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November 18, 2003
Important if True: Online and Offline Meet Up to Change PoliticsEd Cone explains exactly why Howard Dean's "open style" of politics is a big deal--and a big story--whether he or not he wins. This will scramble the mind of the press if the press retains its master narrative: winning.Ed Cone— journalist, weblogger, tech thinker, biz writer—has done what is so far the definitive piece on What’s Different About Dean and why it matters. It makes a powerful case that there is something out there… emergent: Even if Dean fails to capture the Democratic nomination, he has made [internet] technology an integral factor in national campaigns for the foreseeable future. Not since the televised Nixon-Kennedy debates has there been a comparable shift in the art and science of running a campaign. Take that, horse race. Writing in Ziff Davis’s Baseline magazine, Cone argues that Dean is a big deal whether he or not he prevails in the end. This scrambles the brains of the press in the degree that the press believes its own story— that winning the race is not only the point of a presidential campaign, but also the departure point for reporting on it, the base line for the political story, the thing that’s really real. Winning has for a long time been the “master narrative” of campaign journalism, (I wrote about it here) even though other stories are allowed in. Without addressing them directly, Cone says: fellow journalists, the art and science of running a campaign are changing before our eyes. Whatever happens in the race, (which could go many ways) there’s the import of what Dean and Company are discovering about the Internet: now. They are showing us how tools developed online can generate action offline, and affect people’s lives— including the nation’s political life. “I’m obsessed with offline,” says Zephyr Teachout, the director of Internet organizing for the Howard Dean presidential campaign. (That’s a switch.) Here’s Cone: The lessons of the Dean campaign do not just apply to politics. Teachout and her compatriots have laid bare the essential power of the Internet to marketers of all types, from clothing to industrial equipment to financial services. Cone isn’t a recruit or supporter of Dean’s politically. But I think he is intellectually. He is fascinated by what’s happening, and tries to explain it in “what’s the fuss about” fashion, loosely joining the various pieces together—the Dean weblog, the meet-up method, the fundraising by Net, the local “cells,” the thinking at headquarters, and the difference it could all make. He leaves enough space to let you think it through yourself. Cone is currently expanding his sense of community (and journalism) at his own site and in his work as a columnist for the Greensboro (NC) News & Record. Meanwhile, he writes about Dean expanding politics with tools and strategies that tap the power of “community,” which here simply means people doing it for themselves because they want to help Dean and participate. With the Internet, an effective campaign creates a community that will on its own begin to market your product for you. Properly done, you won’t be able – or want — to control it. One would not want to control it. IMPORTANT IF TRUE. Think what that does to one of the most reliable “laws” of presidential campaigns: that top down control of the message and the operation as a whole is essential, the way the game is played. Think how many news stories have been generated over the years by that thesis. Think of all the “disarray” stories when the operatives at the top lose control or fight over it. There’s a big narrative premise at stake: The trick is to turn the buyers of a product, concept or candidate into evangelists, willing to take action on their own to spur demand. And the recruitment doesn’t have to cost much. Willing to take action on their own. This only happens if you don’t control everything. The payoff is a powerful multiplier effect that turns anyone into a potential campaign worker. It gives Dean a national network of troops on the ground, unpaid but on task. This is the great innovation of the Dean campaign: using the Internet to raise both support and funding, before rivals figure out how to do the same. As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, read the whole thing and come back for some discussion…. Some discussion: Among his examples, Cone shows Dean supporters in North Carolina using meet-ups to draft handwritten letters they will send to undecided voters in Iowa. Maybe that means nothing to the final result. But it seems to me the Iowa Caucuses, which are one big meet-up, are a pretty good test. Do powerful Internet tools shrewdly deployed result in turnout offline at a distributed caucus event? The test is not just for Dean. It’s also for the Cone thesis: that there has been a shift in the science and sensibility of campaigning for President. Either we will or we won’t see a different pattern emerging into its own. Either we will or will not observe a “community” dividend on the ground for Dean. I posed this to Cone after I read his article. He e-mailed back: To the degree that local organizing capabilities matter in the caucus system, Iowa is a great test. But it’s also a limited one, because most states send voters to the polls – so in that sense, New Hampshire and other early states will be more relevant, because they will measure the ability of the Dean campaign to translate the preliminary real-world activities we know it can generate into the ultimate offline activity for any campaign – voting. “None of this means Dean is going to win,” Cone