On McCain and Rudy

Jan 30 2008 Published by under Elections, John McCain, Politics, Republicans

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia.’ But only slightly less well known is this: ‘Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.’

You can add one to that. When the only guy in the race that can hurt you is down, you need to make sure that guy doesn’t get back up.

I was trading e-mail with someone who asked what I thought of McCain’s ascendancy. While I think the story of his comeback is impressive, I think the story of Rudy’s failure is even more impressive.

When the story of 2008 is written, and Rudy Giuliani’s campaign is analyzed, I think they’ll actually find two great mistakes. The obvious mistake of writing off the early states is the first. The second, and less obvious though, is the mistake of not engaging McCain directly and not doing it last July.

McCain was the only person in the race with better credentials on National Security than Rudy. He had argued for the surge when it was politically unpopular, he had stuck to his guns and not made equivocating statements about it. He was also a POW and war hero. Other than that, on paper they were very similar with a spotty history of principled conservatism and a lot of baggage. To let McCain cruise through five states before trying to engage was a mistake. Rudy had one opponent he absolutely had to knock down before his Florida & 2/5 strategy would work, and that’s McCain.

They should have taken every opportunity to blow McCain out of the water last June. On July 1, it should have been the highest priority to go after his donors and go after his supporters hardcore. They needed to do whatever they had to do. By not taking the opportunity to put the wounded badger out of his misery, they allowed him to heal and get pissed.

Rudy’s colossal blunder wasn’t yesterday, it was last July.

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And Then There Were Four (and Hucakabe and Paul and Gravel)

Jan 30 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Republicans

With the over-delayed departure of John Edwards, and the implosion of Rudy Giuliani, the race for President comes down to four – Clinton, Obama, McCain and Romney. Between them the race is now an endurance campaign to see who has the resources and stamina to see it to the wire.

It increasingly looks like McCain will come out of 2/5 with a near lock on the nomination and will round out the process shortly thereafter. Romney, no doubt, will probably drop from the race on 2/6 or 2/7.

What’s unclear is the state of the Democratic race. Tim Russert and Chuck Todd were on Today this morning discussing the state of play as we look at the apportionment of delegates, the makeup of the superdelegates and the likelihood that their race may continue into the spring. The best part was Tim Russert’s comment about Rudy:

From a national frontrunner to one delegate $50 million dollars later, it will be studied by political scientists for years. It was a disaster.

That may actually turn out to be a bigger flop than Howard Dean’s $50 million debacle in 2003-2004 because on a cost per vote basis, Rudy fares far worse at this point. Dean also had the scream, so you can point to a total meltdown of his campaign. Rudy just had a terrible strategy. Note to future candidates, skip one early primary? Maybe. Skip five? Not so much.

Now, other than the eventual Democratic nominee, the one open question is when Mike Gravel, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee will come to the conclusion that they have run their course and drop out as well. The longer Huckabee clings to the idea that he can win, the more petty he looks. He’ll undoubtedly make some snide comments about Romney stealing his votes. To be fair to him though, for a week or two before Iowa it looked like Huck might be the guy. That has to hurt.

The next big question is who will become the Pat Buchanan of 2008 and deliver a spastic, knee-jerk extremist speech at the convention that harms their parties chances for winning three months later? Will either party deny the also rans a place at the podium?

Honestly, my money is split now between Huckabee and Paul. Either Huckabee stands up and makes an impassioned case that homosexuals are the equivalent of rapists, molesters and monkey-humpers; or Paul goes off on a 20 minute tirade against the World Bank and advocates for the legalization of black tar heroine. Either way, it will be interesting to watch.

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The New BarackObama.com

Jan 28 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Politics, Republicans, The Internet, Web Reviews

I’m a bit late to the party on this, but hopefully it’s fashionably late, and not like the guy that gets there after everyone has gone home and wants to sit and chat despite the fact that you’re dropping hints for him to get out. I thought I’d take a closer look at the new BarackObama.com. I still think, despite all the prognostications that Hillary has it locked, that he’ll pull this out and be the eventual nominee – even if it takes a floor fight.

This started as a review of the recently revamped website, and became sort of a hybrid post about the site and some general issues with online campaigns in general. I have to be honest; I began from the point of view that I don’t really get why they changed the site at all. The vast majority of voters is still tuned out, probably had not been to the site, and therefore wouldn’t really be sick of it. However, I realize that the staff probably was, the hardcore supporters probably were, and since Obama believes that change is good, well…

If the post gets kind of disjointed about halfway through, that’s because the review also coincided with an interview I did with Jose Vargas and some questions about how campaigns should be using their site to engage voters in states where they may have little to no time to campaign as a result of the compressed primary schedule. After that call, I began to look at Obama’s site through that prism, and specifically began to compare it to other sites through the same lens.

In other words, I wrote half of it when I was with Linda, and half of it after we broke up. And I should warn you I was listening to the Cure a lot.

