Patrick Ruffini

Sanford Shouldn't Resign

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:09:30 -0700

That title is provocative, and deliberately so. I'd like to play Devil's Advocate and argue that blindly going along with the Dump Sanford crowd could seriously damage Republican elected officials' ability to weather future, hopefully less serious storms.

At the core of the Sanford and Ensign episodes is the cloud of "hypocrisy" that hangs over any Republican who strays from the bonds of their marriage. (Quickly forgetting that all who commit adultery are hypocrites, having taken a solemn vow of marriage.) Because Democrats are perceived as more socially libertine, they get off easier.

This is a structural disadvantage that, on the margins, hurts Republican officeholders, forcing them into resignation or disgrace more easily than their equally adulterous Democratic counterparts.

Simply put, it is a strategic error to sanctify the idea that it's worse when Republicans cheat. The hypocrisy charge exacts a double penalty on Republicans where none exists for Democrats -- first, in the accusation of hypocrisy itself, and second, in the media whipping social conservatives into a frenzy in a bid to belatedly "enforce" their moral code -- exactly the thing the secular media believes you shouldn't do 364 days out of the year -- to hound a Republican out of office.

Some will argue that conservatives should enforce a higher standard upon themselves. In cases of corruption or illegality, I have agreed. The stench of systemic corruption can be grist for severe electoral losses, as it was in 2006, and from a party-strategic perspective must be purged immediately. But adultery is different -- a human failing that strikes Democrats and Republicans equally, and one in which there is a certain presumption of privacy unless there is illegal behavior (Clinton, Spitzer) or it affects job performance (Sanford). Do Republicans want to purge their ranks based exclusively on a test of personal moral conduct? How exactly does this help solve the (inaccurate, IMO) perception of the Republican Party as intolerant and dominated by the religious right?

This is not to say that Sanford's disappearance was not a serious matter. Whether that alone is cause for his departure is a question that will be seriously debated. What I do think is clear is that Sanford's affair cannot be a factor in determing whether he stays or goes. If Sanford had been hiking the Appalachian Trail, would you still be calling for his head?

* * *

It would be a mistake to deny that religious and moral judgments don't impel people to the political practice of social conservatism. But social conservatism has won significant victories only when driven by valid public policy concerns. The breakdown of the family figured heavily in the welfare reform debate in the last decade, and Proposition 8 won because proponents raised the issue of what children would be taught in schools.

When social conservatism is driven by public policy, it wins. Social conservatism has borne more than its fair share of criticism because there is strong public resistance (not to mention GOP elite resistance) to the idea that public policy should be outwardly informed by religious precepts. It is only through a fusion with secular public policy goals (lower teen pregnancy rates, fewer out-of-wedlock births, less poverty) that social conservatism gains broad acceptance. Indeed, social communitarianism is part of what's behind David Cameron's rise in Britain.

There are valid public policy reasons to be pro-life and pro-traditional marriage that are unaffected by someone having an affair. If we fall into the trap of accepting an affair as a threat to these general principles by making our reaction to it the expression of social conservatism in the political/policy realm, we feed directly into the people who would enforce a double standard on Republicans and make it easier for people to destroy Republican political careers (not to mention social conservatism) over personal indiscretions.

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Change Requires Accountability

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:11:10 -0700

When the #AllBarackChannel realizes something is going wrong, it's probably time to pay attention:

Obama's spending proposals and a record-breaking national debt inherited from President Bush that is projected to grow could be Obama's political Achilles heels, and one reason he often underlines fiscal prudence as a top priority.
The percentage of people in a Pew Research Center poll out today who expressed approval for the way Obama is handling the economy slipped to 52 percent from 60 percent in April.
Recent NBC/Wall Street Journal and CBS/New York Times polls showed that nearly six in 10 people said the Obama administration is not doing enough to reduce the deficit, and the Pew poll showed about the same percentage disapprove of the government spending billions to keep General Motors and Chrysler in business.
"They worry that government is going to be too involved in the economy and the everyday lives of the American people," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

Obama faces this conundrum: while the country voted resoundingly for a political change from George W. Bush, Obama continues to preside over a country that is fundamentally conservative not simply in the center-right political sense, but in its skepticism of big structural changes to the basic nature of the economy.

When hopeandchange is inextricably tied to disturbing and unsettling changes like auto nationalization and mountains of new debt, the whole "change" mantra tends to lose its luster.

The fear right now is not that the government will do too little, but that it will do too much. Popular resistance to any action to support the domestic auto industry runs counter to the natural political instinct to "do something" to help the little guy keep his job. The American people are way out ahead of Obama and the Republicans because of a basic sense that nationalizing industry is just not something we do here in America, not even temporarily. This is that basic don't-rock-the-boat mentality speaking, I think.

Furthermore, what if health care is effectively tied in to this? The proposition that the President is going to do for health care what he's doing for the auto industry seems pretty toxic, and has a kernel of plausibility, in that new government-owned entitites are springing up all over the place competing in the private market. It's not a huge narrative leap to suggest that neither the government standing behind your new muffler nor it competing in the health insurance market are particularly well-advised ideas.

It is here that I think the seeds of a Republican political recovery in 2010 are born. Republicans don't need to convince the electorate that Obama is the second coming of Karl Marx. They need merely to establish that if one has any doubt that the stimulus, or Government Motors, or health care will work out exactly as planned, the only prudent thing is to vote Republican as a hedge. There has been sweeping economic change these last few months, some of it created by the previous Administration, and little of it good. Sorting out the mess will require a huge national effort, not just one party. And times of sweeping change require accountability, not its complete absence.

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Does Money Even Matter in Elections Anymore?

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:34:33 -0700

In Virginia today, this lost:

How many times do I have to say it? In the modern campaign, early money and establishment support matters far, far less than it used to, and could actually turn out to be a handicap -- particularly when money becomes the story.

Campaigns like McAuliffe's that are focused above all else on money, and that put out self-congratulatory press releases about their "grassroots organization" and their Noah's Ark of big-name consultants, frequently forget that money can't buy two other M's: message and momentum. As a campaign manager, I'd much, much rather be running the guy with a message and no money versus the guy with money and no message. Why? Because the guy with a message will eventually find momentum, which will deliver all the money he needs when he needs it.

Of course, political consultants (and, disclosure: I'm one), like early money and quarterly numbers stories because they determine whether and how much they will get paid. But the reality is that money rarely translates into votes, particularly when fundraising is a fig leaf covering up glaring flaws in a candidate's argument. Ask Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani (who raised more than any other Republican from individuals, all for a single delegate) what having big, early bundler money gets you.

I didn't predict Creigh Deeds would be the nominee until last week, but I did have a strong sense that Terry McAuliffe would crater once this DC fixer met grassroots reality. Placing me squarely in the analytical minority inside the Beltway, I tweeted this on January 29th:

Moran did not catch on partly because of his brother's baggage, but McAuliffe remained hugely vulnerable in a party that had just last year spit up and chewed out its most inevitable candidate in recent history, McAuliffe's former boss. That vulnerability caught up with him when Deeds became a viable candidate.

