I hope the Democrats have a Plan B because relying on Facebook and Twitter to win elections is a strategy for suckers. We are not a closed society. Social media is valuable, but it doesn’t have the same impact here as it has in closed societies where there are literally no other ways to effectively organize beyond the reach of the law. Howard Dean enacted a 50-state strategy; he didn’t just rely on his internet-savvy. I don’t want to read any more of this crap coming out of the Democratic leadership. We can’t afford any more stupidity in this country. The Republicans have already filled the Stupid Cup.
If you want a model for success in 2012, look back to 2008. That was the best campaign in history. Yes, social media was a huge part of it. But that’s built in. And the Republicans probably dominate in the use of Twitter, so it’s not like we have some edge on that platform.
Of course, Republicans in general are clueless and lack creativity. But twittering is no substitute for fieldwork.
I really hope this is just Democrats throwing crap out there for right-wing outfits(yes .. RollCall is an establishment paper) to write stupid, easy stories. But Boo is right. And if this is for real, it’s another example of how clueless Democratic leaders are. Ugh!!
meh. that strategy is about as well thought out as the outfit Pelosi’s wearing in that article.
The dumbest thing they ever did was get rid of Dean. When that happened I knew the Democratic Party would once again fail to meet my already lowered expectations.
It was actually Dean who gave us a LOT of Blue Dogs. That is how he got the Dems control of so many districts… by finding really centrist Dems, who could win in iffy districts.
I didn’t read the entire article but do you really think that this is the ‘only’ plan? David Plouff would beg to differ, I suspect.
How many people who write/read on the blog are Precinct Captains or active in their House District or for their Senate candidate? Boots on the ground stuff for months on end?
I know, you are going to yell at me but sometimes we are really quick to complain from our couches. And if you are not on your couch, good for you!
This is a silly article. Media people (both news and PR) are absolutely obsessed with the use of social media in marketing. Given that political communications folks are doing a form of advertising themselves, it’s no surprise they’re all excited about it too. Personally, I think the uses of social media to sell anything – whether it be Democrats or diapers – is vastly overblown, mostly by terrified marketers who see all the old media platforms fracturing, along with individuals viewing preferences and as a result, their formerly beaucoup advertising dollars. So, it seems like the marketers are mostly just trying to sell gullible clients (again, here, political parties, there, diaper manufacturers) on how “Social media is just really where you need to be” in a flailing and fairly disingenuous attempt to stem the inevitable tide.
I don’t think, however, that one can draw from this article that the Dems (or the GOP for that matter) are simply and idiotically going to rely on social media to win in 2012. This is a dumb puff piece (this one is dumb, but some puff pieces are interesting and enjoyable), nothing more. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. David Plouffe and Steve Israel and their people aren’t fools.
David Plouffe and Steve Israel and their people aren’t fools.
Plouffe gets the benefit of the doubt, for now. Steve Israel doesn’t.
Fair enough.
booman, the DNC and OFA have been doing a lot of recruiting for organizers and interns. They have way more applications than expected. There are already meetings occurring all over the country and my “online friends” have reported that the turnout to these meetings is high and the people are ready and pumped.
So no, this isn’t going to be all Twitter but according to an article I read last year, Republicans are besting Dems on Twitter by a lot. Dems do need to catch up.
Well, 140 characters is about the brain capacity of most American voters.
So maybe they’re on to something.
Here’s the problem Democrats have. All of the mass media – newspapers, TV, cable – are owned by folks who support Republicans and use the free resources at their disposal to offset the Democratic message. So the Democratic Party winds up financing its opposition. That is the situation that has to be addressed before 2012.
Facebook and Twitter are not silver bullets, but instead of messaging the mass and hoping it sticks, the messaging gets passed by folks who agree with it to folks who at a minimum are acquainted with them and tolerate their activism.
Twitter is a very interesting medium. It does not appear to have spam filters or penalized sockpuppets, and the nature of retweeted microblogging is such that apply a Turing test to the messages is very difficult. It is a natural medium for Republicans because they can set up paid shops of Twits or Robo-Twits to pump out a focus-group-tested message. And link to focus-group-tested shared video and picture resources. That essentially is using Twitter as a mass medium one-way messaging technology.
The Democrats need to remember that the Republican strategy is always to divide people power and suppress the vote. And the Democratic strategy when it has been successful is to organize people power and get as many people as possible out to vote. Mass media messaging not universally is intended to suppress the vote of the other guys. By nature, it is not great at playing to Democratic campaign strength.
The 2008 campaign used a number of strategic devices to build electoral strength. The primary between two strong candidates who were both potential history-makers was an unplanned gain that built interest from Iowa through June and the “Great Compromise”. The story appealed to the horse race instincts of the Village media even when they were inflating Rev. Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers. The convention in Denver pulled the party together flawlessly; including the open-to-the public open-air acceptance speech. All along the way, the imagery was of big huge crowds of people; even when the local mass media covered nothing but a clip of the rally, what was apparent were the huge crowds. Nothing says people power like huge crowds, which is why the Tea Party motivated the Republican base but otherwise was a bust; at least three rallies in an insignificant (by population size) state capital have pulled more people in Madison than anything the Tea Party pulled in Washington DC, even with the round-the-clock media hype not only on Fox but on its competitors.
To the extent that Facebook and Twitter can coordinate and mobilize crowds through private tweets and statuses and publicize events through public tweets and fan page statuses, they will be more useful tools to Democrats than the Republican mass media approach is to Republicans. I hope there is someone in the new media operation of the DNC, Democratic leadership, and White House that understand this.
What the Democratic leadership has been very bad at is covering all of the geography so as to make Republicans spend to defend. And prematurely writing off large numbers of Congressional and legislative districts and states. And to a greater extent than Republicans, Democrats let their candidates step on the Democratic Party message. That and the failure to stand strong on Party principles is why so many independents have tended not to trust individual Democratic politicians.
There are two things I learned from Karl Rove that I wish Democrats would learn. (1) You don’t compete against the opposition’s strength, you attack it. And (2) do the electoral math down to the precinct level and figure out how to make the numbers. Which is why they attacked Gore’s intellect, Kerry’s valor,, and Obama’s centrism. Haughty elite, cynically scheming unpatriotic soldier, and extreme socialist reverse racist: those were the attacks carried out relentlessly.
Scott Walker has inadvertently given us the key to attacking Republican strength: Citizens United, the Koch Brothers, and who’s buying your government. Problem is, Democrats can’t use the mass media to deliver that message without getting into and endless “he said, she said” argument over basic incontrovertible facts. So how is it that you expose the degree to which Citizens United allows government to be sold to the highest bidder, which guess what isn’t the unions and the environmentalists? What is the medium that you can use effectively?
Answer that successfully and watch for a Democratic landslide that reverses 2010 dramatically and forces the Republican Party to get real or die.
I would never underestimate David Plouffe….now democratic leaders, well, that’s a different story.
To twitter or not to twitter isn’t really the question, in my view. What is being twittered, texted, e-mailed, spoken, broadcast and televised is. I know I’m not up to speed with all the forces that come into play in today’s political debate, (I’m an old dinosaur) but one of the most effective Democratic campaigns in my lifetime occurred way back in 1948. Dems could do worse than they are currently if they do not review some of Truman’s “whistle stop” speeches in the last weeks of that campaign. The issues he speaks of, I know, are not current, but the message still is.