Color Scheme and Appearance

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of the glowing blue ethereal cloud look. It’s a little too artsy for me. You can’t really make it out in the screen grab above, but they also have a mesh effect oddly reminiscent of the background on dollar bills behind the sign up option. When they continue the flowing blue angel effect into the headline, as they did above, it makes the whole page a little overbearing. It’s way too blue, and feels like I have died and Obama is the maker. I can’t imagine that’s the look they were going for.

On a whole other level, the site also contradicts one of the things so many people credit him for – his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Wasn’t it he who spoke of no liberal America and no conservative America, but only one America. Didn’t he challenge the idea of pundits dividing us into red states and blue states? Yet he seems to be sending a signal that he is the bluest of the blue.

I don’t know if that was their intention, but as a Republican, it was the first thing I noticed. It’s very, very, very blue.

The other big problem the site has is readability. With the text and background colors they have chosen, large chunks of the site become almost entirely unreadable. Take these two examples:

I’m no expert on graphic design, but I like to think I have a pretty good bead on what does and doesn’t fly on the web. I also have a pretty good feel for what is and isn’t W3C Compliant. Both of the examples above fail that test. The choice of grey text on white also causes readability issues throughout the site

Now I freely admit that I’m one of the older dogs in the online politics game. I’m knocking on 38 and most of the people I work with on campaigns are just out of (or still in) college. I suppose it’s possible that Obama’s website is kind of like the mosquito ringtone – only those under 30 can read it. If so, that might explain the huge advantage he enjoys with young voters.

Unfortunately, it causes a significant number of others to have a heck of a time working his navigation. Where I am from, that’s a bad thing.

The Action Center

I continue to be a big fan of Obama’s action center. Since the last time I spent time exploring his web presence, not much has changed as far as functionality with the exception of the online phone bank. One thing struck me about that tool, however. The Bush campaign referred to its online phone bank as Neighbor to Neighbor and under the larger umbrella “Personal Precinct”. Mitt has “Call from Home” Thompson had “Phone for Fred”, and McCain calls his, simply, “Online Phone Bank”. These are less than clever names to be sure, but I do think these tools need to have a brand that conveys a) exactly what’s expected and b) how simple that is. Obama calls his “Peer Contact”. If I saw that as an uninitiated volunteer, new to the process, I would have no idea what it was. Even “Make Calls for Obama” would be better than “Peer Contact.”

One problem Obama shares with his chief rival Hillary Clinton is a limited implementation of their calling tool. When I log in to Obama’s application, I have the three options to make calls with two of those being into New Mexico. Hillary’s, on the other hand, has only one option to make calls into California regarding absentee ballots (aren’t there other primaries coming up?).

(note: the screen grab above was taken after the post was drafted. When I logged back in, I only had two options, but originally had three.)

I’m not sure if any of the Republicans are any better at this. I can’t log in to Romney’s TMAC, McCain is focused solely on Florida (as he should be), and Rudy doesn’t seem to have such a tool (at least, not that I could find quickly, and on the Internet if you can’t find it fast, it may as well not be there at all). I tried signing up for a Team Rudy password, but ten minutes later have not received my confirmation/validation e-mail.

Looking just at the Dems, though, at least when I click on Obama’s, I get people and a script. When I click on Hillary’s, I get a message indicating that “no callees are available”. Huh? Are you kidding me? You can’t find anyone in California for me to call? What about those other states? You know, the ones voting next Tuesday. With Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado , Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah all picking their nominee next week, you would think the two campaigns would have some folks to call.

States

Obama does make good use of a tactic we tried with the Bush campaign in 2004 – creating state specific pages with content relevant to the specific location. The bad news is the New Mexico page, a week before their election, is broken (pictured at right). The other states voting next week seem to be fine and contain interesting content. For instance, Obama has done a good job of including the ads they’re running in the states. Many campaigns run ads only in one location to talk to specific segments of the population. Pre-YouTube, these ads were often never seen by people in other states. Obama has provided them on a state by state basis providing some nice transparency.

Campaigns can leverage those state urls in ads and drive voters in each state to specific information about the candidate and activities available to help. While campaigns are getting better at including their url in their ads, it can still be a tough sell to get the leadership to include them throughout the entire ad.

In 2004, Kerry’s team did a great job of getting the campaign to understand the value of driving traffic with an ever-present address. The GOP still doesn’t do that in most cases. They see the url as a distraction from the message. I’d like to see a campaign like Barack’s employ not only a steady state url, but also make it specific to the state. An ad with the address BarackObama.com/NewMexico is more likely to grab my attention than simply BarackObama.com. I’m more likely to come back. As long as that ad is running, the state page should also feature more information specific to the ad in question.

The one thing missing

The one thing I really don’t see on Obama’s site is Obama. I see his picture up top, and I see clips of his speeches in their video content, but I don’t see a lot of him making a personal contribution to his site. I’d really like to see him posting regularly, or doing some candid video. I’d really like to see him being as active in his community as he’s asking us to be.