And lo and behold, within days of Deeds catching on, which according to this Google search trends chart, happened sometime around May 27th, five days after the WaPo endorsement, he was outpacing McAuliffe by the 31st in search queries and most criticially, he suddenly had money. He was buying broadcast in Northern Virginia, and in fact bought a couple of ads on NBC's special on the Obama White House, a smart way of targeting Democratic voters, something even McAuliffe didn't do. Around this time, I noticed that the sea of McAuliffe signs on my way to work was thinning, to be replaced decisively by a sea of "Washington Post Endorses Deeds" signs. The coup de grace came in the final 24 hours, when with money to burn Deeds bought a "network blast" on Google's ad network, essentially taking over ad inventory on every website (including this one) if you lived in Virginia.

The moral of the story is not to run an ascetic campaign for its own sake, but to realize that money and political success are growing more and more intertwined. This is not 1988 or 1992, when a Paul Simon or Paul Tsongas could have a surplus of political success combined a deficit of money, strangling their upstart campaigns in the crib. Today, the money comes in virtually instantaneously online at the first hint of success. The McAuliffe model of banking money early to generate momentum later through ads is broken. The new model is to generate organic opportunities for momentum first then monetize them, punching through the finish line in a final blitzkrieg at the end.

Disclosure: I consult for Bob McDonnell.

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Sotomayor Isn't Roberts

Fri, 29 May 2009 02:32:12 -0700

The debate over whether and how much Senate Republicans should oppose Sonia Sotomayor is grinding along. I personally don't think it's the worst thing in the world if Republicans got more aggressive than they currently seem to be comfortable with, and for the following reasons.

Not Blowing the Whistle on a Solid Liberal Like Sotomayor Creates a Bad Precedent for Decades to Come. The left is trying to spin the Sotomayor nomination as a pick in the mold of what moderate conservative John Roberts was to Bush -- a moderate liberal "slam dunk." In reality, she is more like the liberal Sam Alito, whose strongly conservative tendencies were seen as a suitable replacement upon Rehnquist's death (remembering that Roberts first had to clear a lower conservative bar to replace Sandra Day O'Connor). Is there any doubt that Sotomayor wouldn't at least tie Ginsburg and Stevens as the biggest liberal on the Court?

The calculus is this: if you let a leftist judge sail through where an Alito would get at least 40 no votes you create a precedent whereby it's considered okay for Obama or future Presidents to nominate far-leftists with impunity, while conservatives always have to jump through extra hoops. The President gets his judges most of the time, but differences are made at the margins. Republican Presidents will always have an incentive to be more cautious or play games with Supreme Court picks, as Bush tried to do in nominating Harriet Miers, which was initially seen as a play to placate Harry Reid, who wanted a non-judge.

In past years, Senate Democrats have been far, far more aggressive in stalling Bush judicial picks than even Republicans were in the late Clinton years. Republicans played up their light treatment of liberals Ginsburg and Breyer during the 2005 court fights, even coining the term "The Ginsburg Precedent" to legitimize bipartisan support for an ideologue with judicial credentials, but where did this get us exactly? The media's playing up the danger of opposing a minority is cruelly ironic in light of the Democrats' shameful treartment of Miguel Estrada and Janice Rogers Brown, and their specific strategy of Borking minority conservatives to lower courts to head off a future Supreme Court pick. Schumer and Co. play for keeps, and Senate Republicans should not be afraid to do the same when we are talking about lifetime appointments.

We Can't Be Afraid of Legitimate Criticism of the "First" Minority. Much hay has been made of how delicately Republicans will have to handle the first Latina nominee, as though the media assumes that the GOP's first instinct would be to race-bait.

Well, here's some news: Sotomayor is not the only "first" minority on the political scene today the media routinely shields with a protecting coating because of the genuine historicity of their rise. Another lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Many of the same reasons for treating Sotomayor "delicately" were brought up as reasons for treating Obama delicately last year, so much so that the heroic self-conception of the press as a check on the government has become disturbingly laughable.

Republicans cannot shy away from legitimate critcisms of Sotomayor's job performance and judicial philosophy, just as we will have to learn to more effectively criticize Obama. If you concede the point that criticism of an historic, "first" minority is out of bounds, that doesn't say much for GOP prospects for the next eight years.

At the same time, we will need to ostracize those who would bring ethnicity into the equation. If Republicans don't like the tenor of the opposition, we should not be afraid to nuke the bad actors on our side while amping up criticism of Sotomayor's legal record. The trick is not so much being delicate but being rough both with the left and certain people on the right to insulate against charges that our opposition is anything other than policy-based. The ideal messaging to my mind would be as follows:

Tom Tancredo is an idiot.
Sotomayor's decisions, her stated penchant for "making policy" from the bench, and her high reversal rate among those she aspires to join all render her nomination profoundly troubling.
Tom Tancredo is still an idiot.

Remember also: Supreme Court fights are inherently elite D.C. fights. Don't expect voters, even Latino voters, to passionately engage. Most people correctly perceive the Court as being far removed and even irrelevant to their daily life and whether they will keep their job -- and that's as it should be. Has there ever been a mass movement for or against a Court nominee, even a Thurgood Marshall, a Sandra Day O'Connor, or a Clarence Thomas?

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Local Obama Organizers Struggle to Keep the Movement Alive

Sun, 24 May 2009 19:05:07 -0700

During the election, the groups functionality on My.BarackObama.com was a remarkably efficient way to communicate to Democratic activists on the local level. Republicans wanting to volunteer for McCain-Palin signed a sheet at county victory headquarters, and might or might not get a call back. If you wanted to get plugged into the Obama campaign, all you had to do was sign up to your local group online, and a local organizer would send out regular e-mails with volunteer opportunities, which if printed out would be something like 10 pages long.

Ever since, the group listservs have served as an EKG of sorts for the movement. It's not so surprising that activity is way down from the election. In one Gmail inbox I used to track groups in swing states, MyBO group emails went from 4,200 messages in October to just under 300 in the last 30 days -- a decline of 93%. However, the content too is considerably less upbeat. Here's part of a message I got to my local group summing up recent election results and looking forward to the June Virginia primary:

Let's prove that 2008 wasn't a fluke because of the cult of Obama....the long term demographic trends are in our favor but WE CAN'T BRING CENSUS AND POLLING DATA TO THE BALLOT BOX and declare victory.

...

So far this year there have been several special elections in Virginia and the results haven't been good....WE RECENTLY LOST TWO CITY COUNCIL SEATS IN ALEXANDRIA (voted 72% for Obama) and came close to losing Brian Moran's Delegate seat and Rep. Gerry Connolly's Chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (home of 1 million people). Because of EXTREMELY LOW TURNOUT these races came down to a handful of votes as the ELECTORATE OF THE "PAST" DECIDED THE WINNER.

On a similar note, PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS US to get involved in the upcoming HEALTH CARE REFORM BATTLE. So, keep in mind that elections might require the most work for the "community organizer" in us, but WE NEED TO STAY ENGAGED IN OUR COMMUNITY TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT after our candidates get elected.

