Politico related Tuesday morning how liberal activists are bringing the awesome power of the Google to bear on Republican opponents:
Chris Bowers, campaign director for the Daily Kos, is launching a behind-the-scenes campaign against 98 House Republican candidates that attempts to capitalize on voters’ Google search habits in the hopes of influencing midterm races.
Bowers wants the Daily Kos’ thousands of participants to dig up little-noted or controversial news stories about the candidates that could hurt their chances with undecided voters. Users would click on the links and blog about the stories with the goal of boosting their rankings on search engines, so that undecided voters will discover them more easily.
These activists are… well, we don’t know who they are. One might say their identities could be somewhat “shadowy.” They aren’t necessarily based in the districts in which they are campaigning, so I assume you could call this group “outside” activists. But regardless of what one calls this shadowy outside group, one must admit that they have every right to make their voice heard, right?
In all seriousness, though, this “new” tactic isn’t all that new at all (for a couple years, searching for the the term “miserable failure” famously brought up links to President George W. Bush’s profile thanks to a similar effort). A more valid question is what good this tactic will do – and its main value may be as a team-building exercise to start getting the Democrats far-left base back involved. That may not mean much in two weeks, but you can bet that Democrats will be looking to re-take the majority on the morning of November 3 – and that means they will need these types of activists to fuel excitement and energy just as the Tea Party groups have done for the Republicans.
Jim Eltringham 