says back at his weblog. “And none of it can make him win on its own — message, tone, and external factors are critical — but it’s a huge part of his success so far.” I agree with that note of caution. But I bet it won’t stop people from arguing against a claim he does not make: that the Internet campaign will certainly spell the difference next year. Prepare for the “nothing really new here” articles to come. Prepare for savvy analysts in the press who will be out to de-excite. Prepare for a lot of knowing chuckles the first time the Dean campaign disagrees with the “community” and people get upset. (It will happen.) In general, the press is better at pattern repetition than pattern recognition. But who knows? We may see a split among journalists on the matter of the real story in 2004. Cone has his eye on developments after and in spheres far removed from electoral politics. E.J. Dionne made a related observation this weekend on CNN’s the “Capital Gang.” What’s striking me is how similar the Dean campaign is to the Goldwater campaign in the sense that Dean ends up speaking up for all these liberals who feel excluded, left out. The government’s in the hands of the other party. Just like conservatives did when Barry Goldwater ran for president. And he’s created this vast organization, just the way Goldwater did. The good news for Democrats is the Goldwater movement changed the country. The bad news for Democrats is that Barry Goldwater got clobbered in 1964. Dean may lose, and yet change the Democrats, change the country. In that case, the demand on journalists would be to tell both stories. But they arise from different narratives of political life: community and connection vs. command and control. Ed Cone has written the primer for one. The other story journalists know cold. For a bigger picture view, read this, from Ryan Lizza of the New Republic, alongside Cone’s exemplary work. Then put the two together. (Thanks to Daily Kos, who adds his own analysis.) See Dave Winer’s Tips for Candidates re: Weblogs from September 2003 Dan Gilmour’s report from back in August: Dean Campaign’s Net Savvy Shows. See the comments section if you are really interested in the subject.
Posted by Jay Rosen at November 18, 2003 11:46 PM
Comments
Jay: I posted some thoughts at my site; here's an except: Ed Cone's piece seems to be missing one critical point: anything perceived good guy Howard Dean can do with technology can be replicated by his enemies ... The Web knows no politics, it just offers politicians another way to get people to the polls. All Dean's "he gets it!" cheerleaders are gonna have some crow to digest if somebody really repellant uses all these tools to get elected in the future. As a paid-up member of the International Liberal Media Conspiracy I'd prefer to a Dean to a Bush, naturally, but I can live with either of them. But I do sorta worry about who comes next, because the tools are there for any old crank to exploit (Osama and Saddam spring to mind). Posted by: tom mangan at November 19, 2003 12:40 PM | Permalink Tom: I think you need to remember that "all these tools" are simply that. Tools. Of course tools can be used for good or evil. It is what people SAY that is most important. These tools are simply making it easier to say things to more people in a more conversational manner. Dean is doing a good job. Compare his blog with the Bush "blog." Same tools, different affect (and effect). It is the story and the way it is told -- its voice -- that matter. Posted by: Elizabeth at November 19, 2003 1:14 PM | Permalink Jay: true, but a key chapter of the "Dean gets it" story is that he's all tech-savvy and somehow, by implication, this makes him a better candidate. Tech-savvy can have all sorts of consequences depending on who's the hammer and who's the nail ... so maybe there's grounds for a bit of skepticism on the high-tech angle of his campaign. Remember what happened to Netscape ... the pioneer made all the early investors rich, but the company still got destroyed by a more powerful force. Posted by: tom at November 19, 2003 3:40 PM | Permalink Tom: "Dean's 'he gets it!' cheerleaders..." I do like that. Touche. A phrase good for what I'm sure will be many moments of excess or dim-witted enthusiasm for things Dean. You will have opportunities for bubble popping because there are bound to be pretensions floating around when people intellectualize their hope. I do think you have to start from there-- people have hopes for politics, (not for Doctor Dean as dream candidate) that seem to spring from what Dean is doing, and who he is attracting. I tried to describe this as journalist Ed Cone being "for" Dean intellectually-- not a sin at all, in my view. But neither is it the common journalistic stance. Now you wish to warn us that the same exciting tools not only could be used for ill, (a banal point, though true) but that it is easy to imagine these particular tools "falling into the wrong hands," so to speak. Or just being downloaded by Osama's men. You are right: the sinister version of meet up is ridiculously easy to imagine. Picture Fascism with it. Technology cuts both ways, is the way people normally put this, yes? But does it follow that writers, observers and political people who cheered Dean's use of new Internet tools and Net-fed forms of community in 2003 are going to have to "digest some crow"--face up to their foolish oversights and wrong projections--if Osama turns yet another Western technology against the West? I don't see how, Tom. Take early adopters of the cell phone who said, "this is going to transform telecommunications and free people from..." Should they now eat crow because cell phones are used by all criminal gangs world wide? Are cell phones--another way to connect people whereever they are--fundamentally different from what Cone is talking about? I'd have to see the argument for why. How about journalists who said after the Gulf War that, come the next war, satellite phones are going to make confining the press in Pentagon space impossible (I was there at post-war conferences in 1992 where this was quite accurately assessed.) Should we prepare their crow because now Al Queda uses satellite phones too? Don't see it. It seems to me that this kind of knowledge--"wow, this could become a nightmare if the people who want to destroy us get hold and use it to..."