The all-caps exhortations seem kind of.... forced, no? Like it isn't as easy anymore without Obama on the ballot. As the e-mail accurately notes, there is a partisan realignment of sorts going on in Northern Virginia local elections, with Republicans coming within one percent of capturing the chairmanship of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, a Republican picking up the supervisor seat of the newly elected chair in a quite Democratic, close-in district, a pickup of two seats on the Alexandria City Council, and the almost inexplicable near-win of Brian Moran's old House of Delegates seat.

Looking forward, the e-mail sounds an ominous note. Northern Virginia was ground zero in the statewide shift to Obama last November, yet the implication is that Democrats have sat on their hands ever since, content in their victory. There is fear that this complacency might threaten the Obama push on health care and other issues.

Another data point is the DNC continuing to lag the RNC in monthly fundraising, despite the incumbent advantage. Remember that the Obama e-mail list has been brought in-house at the DNC, and fundraising returns from THE LIST (a.k.a. "the 13 million") count towards the DNC's bottom line. And yet, the same fearsome fundraising machine that utterly blew the doors off the GOP last year can't keep pace with the RNC's aging direct mail house file.

There is an inherent problem with "organizing" while in power and it's by no means unique to Obama. It's perhaps an early manifestation of the restlessness that gripped the conservative base in the latter Bush years (and the liberal base in the latter Clinton years). No matter what the organizational advantages were that were "banked" during the election, it's very, very difficult to transfer them into a "movement" to defend a power hegemony in Washington, D.C. The Bush people tried this in 2005-06 after building quite the machine during the 2004 re-election, and fell short of their lofty goals. Electoral machines don't transfer that well to non-electoral situations when people aren't in the mood for community organizing.

Nor does the Internet, which I've written quite a bit about, solve this problem. If anything, the same forces that make it easier for movements to form make it easier for them to de-mobilize after the fact, as the next big thing is always just around the corner. The yawning chasm between the burning passions of an election campaign and second-order movements (like Organizing for America is now) is especially apparent in the friction-free market for activism that it is the Internet.

Parting thought: Was Obama '08 simply the biggest flash mob ever assembled, rather than a "movement?"

Full Obama organizer e-mail after the jump.

- NOVA/DC OBAMA MEMORIAL DAY UPDATE -
(May 22, 2009)

VIDEO: President Obama at the White House Correspondent's Dinner!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2009/05/09/full-video-obamas- white-h_n_201264.html

What better way to recognize those who served our country but by SERVING YOUR COUNTRY this weekend!

As you probably know, we're having a big Democratic gubernatorial primary on June 9th. This will be the biggest election of 2009 as the media will cover it as a referendum on President Obama and the Democratic Party in this new swing state, but more importantly, it will be a test for YOU.

Even if you don't live in Virginia, you can still get involved like in 2008 and have your voice heard between now and June 9th on who we should have represent us in this fight in November. To get you up to speed, check out Tuesday's final debate between Terry McAuliffe (terrymcauliffe.com), Brian Moran (brianmoran.com) and Creigh Deeds (deedsforvirginia.com):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/video/2009/05/ 19/VI2009051902235.html

Meanwhile, the Lieutenant Governor's race is a very interesting contest between Virginia's Secretary of Finance Jody Wagner (jodyforva.com) and local Young Lawyers For Obama, Foreign Policy Professionals For Obama and Arlington Democrats' member and campaign/foreign policy consultant Mike Signer (mikesigner.com). Check them out too!

Let's prove that 2008 wasn't a fluke because of the cult of Obama....the long term demographic trends are in our favor but WE CAN'T BRING CENSUS AND POLLING DATA TO THE BALLOT BOX and declare victory.

We might not quit our jobs or put our lives on hold quite like many did last year, but let's show that Americans want HOPE and CHANGE throughout the governing process and won't accept POLITICS AS USUAL anymore! Helping a candidate or cause for a couple hours once a week, once a month or even ONCE adds up to make a difference....and by that I mean DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!! (Virginians can vote absentee or find their polling place by June 9th visiting sbe.virginia.gov)

So far this year there have been several special elections in Virginia and the results haven't been good....WE RECENTLY LOST TWO CITY COUNCIL SEATS IN ALEXANDRIA (voted 72% for Obama) and came close to losing Brian Moran's Delegate seat and Rep. Gerry Connolly's Chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (home of 1 million people). Because of EXTREMELY LOW TURNOUT these races came down to a handful of votes as the ELECTORATE OF THE "PAST" DECIDED THE WINNER.

On a similar note, PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS US to get involved in the upcoming HEALTH CARE REFORM BATTLE. So, keep in mind that elections might require the most work for the "community organizer" in us, but WE NEED TO STAY ENGAGED IN OUR COMMUNITY TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT after our candidates get elected.

In addition to the progress of grassroots groups like Generation Obama, DC For Obama, Young Lawyers for Obama and Foreign Policy Professionals for Obama, OFA will be working with supporters across the country to host events this summer (http://my.barackobama.com/ page/content/hckickoffhost), including June 3rd when the Arlington Democrats and Organizing For America host a reunion event to keep us moving forward.

So, please do something, anything, to stay involved! I have seen lots of interest since Election Day and so when I look at this challenge of encouraging people to do a little more to keep up our momentum....I say, YES WE CAN!

Jim McBride
Generation Obama / Virginia for Obama

"This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change."
- Barack Obama (November 4, 2008)

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The Unhelpfulness of Charlie Crist

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:54:50 -0700

Unless you've been living in a cave or something, you've heard that Charlie Crist is running for the U.S. Senate from Florida.

This is supposed to be great news. No credible Democrat will now run. And this will save the national party from investing lots of money in holding a seat in a swing state. The logic is impeccable.

Except for the fact that with Crist out of state politics, it's open season on the Florida Governor's mansion. And holding on there is far from a sure thing, with old warhorse Bill McCullom the likely GOP nominee going up against much buzzed about Dem CFO Alex Sink.

We might say that the Governorship of Florida is not Washington's problem -- except this is the same sort of short-term DC-centered thinking that gives us establishment favorites inimical to the grassroots. The GOP's revival will not come from Washington or from the Senate. It will come from the states. From an overarching party balance sheet perspective, we need to evaluate the potential loss of the Florida statehouse before stating whether Crist's move is a good thing.

Florida is one of the few places left with a thriving Republican state party and multiple plausible statewide officeholders waiting in the wings. I would not have minded a competitive Republican primary between Connie Mack and Marco Rubio -- because either could win the seat -- combined with a safe Crist re-elect. The conservative legislature in Tallahassee has largely restrained Crist from enacting Obamaism in Florida.

On the one hand, I'm glad that candidate recruitment seems to be going pretty darn well in the Senate. However, my antennae stand on end when these recruits are plucked from useful and key positions in the states, because those officeholders are strategically more important to party revival. The class of 1994 was packed with Newt Gingrich/GOPAC recruits from the late '80s for mayors, county commissioners, and state legislatures. Ultimately, we'll be able to tell more stories about successful Republican governance if we can point to a few jurisdictions we actually control, rather than being a slightly more effective opposition on Capitol Hill.

