Many of the analysts have been trying paint this week’s elections with a very broad brush as general examples of popular unrest with Washington, D.C. While true in part, this overlooks an important fact: each race that happened this week happened in a unique set of circumstances.
Pennsylvania Democrats did not repudiate the concept of incumbency when they cast their vote for a sitting Member of Congress; they did repudiate Arlen Specter. Specter was not a Democrat, as Joe Sestak so successfully pointed out:
Similarly, the idea that Sen. Blanche Lincoln is “too conservative” for Arkansas Democrats doesn’t hold water, either. The state has a long-standing strong history of dumping incumbent Senators in primaries. And Lt. Governor Bill Halter’s national appeal to liberal special interests helped his campaign infrastructure, but it didn’t necessarily win him votes:
The darling of national liberals and labor unions got powered into a Democratic U.S. Senate runoff in Arkansas on Tuesday by the support of good ol’ boys in South Arkansas who either didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t care, both entirely plausible… Halter waltzed into a runoff using liberal money and a conservative backlash.
There is a strong undercurrent of unrest with national elected officials, but that alone doesn’t win an election. That spirit may have manifested itself in similar way in Pennsylvania and Arkansas, with incumbent Senators underperforming, but it came about for different reasons.
A spokesman for Mr. Corbett, Kevin Harley, said the subpoena had nothing to do with the criticism of the attorney general… He said the subpoena was related to a criminal case concerning Brett Cott, a former political aide convicted in a political scandal known as Bonusgate. That long-running investigation concerns bonuses paid to legislative staff members and whether they were illegally related to political campaign work.
For Corbett’s sake, I hope this isn’t simply an attempt to shut up anonymous critics, because it’s hard to think of a less effective way to do it. Consider that, between themboth, the accounts probably have no more than 1,000 unique followers, and that comes after a round of national press coverage that has surely inflated those totals. Everything Corbett has done has only driven more eyeballs their way. And any type of censorship – or perceived censorship – of political speech tends to be a bad issue for a candidate.
The online team employed a phased rollout approach, recognizing that the need to have something up online early trumped the need to launch a website with all the bells and whistles. And the back end content management system of the site was built so that anyone could update it – in other words, instead of the “website guy” having the keys and being the only one able to drive the campaign’s online presence, everyone got their own car. It provided for a streamlined, slick, and – ultimately – victorious campaign.
The online campaign didn’t win PA-12 for Mark Critz by itself, but no online campaign is capable of that. It was successful by the measure that matters: it didn’t get in the way of a the other parts of a well-run campaign.
Augmented reality is a pretty neat trick, using markers picked up by webcams (or cameras on mobile devices) to display images that others can’t see. This has been around for a while, but it usually required some type of narcotic substance; now it can be harnessed through technology without ingesting hallucinogens.
With smartphones becoming a hub of political activist activity, the next question is: how does the next “revolutionary” campaign use this technology?
The easiest way will be to turn lawn signs and other advertisements into instant sources of new information. The typical lawn sign is pretty simple: it has a name and, maybe, a slogan but little else. Augmented reality would allow passers by to point their iPhone or other mobile device and instantly have access to a much broader range of text and information.
But for many campaign operatives, the more fun part might be finding a way to piggyback messages about an opponent onto his or her own signs – the messaging equivalent of Bugs Bunny drawing a mustache on a wanted poster of Yosemite Sam.
So distasteful is the idea of somebody mistaking my military service with war-fighting service that, until a fellow Marine jokingly wondered if I were embarrassed of my eight years in the Marine Reserves, I kept my Marine service out of my official bio. Since the bio is generally used for introductory purposes at campus speeches, I worried that a student MC might jump to the conclusion that my service in the Marines necessarily meant service in Iraq and Afghanistan–or Montezuma and Tripoli for that matter. If such people are capable of occasionally prefixing the word “author” with “bestselling” without any real justification, then certainly the idea of dressing up my service with undeserved honors isn’t beyond them… I’m so proud of my service that I finally included it in my bio. And Richard Blumenthal, who, like me, served as a Marine Reservist, should be proud too. But obviously, he’s not proud enough of his service, which helps explain why he weaved a weird tale about fighting in Vietnam.
The internet’s favorite candidate for public office right now isn’t Rand Paul, Joe Sestak, or Bill Halter. He isn’t running for Congress, governor, the Senate, or even President. But he is anti-establishment, railing against the “thugs and criminals” in power. His name is Dale Peterson, and he’s running for the Alabama Agricultural Commission:
Peterson’s over-the-top honesty and evident frustration with politics as usual might be attracting tongue-in-cheek derision from some bloggers and pundits, but he isn’t running to be on the National Press Club’s Agricultural Commission. Lost in the yuks is the fact that Peterson, likely for very little money, now has an advertisement getting attention from all sorts of media outlets. And though the white cowboy hat and the gun may seem over the top, his message really isn’t. Did you know that the Alabama Agricultural Commission has $5 million to play with? Heck, I don’t even know how much Virginia’s Agricultural Commission has to play with.
The exposure puts Peterson in front of in-state voters – and potentially out-of-state donors – who identify with his message, and who kind of like his style.
