick had suggested that my focus on implementing web 2.0 in an effort to get activists engaged would be less than successful without a corresponding effort to increase the quality of the content you’re offering. I agree. I think both are critical.

This is where I part with David. I agree that we need a more effective Internet strategy, and need to build an infrastructure that will support the type and level of activity David suggests, but I don’t think simply building it will attract droves of Republicans. The GOP has greater problems than a lack of social networking. There is a party that is not terribly happy with a sound electoral loss a few months ago, a continuing series of miscues by the Administration, and a lackluster field of Presidential candidates. That is a significant hill to climb, and we won’t be able to if we don’t fundamentally alter our approach.

The Democrats blog community is strong because the leadership of the party views bloggers as activists. With very few exceptions, our candidates and elected officials view them as another form of media. They approach blogs the same way they approach newspapers, rather than the way they approach a neighborhood association or a pancake breakfast.

Further, while the GOP has been recognized for its effective message control with a stable of surrogates repeating the same mantra over and over and over, the Internet gives more people a voice. That’s the appeal of web 2.0. But messages, like technologies, are introduced and then take on a life of their own – changing and shifting as they pass from person to person. GOP efforts will need to relinquish control over the message and allow users to adapt it if we ever expect to be effective in an Internet world.

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Online Fundraising: What The Media Should Ask

Apr 16 2007 Published by under Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Politics, Republicans, The Internet

Cross-posted to Tech President

In the last 72 hours, I’ve taken a fair amount of heat via e-mail about my TP post on Romney’s fundraising. With Alan’s post arguing that anything solicited or fulfilled online should be counted as online; and Roger Craver’s discussion of balanced fundraising, I’ve been rethinking the operational definition of “online fundraising”. While there has definitely been a specific connotation for that term – essentially equating it to “grassroots” fundraising, it appears that many now feel the definition is out-dated.

If that’s the consensus view, I’m not one to stand in the way of progress. If the Internet has become ubiquitous and we no longer need to distinguish between the small dollar donor and the major donor online, so be it. My bigger complaint was always been with the distinction between the low-dollar and high-dollar donors. Where a campaign gets its funds, and who it is ultimately beholden to, should be of concern to everyone. As a result, if we are to stop categorizing donors as online or off, we must draw that distinction elsewhere.

The media should immediately, and for any future reporting, request candidates make available an accounting of their donors. Specifically, they should ask a) how many itemized donors does the campaign have, b) how many unitemized donors, c) of your total receipts, how much is attributable to itemized contributions, d) how much is attributable to unitemized donors? These questions should allow us to better gauge the relative depth and breadth of a candidate’s fundraising appeal.

To his credit, Romney was forthcoming with the total of itemized/unitemized donors, but did not indicate the amounts they raised respectively.

Breaking things out in this way would have provided a better view into the advantage that existed in the fundraising by Bush in 2004. At about the same time in 2004, the Kerry campaign announced it’s one millionth donation, and the Bush campaign announced its one millionth donor. The story told by the media was the Kerry campaign was way ahead on grassroots fundraising. It ignored the fact that the Bush campaign had a much larger stable of donors. The end result was the Bush campaign had somewhere in the neighborhood of 300k to 400k more individual donors than the Kerry campaign, but they were giving via mail and phones.

Update: A commenter pointed out a math error on my original Romney post which I have now corrected. The math didn’t really impact the argument, but I adjusted the figures and left the edits. I also received a note via e-mail asking if the post above was intended as a non-apology apology.

The fact is the term “online donations” had a very specific connotation – one which I and others felt was incorrectly used by the Romney team. Having seen the discussion in my inbox, and the discussion on TechPresident, I can say there is a legitimate argument that the Romney people may have been right to move the goal posts. I can also say that I have probably ascribed to the Romney campaign nefarious motives that may not have been present.

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Campaign Reports and Cash On Hand

Apr 13 2007 Published by under Candidates, Fundraising, John McCain, Politics

The ever important figures for Cash on Hand are starting to come in and the shape of the race is adjusting accordingly.

Giuliani today reported $15 million raised (as previously reported) and $12 million on hand. That’s a substantial figure that could actually put him in first place in the money game. Romney’s people have said they’ll report more than $11 million, but we won’t know how much more until we see the report. In addition to his high COH amount, Giuliani reported very little debt (about $90k).

If McCain, who raised only $12.5, has a burn rate closer to Romney’s (48%) than Giuliani’s (32%), he will come out of the first quarter with a COH in the mid-single digits. That’s a bad place to be.

On another piece of news, the number of contributors to Rudy’s campaign is around 28,000. That’s only about 5,000 fewer than Romney, but those 5,000 raised $6 million more (an average of $1,200 per person). That gives you a further indication that much of Romney’s donor stable is tapped out and unable to give more. He had better hope that the Pioneer/Ranger model finds a LOT of new blood or his second quarter numbers are going to look pretty lackluster compared to the first.

Both Romney (with maxed out donors and a need for new blood) and McCain (with little money to carry him) face a tough time going into the lean fundraising months of summer. Summer is a hard time to raise money as donors are generally consumed with other things and less likely to engage.

UPDATE: After Mitt released a breakdown of his numbers today, I felt compelled to call him out on his “pure and simple” website fundraising. The complete post is available over at TechPresident.com.

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