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Grappling with Obama's Huge Personal Popularity

Mon, 11 May 2009 21:11:47 -0700

Republicans looking for a comeback have yet to come to terms with a basic fact in today's polling: Obama's strongly favorable personal ratings.

Too much of what passes for sea changes in public opinion on policy are in fact residual effects of a narrow partisan advantage magnified by the huge personal popularity of that party's leader. This is how JFK's political position was never seriously dented or in doubt. Or how Ronald Reagan always seemed to bounce back from serious political crises. In Reagan's case, the Gipper's personal magnetism created an opportunity to move the country to the right. Obama is now doing the same for the left.

The tale of the tape is indeed telling here. Obama's personal popularity stayed remarkably stable throughout the course of the campaign, and the average unfavorable rating barely ever cracked 35%. Obama the campaigner looks downright polarizing compared to Obama the President, who now sports a 65/25 fav/unfav in the Pollster.com average.

Why is this important? Republicans right now haven't the slightest idea of how to reduce the President's appeal because they've never actually done it before. It would be one thing if Obama had become a controversial figure during the campaign, like Bill Clinton did in 1992, providing fodder for a comeback once he did get into office, but that possibility scarcely exists today.

While personality may not be everything, and real-world policy outcomes provide opportunities for inflection points, it rarely ever works out that a President's policy agenda is unsuccessful while he remains personally popular. Yes, there are weird situations where a President might be personally loathed (Clinton post-Monica) but politically successful, but not (that I know of) the other way around.

While attempts to remake Republican policy may be all well and good, to pretend the American people will listen to new policy ideas in a vacuum, without reference to their satisfaction (or lack thereof) with Obama is silly.

This hopelessness with respect to Obama's popularity might be cause for more long-ball type thinking and for cultivating charismatic young leaders who too can put an attractive face on conservative ideas, not for seeking short-term tactical wins. Paradoxically, the more irrelevant Republicans become, the easier it is (or should be) to think outside the box. And it is in this intellectual ferment that a comeback will be born.

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Springtime for GOP Moderates

Wed, 06 May 2009 21:57:41 -0700

Arlen Specter's departure has triggered the predictable media outcry attacking the Republican Party as an increasingly insular conservative rump, a regional party at best with no foothold in the Northeast.

That is one narrative. But there's a different story being told by the likely Republican lineup of Senate candidates in 2010. It's a story of our best pickup opportunities coming in blue states from more moderate Republicans, not from easy layups in red states represented by Democrats (of which there are many). And by and large, these candidacies are being embraced by conservatives, chief among them Mike Castle (DE), Mark Kirk (IL), and Rob Simmons (CT) (disclosure, I work on the last race).

Arlen Specter's erratic behavior in the last week is proof he needed to go. But this doesn't change the fact that there needs to be a functional relationship between the conservative and moderate wings of the party, and that any situation where a blue state Republican is ipso facto disparaged as a RINO is a dysfunctional one not conducive to building a majority led by the right.

I wasn't happy with Collins and Snowe's votes on the stimulus, but it is useful to make this distinction between the Maine Senators and Specter. For them, one gets the sense that it's not about ego or entitlement. They are genuinely moderate-to-liberal Republicans (moreso Snowe) representing a deep blue state that just legalized gay marriage through the legislative process.

If it's a choice between Lindsey Graham, a headline-grabbing conservative-hating conservative, or an honest, workmanlike moderate like Collins who will not go out of their way to rip the party to pieces in the press, sign me up for the moderate. Both parties will have their moderates. And if we keep ours in line and grab some of theirs, that's the surest sign we're winning (see: card check). If we ever find ourselves in the position where moderates can't vouch for a center-right governing agenda, we are in trouble.

There is a categorical difference between egomaniacs or iconoclasts like Specter, Chafee, and frankly Lieberman who fancy themselves Senators-for-life and think of themselves as entirely above party, and those who understand that parties and ideological blocs are vital to shifting the political center of gravity. Yes, they won't be with us on stuff like earmarks, and yes, we'll razz them about that. But you know what? No intellectually honest person could ever call them a Specter. We need to take back seats in places like North Dakota and Arkansas to allow the natural Republican small state majority in the Senate to reassert itself. But I wouldn't mind planting a flag in the blue states either. And that is going to take a certain type of candidate.

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Social Media & Politics

Mon, 04 May 2009 15:54:54 -0700

Last week I had the pleasure of joining a panel on social media and politics at the Milken Global Conference. The Conference targets CEOs and featured Nobel-prize winning economists, major nation defense ministers, Olympic athletes, and this year, Rush Limbaugh. So what was I doing there?

Social media’s role in politics fascinates even the triple-Ivy-league credentialed academic. How is the social web effecting who we elect and how we elect them? Will the social web have long-term effects on the shape of our democracy? Will the candidate who best understands social media prevail?

Our panel responded to these questions and more with a summary of our discussion below:

Candidates Must No Longer Run and Hide.

Voters expect candidates to make a presence and engage voters where they are: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and dozens of smaller social networks. These virtual meeting places are today’s version of town fairs, civic club meetings and after school programs, except online they take place around-the-clock. This means candidates can make their presence felt on their own time; conversely, once they begin to engage with supporters, they set a standard for the level of activity expected of them.

Authenticity Rules the Day.

Some candidates have “the gift:” this is the smooth-talking, heart-string pulling appeal of Presidents old and new, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama respectively. Such candidates have a unique ability to win over voters with their authenticity, although one could make a strong argument that their perceived authenticity is as big an act as your average politician. No matter, candidates with “the gift,” have a natural ability to rule social media too. They have an appeal; they inspire you to connect with them; they win you over with their hopeful message. Ronald Reagan, had he been running today, would thrive in the social media.

So what is a candidate to do who has less of “the gift?” They could be themselves for one; and treat their supporters as friends, valued members of their team, and the key to their electoral success. After all, roughly 20% of Internet users, according to Pew, received and/or shared information through a social network in the 2008 elections. Social network participants are real people, and the network is purely an easier, more efficient and personal way of communicating with them than traditional media. It’s not a new phenomenon for the more likeable candidate to win an election; social media platforms allow candidates to feature their likeability, if they choose to open up and let the walls down.

More Networked, Less Dependent on Money(wo)men.

The social web is the ultimate flattener of influence. Through most social networks, every individual has the same opportunity for influencing the greater community, and thus one would assume, the candidates they support. One is ranked by how interesting and involved they are, and not by the amount of money they have to contribute. Popularity matters instead, as the number of friends one has determines their value as an advocate for the candidates and issues they support.

Most social networks are purely democratic institutions; their members, particularly America’s youth, are being socialized to expect an equal stake in historically heirarchical institutions like our government. Populism sells on social networks, a lesson for tomorrow’s candidates. The questions is whether the influence of online networks — where membership is free — will surpass the influence of money in politics, and if so, when?

Social Score Does Not Equal Voter Score.

Or does it? Barack Obama currently has over 6,000,000 Facebook supporters while John McCain has less than 600,000. If an election were held today, would Obama receive ten times more votes than McCain? Of course not. So how good of an indicator of voter support is Facebook, or any social network? The most socially networked candidate is not necessarily the most popular at the ballot box. Ron Paul had many more Facebook supporters than most of his primary challengers; yet, they received more votes than he did.