This, apparently, is what passes for a sex tape for Republicans – and that’s just fine. Souder kind of looks like an early 90’s character actor – the type of person who’d play the neighbor in a short-lived sitcom.
Web comic XKCD – which chronicles stick figures discussing physics, science fiction, and computer programming – has unwittingly (or possibly wittingly) touched off a mini-controversy on Wikipedia.
The original comic featured a made-up word made up of words that dealt with making up words (with the original words, ostensibly, disproportionately popular on Wikipedia). Don’t be ashamed if that seems tough to follow – any web comic that has an explanatory blog is pretty high-end stuff to begin with. What isn’t tough to follow is that some enterprising fans created a Wikipedia entry for the made up word.
The ensuing debate among Wikipedia users and site editors took 19,000 words and resulted in searches for the word (“malamanteau”) redirecting to XKCD’s own Wikipedia entry. But it illustrates a good cautionary tale for user-generated content: it’s best to have good site rules up in advance in case you want to maintain any semblance of message control down the line.
And it’s also good to keep an eye on Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it, including people who might not have good things to say about you.
Arkansas and Pennsylvania are the twin epicenters of the political universe today. For what it’s worth, here are my predictions – although, to members of the gambling community, I have to say that these are intended for entertainment purposes only:
Pennsylvania Senate: Arlen Specter wins the Democratic nomination.
Arlen Specter’s support from what’s left of organized labor’s infrastructure and African American voters will determine his fortunes today. Remember that there were an awful lot of moderate and independent registered Republicans who switched parties in 2008 to participate in the Democratic presidential primary, which is why Specter has a shot.
Arkansas Senate: Bill Halter forces a runoff, which he will win.
Arkansas has two moderate Senators, but Blanche Lincoln gets the label of being squishy while everyone loves Mark Pryor. Whether it’s the good-old-boys’-club stereotype I unfairly have of Southern politics (it actually applies to all politics) or the fact that she isn’t the scion of a former Governor like her colleague, Lincoln seems to get the short end of this stick.
This race is more interesting because Lincoln is nearly always a swing vote on legislation – the Democrats’ equivalent of Olympia Snowe. How a runoff or a lame duck session will affect her voting record will make for interesting political theater.
Pennsylvania-12: Pro-life, pro-gun Democrat Mark Critz takes the seat held by his late boss, John Murtha.
Democrats will mistakenly see this as validation of the ruling regime and the quieting of the anti-incumbent trend. To a small degree, it will be – but only so far as they work across the aisle.
The real question will be if Critz is able to survive multiple terms, given that he won’t have the seniority his late boss used to siphon federal budget dollars back to the district.
YouTube is celebrating not only turning five, but reaching 2 billion views per day. In the decade before YouTube, internet publishing and blogging had become commonplace. But though the internet had long been a place where anyone could put their work out there (as long as they didn’t mind not getting paid for it), YouTube’s video sharing platform – along with technology that made quality video devices cheaper – turned everyone into a video producer. Anyone could be Cecil B. DeMille.
That said, not everyone can effectively communicate on YouTube.
1. Video is now essential to message delivery.
Political communication has always been a matter of telling stories, and no medium can tell a story like video. In 1960, the story of the cool, collected, and telegenic JFK as the harbinger of a new political generation was cemented by his now-famous debate performance; in 2008, the story of Barack Obama as the idealistic, optimistic harbinger of a new political generation was cemented by a music video adapted from one of his speeches that seized upon the phrase, “Yes We Can.”
Politicians can try to position themselves with stump speeches and media appearances, and their surrogates can attempt to provide “objective” support. People believe what they see. That makes effective online video a must-have.
The reality of modern politics is that if you can’t make your case in a YouTube video, you have no chance of winning the hearts and minds of the public.
2. Brevity is art.
Part of the “effectiveness” factor is being able to boil an argument down to the point where it fits in a two-to-five-minute video clip. Case in point: one citizen activist was able, in 1:38, to sum up just how insignificant a 2009 federal budget cut proposal was:
3. The best ideas come from others.
The best part about YouTube is the opportunity for participation from the initiated, regardless of their “official” role. Obama’s nascent 2008 campaign had a lot of energy, yet it was tough for people to discern exactly what kind of change he offered. All Democrats were, in fact, plugging away at that theme after eight years of a Republican administration. But one Obama supporter – whose involvement in the campaign was tangential, though his enthusiasm wasn’t – summed it up by repurposing a famous 1984 Macintosh commercial:
The Obama campaign could not have cut this ad – it’s too direct, and it uses images and clips which are most likely protected by copyright. By supporting user generated content like this, YouTube invited a new level of citizen participation.
4. Compelling content is the most important factor in attracting an audience.
Never has publishing content been easier. Yet because of this, never has it been more important to create quality content: media consumers have plenty of choices.
It’s counter-intuitive: We think of the internet as this highly personalized frontier, where each user has the utmost control over the news he or she reads or the entertainment he or she consumes. Humans are social beings, and the internet augments that.
YouTube’s comments, video responses, subscriptions, and other site tools make it more than a place to post and share media; YouTube is a social network built on user connections.
But more that, YouTube success is based on the ability of an idea to pass from one person to another. High-ranked YouTube videos don’t amass viewers from independent searches, they come from recommendations. It’s the most obvious viral medium.
Jim Eltringham 