--is the very condition we live in now. And we are doomed to be aware of it as we go forward into freedom. Every increase from now on in communicative capacity, competence, autonomy, convenience, privacy, control, efficiency--and almost every good use we find for these increases--is going to possibly benefit Al Queda and like networks. Or already is. Our tools are their tools, so our defense cannot be based on that. What Net person, what citizen, what journalist, can afford to ignore this? Dean "he gets it!" cheerleaders (I do love that!) are responsible for thinking through the consequences, if what they hail as emergent grows ever larger and succeeds in changing the rules. That is a fair demand. Perhaps there should be more of that reflection, beginning now. "Start up the nightmare machine, you're gonna need it later." I'm not being funny; and it isn't funny. But surely step one in that act of civil imagination, (and that's what it is) is to take the various Dean "discoveries" seriously, pour attention into understanding them, and look patiently at what is actually there that is, yes, different and potent. And it would be equally good to apprehend the sleeping hopes that predated the tools and trends that Ed Cone describes as things Dean. His is a great act of reporting because we can have this debate.... now. See Tom Mangan's post on the matter: Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 19, 2003 3:59 PM | Permalink of course others can and will use the technology. beyond being the first to do it, i make no special claims for dean in that regard -- except for his willingness to cede some control to the grassroots, which may be the X factor in really making this technology work to capacity, and which other candidates may not be able to do. and it's important to note, as i have at my blog, that all the tech and all the control-giving-upness in the world won't elect, say, moseley braun. i make no judgement on the "goodness" of dean. i looked at his success as measured in polling, volunteers, and dollars, and wrote a technology and strategy case study about it. my guess is that bush will win the election. but as jay pointed out, that's not the only important story. Speaking as just one techno-weenie who is inclined toward Dean (though not committed), the exhilerating thing about the "he gets it" phenomenon is NOT that Dean actually gets it, or understands the technology or any of that. It's that Dean and his staff, are self-confident enough to NOT be in control, to start an experiment and let it go. Implicitly, there's a faith that uncontrolled citizen involvement in the process is, in itself, A Good Thing. This, I believe, is the truly radical notion of Dean's blog, Meetup, etc. No other candidate "gets it" to that degree. The others, as best I can see, follow the tired "consumer" paradigm that sees citizens as consumers and politics as "products" for consumption. Posted by: Roger Karraker at November 19, 2003 8:55 PM | Permalink Where's Jeff Jarvis when we need him? He could tell us politics is a conversation. The experiment should be fun to watch, for sure. What it reminds me of most is the John Doe Clubs from the movie "Meet John Doe." It certainly celebrates the "people are inherently good and smart" philosophy, vs. the "people are sinful and must be controlled" philosophy. and it's important to note, as i have at my blog, that all the tech and all the control-giving-upness in the world won't elect, say, moseley braun. Why not? I asked Ed the same thing in the comments at my blog. Here's his reply: i don't mean to pick on ms. moseley braun, i also used kucinich as an example at my blog -- the point being that a candidate who lacks the ability to fire up a broad swath of the electorate for reasons of message, presentation, etc., will not be transformed by technology into a contender. you gotta have game in the first place. dean has the anti-war message, he's clearly bright and speaking his mind, he's attractive at this moment to many people...and that still might not get him elected -- the tech is a way of maximizing potential, not inventing it. Posted by: tom mangan at November 20, 2003 10:11 AM | Permalink Traditional means, top-down control with tv ads, are battles of heavy artillery. From the stands, it looks like the insiders are using the same old methods that split the ticket and lost the last election. When confronted with an impossible threat like that, switch the battle to different technology, different ground, or a different purpose. And of course blogger bubble-up-ideas model has a lot of promise for bringing up new political techniques. It just seems odd to me that they wouldn't want to keep an eye on it, swing by to see what they're coming up with, drop in for a chat to keep the lines of communication open for later, just in case. Posted by: Heather at November 22, 2003 8:43 PM | Permalink |
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