But, we shouldn’t ignore social network support just yet. Candidates who understand the value of running an authetic campaign, and the importance of communicating with and engaging every interested person online, most likely exhibits those characteristics offline as well. The campaign who treats a Facebook organizer the same as the way they treat a $300 donor is likely to earn favor from more voters than the one who has a static politican profile. And yes, the campaign that makes an effort to engage voters through Facebook, when their opponent is absent, is more likely to win. Social networks matter.

What’s Next?

I don’t know what is the next MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning or Twitter, but if history repeats itself, we will all be socially networked on new, improved platforms by the time we cast our vote for President in 2012. Remember Friendster?

Jack Kemp, RIP

Sat, 02 May 2009 21:41:01 -0700

For those of us who came of age politically after Reagan was President, Jack Kemp was, if not Reagan, then the next best thing. He was arguably the most consequential and electric conservative between Reagan and Newt. Had Kemp run for President in 1996, I would have been his first volunteer (I missed '88). Of course, Kemp's contributions to the cause of freedom long predated that time, having helped Reagan break the grip of an oppressive marginal tax regime.

What made Kemp different is that he had an original idea of what conservatism could be. The post-Reagan period leading up to the Contract with America was a period of intellectual ferment for the movement. Kemp led the way in advancing a conservative idea that could appeal to non-traditional Republicans, with enterprise zones and school choice lifting more of the poor into the middle class. It was compassionate conservatism -- but actually conservative.

The Republican Party in the '90s then faced many of the demographic problems it does now. Perhaps in contrast to today, there was an actual good-faith attempt made to solve those problems, led by Kemp. Building a GOP that could appeal to urban areas may not have been the most logical next step politically, but it created an ambitiousness in the realm of ideas that we lack today. In the '90s, we were electing Republican mayors in big cities like Rudy Giuliani, Steve Goldsmith, and Bret Schundler who created a model for how conservatives could govern deep in Democratic terrain.

With the battle in the GOP today being between no change and cosmetic change, we would do well to look to Jack Kemp, who was a big part of the sea-change that transformed the party in the late '70s and was never afraid to advance unorthodox ideas in the years that followed.

RIP.

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The Democrats Need to Govern. The Republicans Need to Hold Them Accountable.

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:27:17 -0700

With the Specter defection, there has understandably been a lot of handwringing within the party about where we go next. The "modernizers" are latching onto this as a rejection of the so-called "party of no" and calling for a more forward lean on positive alternatives to the Democrats.

The Republican Party will only fully come back as a party of ideas and solutions. But let's not kid ourselves: this will not happen in 2010. This is not so much because it isn't possible for the GOP to be the party of ideas before then, or because victory or significant gains aren't likely, but because the public granted the Democrats a sweeping mandate in 2008 and the public's judgment on 2010 and likely 2012 will by definition be a referendum on that seminal fact.

Today the mandate was cemented. The Democrats now have full control over Washington, D.C. They can now break the filibuster. And any failure to do so is not the result of GOP "obstruction" but of self-beclowning Democratic overreach of the sort they couldn't possibly hope to get away with if any semblance of a balance of power existed.

The Democrats are now fully responsible for what happens in Washington. And though it is necessary that the GOP go above and beyond to demonstrate their eventual fitness to govern, their first responsibility right now as the loyal opposition is to hold the majority in check. And that will entail a lot of "no" votes -- and persistent explanation of why the "no" votes will lead to better outcomes for ordinary Americans.

I've written before that before the GOP can be an acceptable alternative, Democrats must first be discredited. Before they vote us in, people need to have a reason to kick them out. Democrats did not have a policy agenda in 2006, but won on the weight of GOP failures. And though the Contract with America was a model of proactively setting an agenda from the opposition, it would not have succeeded absent the context of forty years of Democratic failure.

Do not read this post as pushback against the idea that the GOP needs to be more solutions oriented, but shiny happy solutionsfests will not be enough given the position we are in now. If the GOP offers solutions, but does not offer a systematic critque of why Democratic "solutions" are wrong and will fail, the electorate will simply vote for the "solutions" they know over the ones they don't. Modeling ideal governance before doing the job of an effective opposition is putting the cart before the horse.

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What We Learned from #NY20

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:12:43 -0700

On Friday, the special election contest in New York’s 20th Congressional District drew to a close, with Democrat Scott Murphy edging out Republican Jim Tedisco by slightly over 400 votes out of nearly 160,000 cast. Tedisco finance chairman Tom Lewis has posted his postmortem on the race from the inside looking out.

Though the result is different than we as Republicans may have hoped for, the NY-20 special election generated new levels of online activism on the Right that show that the conservative base is re-engaging in poltitics online in the Obama era.

Engage was brought in to maximize the campaign’s online fundraising in the final three weeks of the campaign. Here’s a snapshot, by the numbers, of what the grassroots were able to accomplish in NY-20:

$121,964 raised online from March 11th, when we started to Election Day, March 31st.
$47,615 raised online for the recount.
Over $214,000 raised online for the campaign and recount, out of a total of $1.39 million raised from outside donors.
Over 3,100 online donors giving an average of $68.
Two thirds of the campaign’s donors gave online.

The groundwork for the campaign’s fundraising success was laid early, as new media maven Ali Akbar hustled to get a simple message out on Twitter and the blogosphere: $20 for NY-20. This message was amplified by Newt Gingrich, who exhorted conservatives to donate to Tedisco during his speech to CPAC, spurring a flood of new contributors. Our activists were already motivated by a simple, clear narrative: take back a seat the Democrats had captured in 2006 in a swing district Obama had won by 3 points.

When we got started, we created an iContribute fundraising widget that displayed the total amount raised as part of our fundraising drive in real time, along with the names and hometowns of the last 5 donors who agreed to go public. We also believed setting an ambitious yet achievable goal was crucial for success. We started with: 20K for NY-20, starting precisely 20 days from Election Day. Here’s what the widget looked like shortly after the first goal was met:

It took just six days for the grassroots to shatter this goal. We wound up upping the goal three more times during the election.

Along the way — and after crunching some numbers — we learned some valuable lessons. They include:

Transparency Works. Activists want to see the difference their efforts are making in real time. Something interesting happens when you go public with a goal — and show people the real numbers. Your fundraising appeal turns into more than an annoying ask and becomes a piece of interesting original content that people congregate around and can help shape. Though many would still have donated because of the overall excitement surrounding this race, we saw the numbers spike as we got closer to reaching a goal.The following chart shows the overall progression of total money raised in the three weeks before Election Day. You’ll see spikes leading up to the $20K, $40K, $80K, and $120K milestones.

And since the widget was a relative novelty early on, here’s a chart that shows just the numbers when it was first tried, leading up to the $20,000 goal.

Transparency is Popular. When given the chance, 77% of donors opted to show their names on the widget. Bigger donors were just as likely as smaller donors to opt for instant transparency.

