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Wait… who’s running in the actual race?
In this commercial, Sen. Barbara Boxer is seeking reelection by fending off Sarah Palin – who not only isn’t running, but isn’t from California.
Meanwhile, Carly Fiorina is not only challenging Boxer, but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Countless Republicans will take to the campaign trail in the next few months railing against President Obama, countless Democrats will dredge up the ghost of George W. Bush.
It’s an accepted (and effective) campaign tactic, made especially famous in 1994 when Republicans used then-new technology to morph images of opponents into Bill Clinton. So why stop here? Why not run against Jimmy Carter? Richard Nixon? Maybe President Mitchell from Dave (the real one, not the one that was actually Dave)?
Strasburg: Obama or Palin?
Merry Strasmas! With California, Arkansas, South Carolina, and other states taking a turn as centers of the political universe, Washington, D.C. is free to be the center of the baseball universe today thanks to Stephen Strasburg.
Strasburg, has little professional baseball experience, yet is already the standard-bearer for his team. In that way, he’s a little like the 2008 versions of both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.
DC likes to claim to be a secular town, but it’s a town that looks for saviors almost constantly. Whichever political party is out of power and seeking a way back in looks for the Chosen One who can at once articulate his or her side’s philosophy while appealing to wide demographics of the electorate. The list of would-be saviors is truly bipartisan: Howard Dean, Newt Gingrich, Fred Thompson, Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Bill Bradley, and John McCain have all been set up at various times in the last decade and a half to ride in on the white horse and save their party from ruin. Stephen Strasburg’s role as the savior of a franchise coming off consecutive 100-loss seasons and mired in last place is appropriate for the dialect of his new home town.
Having been mostly dominant in a quick ascendancy through the minors, Strasburg certainly looks like he belongs on the next level – just like both Obama and Palin looked like they were ready for the big stage of national politics in easily winning a Senate seat and a governorship, respectively. Both stumbled a bit out of the gate – allowing interviewers or non-scandals to take them off message. But Obama was prepared and came back from early hiccups to win his primary and, eventually, establish the perception of polished confidence. Palin never really got on track, and her debut on the national stage seemed rushed. Accounts of John McCain’s Vice Presidential selection process seem to confirm that she was rushed through the minors.
When Strasburg, who has been pitching professionally for less than a year, toes the rubber tonight, the Nationals will hope he is a player whose time has come, albeit earlier than most expected, and who will trust his stuff through the inevitable early struggles. They will hope they haven’t given the ball to a pitcher who isn’t quite ready for the big leagues.
They will hope for the pitching equivalent of Barack Obama. They will not, however, want Barack Obama actually pitching.
Fearless Forecast for Arkansas
Picking the winners in most of today’s primary contests is easy, according to the polls. Much more interesting, though, is reading the tea leaves and trying to gauge what the results mean – specifically in Arkansas.
As mentioned after the Democrat primary was sent to a runoff weeks ago, Bill Halter’s challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln is not about her standing with Arkansas’s non-existent liberal base. It does reflect that many Arkansans feel disenchanted, and the word on the street is that this malaise will bring Halter to victory.
Lincoln has tried to fight back by painting Halter as the puppet of national left-wing interests, working through the most famous Arkansas politician in history:
Bill Clinton, a Lincoln supporter, has gotten in on the act as well, appearing at a Little Rock rally last week and now in a television commercial in which he decries the influence of national unions on the race. “This is about using you and manipulating your votes,” the former president says. “If you want to be Arkansas’ advocate, vote for somebody who will fight for you.”
Clinton then got on a plane and flew back to either New York or Washington D.C., the two places he has lived for the past 17 years since he was elected President and his wife was elected as a Senator from a state that is not Arkansas.
But despite the idea that Halter is “too liberal” for Arkansas, that could dramatically help Democrats’ chances of keeping this seat.
Halter isn’t campaigning to the left of Lincoln in state, but he does benefit from left-wing energy from out of state. Much like Scott Brown’s insurgent campaign, Halter’s website allows anyone to chip in with GOTV phone calls. Donations are still pouring in, too. That won’t subside in the coming months, as liberal activists sense the chance to basically turn a seat from a squishy vote to a solid vote on their key issues. If Halter can continue to enjoy the fruits of national energy without alienating Arkansas voters, he will be a much more formidable candidate than Lincoln – who, despite the advantage of incumbency, would not have enjoyed those benefits.
Sunday Funnies: The REAL 30th anniversary this weekend
Despite Google’s little Pac-Man doodle on Friday, this weekend is more notable because Friday was the 30th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back.