This is a complaint that I have of almost all the campaigns. In most cases, the url for these sites is the candidate’s name, but that’s about the only thing on which they have left their mark. The sites still feel corporate. They still feel more like the website for IBM. Some sort of connection with the candidate is why people are coming to the site, yet the site is often the last place you can find the candidate’s imprint.

Below Average

Overall, I’d give the makeover a “C-”. I was a fan of the old site, and just really think they took this in the wrong direction. I didn’t test it with a screen reader for 508 compliance, because it was hard enough to read without a screen reader. I can’t imagine that would make it easier. The contrast is way off, making a lot of the text hard to read. However, at least that takes your mind off the overwhelming blueness of it all.

The tools he provides are quite good, but the implementation is a bit off. I’d like to see more call opportunities in states voting next week. If there is still no clear nominee next Wednesday, it will become increasingly expensive to run in every state. The Internet could be a powerful tool for both communicating to the states where financial limitations make door-to-door campaigning hard. They can empower their people to be the force multiplier (as they should be doing for next week).

Unfortunately, nobody seems to be doing this, so at least Obama doesn’t stand out.

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Good Luck, GOP. See you in 2012.

Jan 22 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Craziness, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Pandering, Politics, Republicans

As a lot of people chatter about the departure of Fred Thompson from the race, I’m sitting here thinking about the last 9 months and wondering how I can ever look my party in the face again. For that matter, I don’t see how I can look my fellow voters in the face. Fred Thompson ran the race we all claim we want to see. For that, he got disparaging remarks about his vigor, his ambition, his wife, and his personal appearance.

It really is sad. We claim we want a candidate to talk seriously about the issues, to put forth bold policy proposals and debate on the merits of his plan. In a race crowded with style, Fred was all substance. Yet the people looked away.

In a campaign marked by cat-fights between candidates constantly engaging in underhanded digs at others’ religion, age, and life story, Fred took the high road and stuck to records, and policy. With debates that more closely resembled a three ring circus of 30 second sound bites, Fred stood, hands down, taller than the rest and demanded a little dignity.

The one “failing” of Fred Thompson seems to have been the fact that he refused to be treated like some retarded, inbred poodle jumping through every hoop the media threw in front of him.

When he built and unveiled his Internet presence, the media panned his effort with calls that he ‘plans to run his whole show online.’

When he and Jeri appeared in public, the media savaged his wife as a gold-digger, an interloper in the First Lady sweepstakes, and as a micromanaging puppet master working the strings of the campaign.

When he chose to spend time with his family, the media called him lazy, disinterested, and uncommitted.

Yet that lazy, uncommitted, disinterested candidate was the only one in the race saying something that mattered. He was the only one talking in complete sentences about the issues our nation faces. He was putting forth plans that got noticed by economists and experts as being serious and substantive. He was the only one demanding an end to the pageantry and a beginning to a new era of serious policy based campaigns. He was the only one that made it through the debates with his honesty and integrity in check.

It was, in short, exactly the kind of race we claim we want. He was, by placing his priorities on his family and not the sideshow, exactly the candidate we claim we want.

Yet once we got the campaign we’ve asked for, and once we got the candidate we asked for, he was labeled ‘lazy’ and ‘not serious’.

Well, at this point, all I can say to America is congratulations. You will get the President you deserve. You can pick from 32 flavors of vanilla. You can pick from the 6 remaining monkeys who are rabid enough in their pursuit of self-glorification that they will dance as you grind your organ. You can hold your nose and cast a ballot for candidates that perpetuate this ridiculous system we have created.

As for me, I’ll be sitting out the Presidential election this year. I am unable to find anything in the remaining candidates on either side that gives me hope at a time when we really need it. I’ll sit and ponder the death of statesmanship knowing that our American Idol obsessed culture has taken another step away from electing leaders and another step down the road of electing entertainers.

At this point I don’t see why you don’t chuck it all and simply let the winner of Bruno and Carrie’s Dance War run our nation for the next four years. I’ll bet they dance to your music better than any of the candidates you have left.

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Kung Fu Election

Jan 15 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Craziness, Democrats, Elections, Gaming, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Politics, Republicans

With a name like KungFuQuip.com on a blog covering politics, there was absolutely no way I could avoid commenting on Kung Fu Election. Choose your candidate and pit them against the other contenders in bloody death matches to determine the next leader of the free world. The intro song is really annoying and you should skip past it, but as it says, “China may have got our jobs, but we got their fighting skills.”

Now go out there and let John McCain, Mitt Romney, The Huckster, or Rudy serve up a hot plate of whoop ass on Obama, Richardson, Edwards or Clinton (technically Hill, but as you see in the screen grab below, just as in real life, she had to invoke the spirit of Bill to fight her battles for her).

Kung Fu Election at Atom Films

By the way, apparently they were going to include Fred Thompson, but they realized “Fred Thompson doesn’t decide who lives and who dies; he just makes it so.“

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