The Twitter Effect. There have been many discussions of Twitter’s impact on this race and on online activism more broadly. Some have even credited this effort with raising over $120,000 “through Twitter.” We have some interesting data to share that might shed light on these assumptions.

First, it’s unclear how much money was raised through Twitter specifically, but it was more than pocket change — and well south of a majority. Some number crunching after the election revealed that about 14% of online donors were Twitter users. This is in line with the rate of Twitter usage we’ve seen in other online activist communities. Assuming these Twitter users donated the average, at least $20,000 was donated online by Twitter users.

iContribute gives campaigns the power to create fundraising tracking pages on the fly. I created a personal page for my Twitter followers and used the link whenever I tweeted about the campaign. According to Google Analytics, my page got 757 unique pageviews and produced $1,280 in online contributions from 15 donors, or nearly $2 per unique click.

Another interesting example came on Election Night. Knowing the election would go to a recount, a group of us tweeted a link asking people to donate to the post-Election Day effort. 518 people clicked on that link, resulting in 11 donations, eight of them on Election Night.

For those evaluating the effectiveness of Twitter as a fundraising tool, I would say two things. First, don’t forget that e-mail — and walk-in web donations from people who are organically interested in your effort — will still be your biggest sources of online income. At best, Twitter will be a small but singificant share of the online fundraising puzzle, just like blog-driven fundraising drives that can raise 6 or 7 figures in 7 or 8 figure-online efforts. But don’t also forget Twitter’s essential role in distributing your message among key influentials who talk to others. The nation’s top bloggers, radio hosts, and TV personalities are on Twitter. If you can get an instantly peer-reviewed message to them in their most compelling and least crowded information channel, they will take it and repeat it to others, further enhancing the “surround sound” around your campaign or movement.

E-mail Still Matters. As an example of the point above, never, ever, ever neglect an opportunity to build up your list organically. By the end, the Tedisco campaign had built up a pretty solid list of donors and activists. An e-mail the morning after the election quickly raised $7,901 from 188 people to support the post-election effort.

Nor was the Tedisco campaign the only group to send e-mails in support of their candidate. An e-mail by Fred Thompson to his Presidential list yielded at least $30,000 in donations, as I wrote about earlier. This is an opportunity that most people with big lists and future aspirations miss. Instead of raising money for the nebulous thing that is your PAC, and then dispensing it $5,000 at a time, why not raise it directly for the candidates who need it most? Not only will your activists find the message more relevant, but added goodwill will be generated by sending a worthy candidate heaping gobs of cash above and beyond the $5K limit.

Online Fundraising is only growing bigger — not having a coherent online strategy is now like not having a direct mail strategy, or a high-dollar strategy. Campaigns have always been concerned about raising money, and for Republican campaigns in 2008, this meant wrangling the most Bush Rangers & Pioneers and sending the most spammy direct mail pieces, all while Obama built the biggest fundraising machine known to man one e-mail and one $25 donor at a time.

This won’t change with one campaign and likely won’t decisively change until 2012, but the fact that the majority of donors engaged online — in a campaign with many traditional elements to it — is significant.

It’s easy to forget that fundraising in Congressional races is still dominated by PACs, contributions from other elected officials, and personal relationships. Of the $1.39 million the campaign raised from outside sources, $845,000 came from individuals. Over a quarter of that came in online — and for a fraction of the cost of traditional fundraising.

One of the most astonishing — but also frustrating — aspects of online fundraising is that the money almost invariably comes in late, when activists are at the height of their enthusiasm about a race. Of the $550,000+ raised after March 11th, when the campaign filed their pre-election FEC report, about a third came in online. Of money that came in from individuals after March 11th, nearly half was online. When it mattered the most, the grassroots was there, expanding the campaign’s footprint right in the days before the election.

We won’t say that everything about this election turned out exactly as we’d hoped. But for the right, NY-20 was an awakening of sorts in the lost art of grassroots online action. We were proud to be there for a small part of it.

A Call for Great Designers

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:23:15 -0700

Engage is putting out a call for great freelance designers to join our growing network.

Great design can be an elusive thing, but it’s something we value deeply here at Engage. Studies have shown that users judge websites by their design in the blink of an eye. Unless they’re extremely prodigious speed-readers, most users will judge design long before they will the content of a website.

But great design is more than just that initial “wow” factor. It should persist throughout the entirety of the user experience. Good, clean design can make navigating through a site dramatically easier, getting people where they need to go. When a great design is aligned with a client’s essential brand and animating purpose, it sends the public at large an important about the professionalism and seriousness of the organization, and can drive your message. In an age of free tools and template websites, standing out from the pack becomes all the more important.

We’re looking for serious, award-winning designers who can deliver original, pixel-perfect website, logo/brand, and user experience design that breaks the mold. Submit your resumes and portfolios to jobs@engagedc.com — and if you care about great candidates and organizations getting great design, we hope you’ll retweet this post. Since this isn’t a single job listing, feel free to contact us if you’re stronger in just one or two key areas.

Here’s a bit of what we’re looking for:

Someone who focuses above all else on web and interactive design
A firm understanding of the principles of user experience design and designing for applications
Experience with logo and brand design a plus
Ability to code clean CSS/XHTML or ability to integrate this into your process a plus
Experience with designing for politics and public policy. Since we want sites that break the mold, we won’t sweat this point — but for the political newbies in the bunch, we’ll be looking for a well thought out critique of the state of the political web today.
Do you personally do both design and development? Then this probably isn’t for you. We want people who are excellent at one or the other, and it’s difficult to be great at both.
Been in CSS Remix, WebCreme, or been otherwise honored for your design? Then we definitely want to hear from you.
Lastly, as conservative and Republican web strategists, a clear motivation to serve like-minded organizations will be considered a definite plus.

SXSW: Startup Management

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:48:13 -0700

11:45 - In the Dogster panel on startup management on the Hilton. Talks about how to do layoffs. First, look objectively at the money situation. Then look at which departments need to be cut. When you get down to individuals, it’s hard. They were open about communicating, doing a preso on why they did it, the overall economic situation, given to all employees.
11:47 - Economic times have made things more focused and intense. Attitude of “Okay, let’s f-ing do this.” Taking on the economy and beating it. I like this.
11:47 - I can’t believe people in tech are so left. This is total capitalism!
11:57 - Once again I have been sucked into e-mail. Complete ADD.
12:00 - The upteenth question about how to balance the initial startup mode where everyone does everything with a more hierarchical mode. Sales vs. tech guys.
12:16 - When to take VC money. Only when I have an opportunity I can’t execute on without it.