The Empire Strikes Back might be the best sequel ever, and is regarded as the best of the Star Wars trilogy. But one can only wonder if it would have been as successful with the original ending:
Here’s a bonus one – this is what passed for a trailer in 1980, for the sequel to what was, at the time, the highest grossing movie ever:
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An enterprising Rhode Island School of Design student figured out how to bake cookies that make webcams do tricks:
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.
Maybe we shouldn’t be better than this?
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.
At least there’s no demon sheep.
A glimpse of the future
Politico today details the early spending of possible 2012 Republican candidates in building up their online infrastructure. The groundwork the contenders are laying now gives a good glimpse of how online race for the nomination might play out in two years.
The online campaigns of Obama in 2008, Howard Dean in 2004, John McCain in 2000, and even George W. Bush in 2004 were about creating channels that would most effectively target voters’ enthusiasm through various activities like fundraising, creating campaign events, and recruiting others to support the candidate.
In the context of 2012, that means Newt Gingrich, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney are leading the pack: all three have made heavy investments in online consultants, and have a strategy for building lists and maintaining targeted contact with each person on that list. Online operations, just like offline operations, depend on recruiting and communication with individuals on as individual basis as possible with the hope that each will later participate in a collective action (i.e., voting).
There are plenty of graphic designers who can make a pretty website and lots of videographers who can make funny or entertaining web videos. Winning online campaigns are all about the data. A spokesperson for Gingrich’s 527 sums it up well:
“One of the things we’re really big on here at American Solutions is sending the right message to the right people,” said Tim Cameron, the group’s director of digital operations. “We put a lot of money into our back-end infrastructure.”
Gingrich is deploying online ads across the internet. Pawlenty is turning his PAC into a portal for supporters to give to other candidates – giving Freedom First good information about what issues matter to which donors and forming a good base of information for Pawlenty’s 2012 run.
Sarah Palin continues to attract excitement, but her online efforts, like her messaging, appears to lack focus; despite large numbers of social network followers she is not investing heavily in data management. Ditto for Mike Huckabee, whose outreach strategy consists of, according to Politico: “deputizing a volunteer in every state to run a state-specific account for it on Facebook, Twitter and Ning, a smaller social-networking site popular with grass-roots political activists.”
(Note: Ning is no longer a free service.)
This isn’t just about online presences, either; understanding the potential of online outreach is part of understanding what it takes to build a winning campaign. If these trends continue, look for Palin and Huckabee to have online campaigns that look shiny, draw good support numbers, but fail to launch them out of second tier status and into the midst of legitimate White House contenders.
Sunday Funnies: Springtime for Hitler
Earlier this week, the production company behind Downfall made waves by pulling parody videos of the film’s climactic scene from YouTube. This resulted in not one, but TWO videos of the Adolf Hitler rant scene.
First, Hitler as the producer of Downfall ordering the parody clips to be pulled:
Then, Hitler realizes his time as a running internet joke is over:
140-character sponsorships
Though they haven’t shown up quite yet, the phrase of the day is “sponsored tweets” – Twitter’s long-overdue way to make money off its product. (When you hear anyone say “sponsored tweets,” scream real loud!)
I’ve searched a few terms that seemed like good candidates for these ads to show up but haven’t seen a sponsored tweet yet – which may be the first time anyone has ever wanted to see advertising but couldn’t find it.
Sponsored tweets do offer a new political tactic in advance of the 2010 elections. Candidates have been using Google ads to frame themselves and their opponents for years, and 2010 will be no exception. Search engine and Facebook ads, though, are closer to traditional advertising: you see creative (text or a picture), and if it’s interesting enough you take some sort of action. Clicking on an online ad is a more instant (and measurable) reaction that buying something after seeing a television commercial, but the concept is the same.
Twitter ads appear to be more message advertising – so the “creative” may not even come directly from the ad sponsor. Lets say you’re working for Republican Keith Fimian, running against Rep. Gerald Connolly to represent Virginia’s lovely 10th district (which includes this blog). If someone searches for Connolly on Twitter, you might sponsor a tweet from a voter or activist – rather than from the official Fimian campaign Twitter account – that calls on Connolly to get heaved out of office.
This strategy has been tested somewhat with Google ads, but mostly as a joke – searching for John McCain, for instance, might bring up sponsored links for the AARP. But Twitter ads give brands – political or corporate – a chance to use third party voices to frame search results. No doubt this will become as much art as science as the 2010 elections approach.
Jim Eltringham 