SXSW: Presenting Straight to the Brain

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:42:49 -0700

10:41 - I’m here for the end of this. Great breakfast at Cisco’s and the Louis Gray panel at the Hilton was oversubscribed. They’re talking about effective PowerPoint, and if rapid fire visuals are the right away to go.
10:42 - The listing / bulletpoint approach does not hold a candle to the storytelling approach in presentations.
10:51 - They did a yoga exercise– touch your toes. Okay….
10:51 - “Don’t make a better presentation on X… make a user better on X…”
10:52 - Lawyer presenter: I have failed when audience goes into “Blackberry prayer mode.” If you are engaging with social networks instead of the panel you aren’t learning. Other panelist says notetaking OK (like I am now). General question is if backchannels are okay.
10:54 - Kathy Sierra likes backchannels. Live-tweeting ok. If people want to have a conversation about a panel, fine.
10:56 - PowerPoint is a bad word processor. Tap into popular culture. Plays a Star Wars themed slide.
10:56 - Slide: “Also, puppies.” Does every slide have a pulse? -Sierra. Displays cute puppy slide.
10:57 - Tip: Figure out your three most important points and build everything around it.
10:59 - Questioner: How do you deal with rigid cultures, like NIH, in which all presentations have to have heavy science? A: Have to educate internally that what you’re doing has no basis in research.

SXSW: Marketing Meets New Media

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:36:12 -0700

3:34pm - In the Marketing Meets New Media Panel with Jonathan Coulton and also Kos.
3:35 - Challenge for bloggers is breaking out; tools for getting your word out are now free and this leads to noisiness.
3:37 - Kirsner mispronounces Kos’s name “kahs”
3:39 - They’re playing a Coulton music video set to WoW. Now I know why he’s a cult hit.
3:40 - These 5 people have been in the vanguard of trying to figure out how to build an audience and fanbase online.
3:45 - Coulton: Tools borne out of laziness then I got lucky.
3:48 - Natasha Westcoat: committed to using any popular tools like YouTube. Get involved in every website possible because the traffic is there.
3:49 - Kos states the obvious — the product is very good for both Westcoat and Coulton. Kos: I’m not a very good writer. I started in 2002 — first mover advantage? There was still quite a crowd. Two things really stood out. I had a very narrow niche that no one else was hitting. For me, it was horserace coverage. (Now we have Nate Silver.) At the time I was talking about polls. I was also a veteran — could speak about the logistical issue of the Iraq war buildup; media didn’t know what they were talking about. The second was branding. Daily Kos is now as know as “big orange” “the great orange Satan.” I didn’t use the same Blogspot template; same blue background. Very conscious decision to use a color no one else was using; orange, and the icon — revolutionary patriot with the flag which has become iconic. Very conscious of people remembering the branding of the site. (Smart.)
3:51 - Kirsner — was there a key link that built your traffic? Kos: No. In 2000, there was a site called Olivetti. Then Delphi Forums. Then Political Wire. Comment threads at PW shut down b/c of political warfare. Then over to MyDD. Shut down comments on MyDD. So they went to Daily Kos. He learned from previous comment fails. Then there were so-called liberal “pundits” like Joe Klein were pro-Iraq. The Internet at the time was dominated by the right. Create a safe haven for progressives. I was a comment nazi. I banned right-wingers. Very conscious decision to create safe haven for progressives. (WOW.) Says this was instrumental to Kos’s success.
3:56 - Burns: Consistent release schedule critical. Most people have a rotation of 5 sites in their bookmarks. Having a release schedule key to keeping this. RedvsBlue launched a few days before the Iraq war.
4:05 - Coulton: Proliferation of channels can be hard to handle.
4:05 - Westcoat: Schedule time for social media.
4:06 - Kos: 90% of my revenue is ad-based. Subscriptions were just ability to turn ads off. Then book deals and speaking fees. Paid full-time staff of 9 plus contractors. It’s a 7 figure operation.
4:10 - Coulton - 40-50% of revenue is music buying online. Then revenue from live shows and CD sales. This is an unusually high percentage, since he appeals to geeks. I would never have thought to make WoW machinema videos. Was a total accident.
4:14 - Kos: I did 150 polls in 2008. More than any news organization. I will do more this year. R2K / DailyKos poll.
4:15 - Responding to a question if do you advertise. Moderator says that if they do, it’s with cheap Facebook or Google ads. Gaylor says it’s important to have a publicist because MSM peeps are so slammed. It’s still important to have . Anti-marketing vibe on the Internet. “On the Internet people can smell marketing people a mile away.” Kos: Huffington Post, $40 million in VC, and an army of PR people and they’re the biggest news site on the Internet.
4:23 - Burns: Offline marketing worthless for the Internet. If you can’t go to the site right now, it’s worthless. So is “Coming soon…” We were on TRL a few years ago. There was NO IMPACT. Coulton chimes in. NYT piece about him - no impact on his web traffic. But a link from a small blog can make a difference. Traditional media doesn’t believe in linking. (This is very true.)
4:25 - How do you schedule your day? Coulton: be brutal about your schedule. Tuesday is a creative day. Don’t check emails or feeds.
4:26 - Kirsner: MSM journalists looking for phone numbers not emails for instant contact. Coulton: Follow me on Twitter. LOL. Kos: With staff, I can scale back and be more of a family person.

SXSW: Nate Silver Keynote Interview

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:59:18 -0700

1:58 pm - This time I’m early. Keynote interview with Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.
2:04 - Baker’s cheatsheet here. The Numerati (his book) is about statisticians storming into different industries.
2:04 - Silver says 538 was used to procrastinate from other works; borne of frustration at the news media
2:05 - Polls were too much a part of the narrative; he is not a big fan of polls, which are overinterpreted, room for “common sensical expertise” to interpret polls in a way that is more intelligent and meaningful
2:06 - Obama had trouble with working class voters in, let’s say, PA, but not in Oregon or Minnesota which are also working class states.
2:07 - The momentum in the primary dictated by the calendar; states Hillary was bound to do well in voted late; early states were tilted towards Obama. Obama’s primary win partly due to the randomness of the primary calendar.
2:08 - People too quick to assume things are attributable to racial voting patterns. Look at Hispanic vote for Hillary then for Obama.
2:09 - Baker: Demographics is dead; categorize into “behavioral tribes.”
2:10 - Silver: Look at voters at individuals not groups; there are an infinite number of typologies with gradations of like-ness; says Penn’s microtrends is basically BS (YES!)
2:11 - The Silver baseball algorithm is TOTALLY different than his political model. The key to success in both is “good habits.” Being really meticulous. If you really want to solve a problem… go beyond the 80/20 rule; actually push into the hardest 20% and talk about it in a very interesting way. Decisions are made on the margins and simple 80%/20% isn’t enough. Being able to forecast 2% better can save $3-4 million on a $50 million payroll. Detail matters.
2:15 - Baker: did you come upon a “5% difference” that changed your outlook on a state? Silver says in Appalachia people say their ancestry is “American,” a proxy for “redneckness.” This makes a poor voter in Kentucky different than a poor voter in Wisconsin. (”American” voters went heavily for Clinton and McCain more so than national trends.)
2:17 - Baker: “What is Manny Ramirez worth this year?” Silver: He’s a $12-15 million a player and is getting paid twice that. People underestimate how fast players start declining; when a player is in his 30s much more likely to get injured (and lose their will). People assume things won’t change as much as they do.
2:22 - Wifi down. Baker asks about economy; when will people blame Obama. People don’t blame Obama now but in 12-18 months they might. The thing Obama has going for him is non-experts believe the economy will be worse than most economists do. So room to outperform expectations. However, recent recoveries have been jobless recoveries and if the current one follows this pattern Obama could be hurt.
2:23 - A recency problem. Most economists only use the last 10-20 years for modeling but don’t go back further than that to explain current trends.
2:24 - Internet bubble, deleveraging of banks *should* be that predictable; none of us should be that shocked that there were these problems. A few people who did predict this including Schiller and Rubini.
2:25 - Sean Quinn was his correspondent in the field; used to be a field organizer for Jon Tester & Brian Schweitzer. Not enough perspective on what is happening on the ground (organization, field work, data mining, etc.) We’re mostly about the numbers but Quinn’s reporting was useful in differentiating themselves. “Oftentimes it’s where the candidate is NOT that’s important. Obama campaign was working 24 hour shifts in Tallahassee and McCain campaign went home.
2:27 - Quinn was from SF. Picked up a photographer and chronicled the swing states. He was never able to work this into his statistical analysis. One side was anecdotal, the other was quantitative.
2:28 - On the morning of the election, we predicted 98.9% chance of Obama victory. If the 1.1% result came true, were we wrong or unlucky? Likens it to baseball. “What if the player finds Jesus?” Totally random, unexpected things can happen for personal reasons.
2:29 - Q: will you get into human resources? Silver: No. Statistical analysis can’t replace bosses.
2:31 - Q: What would you get a masters degree in that you don’t already? Silver: Computer Science so I wouldn’t have to hire a programmer and could tweak Blogger templates. (Feel your pain!)
2:32 - Q: Would you put your genome up on the Internet? A: Probably not. Goes into privacy. He has a compulsive personality and if he were on Facebook, you’d probably never see him again.
2:33 - The question he faces now if he should take VC financing or keep bootstrapping? (for FiveThirtyEight — a blog!) Always a hard decision. But would be nice to bootstrap.
2:34 - Will he branch out into other areas? He is doing more stuff on the economy. Being asked to predict the Oscars. Did okay, but not that great. Looked at 30 years of Oscar history — based on winners of other awards (Golden Globes, etc.) Those are usually pretty reliable. Academy tends not to like comedy or edgy pictures — likes “big pictures,” epics. Got Best Actor wrong — predicted Rourke over Penn. Said 20% chance of Penn victory, so maybe just unlucky. Said personal factors could have worked against Rourke, who was kind of a jerk to his peers. Also the Prop 8 factor.
2:37 - In Best Supporting Actress, he and everyone else thought Cruz would win not his model. “Never come out with a forecast you know to be wrong. If you know you’ll be wrong, keep working on your f*ing model.” LOL.
2:38 - Now going to talk to people in different fields, everything from fashion design (which can be scientific) to if an asteroid will hit Earth.
2:39 - Going to get into national security? Statistical probability of someone being a terrorist? A: The thing about baseball is you have a perfect data set; the real world is not like that. Not like looking at a needle in a haystack, but looking for a needle in a bunch of needles.
2:41 - Thinks it’s impressive we have not had a major attack since 9/11.
2:43 - Baseball more predictable than basketball, football b/c it’s less self-centered and everyone takes their turn.
2:44 - Audience Q&A. How did you solve the data problem? Polls not as reliable as baseball data. Silver: Baseball collection not that difficult to do. Fundraising primary was a predictor. Obama collected twice as much money as Hillary in Colorado, predictor of caucus vote.
2:46 - Q: What does 538 stand for (duh). Silver says # of votes in EC but misstates that DC would get an extra vote and it would go to 539. Actually Utah would get the extra vote. What do you read? Reads a lot of books halfway through.
2:49 - What would happen if McCain won? A: smaller stimulus package; more interesting is what if Hillary had won? Obama was inexperienced; maybe having someone in the WH before might have helped (Hillary) Do you think the Netflix challenge is interesting? Doesn’t get to this question, but it’s a good one.
2:50 - Have you read Richard Fenno’s work on Congress?
2:52 - Doesn’t business also have perfect data? Disagrees that business has good data; companies cook the books and report their own results. If he knew, he’d work in hedge funds. Even gov’t economic statistics are imprecise. Improve the data quality before applying better predictive modeling.
2:54 - Should the EC be abolished? Silver takes the 5th. It’s good for his website. LOL.
2:55 - Silver thinks the stock market has behaved irrationally despite the fact that it’s a top prediction market.
2:56 - Prediction markets better for information that is hard to quantify like the Oscars. For politics, statistical analysis and prediction markets fairly well matched.
2:57 - Irish dude says he runs a prediction market (InTrade?) Uses the Hillary NH example. Blame data when things go wrong, when things go right, you were right.
3:00 - Pollsters getting more responsible about including crosstabs. Amen.

SXSW: Building a Great Company Culture

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:41:02 -0700

11:39 - Just settled in here at the Hilton.
11:39 - Don’t just take money but do a thorough reference check on VCs.
11:39 - Likens employees to kids; same carrot / stick analogy. Analogizing employer / employee relationship to a family.
11:40 - Read “Good to Great.” (YES!) Best business book to read. (YES!)
11:42 - Talks about maintaining a company culture.
11:43 - Questioner: key challenge is alignment. How do you keep everyone aligned? Top-down or bottom-up?
11:44 - Quotes Tony Hsieh saying “Hire slowly. Fire quickly.”
11:45 - “Know the endgame” (Yes). “You’ve got to overcommunicate. Bring your team in. Show them where they fit in. Be 100% candid.”
11:46 - “What is the journey? What is the crusade? How do they fit in? No one wants a paycheck. That sucks. Figure out what the intangibles are that these guys can be inspired by.”
11:46 - Event detail page.
11:49 - “Are they here for a paycheck? Or are they inspired?” (That’s the $64,000 question.) “Anybody who loses their passion is screwed. Because it sucks.”
11:52 - @MindyFinn: “Lead by example.” So important but also why managers have awesome responsibility. Like parents. And teachers. #sxsw
11:53 - A department of Boundless wasn’t firing on all cylinders. They imposed discipline. 8am conference calls. Now they’re firing.
11:57 - Audience member: All employees must have a sense that they contributed to the purpose of the company. “That has carried us.”
12:07 - Dropped off to do some e-mail.
12:08 - Mindy is asking a question about employees who are your age or older seeing you as the “parent.” Answer: displace the personality. Make it about the business metrics.
12:13 - Observation from the crowd: Company culture takes on the personality of the founder. This is terrifying for some.
12:14 - Book suggestion: “The Starfish and the Spider.”
12:20 - This is actually the most enlightening panel so far. Mostly soaking it in not writing though
12:20 - When you feel like you have to copy a lot of people, or invite a lot of people to meetings, there is not clear accountability and ownership. This is so true. The largest meetings are the least productive.
12:27 - Twitter in corporate culture. How do you connect your personal twitter to your corporate one? What if someone badmouths their work on their personal social media accounts?

Mindy’s Twitter Stream:

Live-Blogging SXSW: Is Spec Work Evil?

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 08:28:18 -0700

10:25 - Arrived almost mid-way through.
10:26 - “90% of what is submitted will suck” — talking about spec work for design
10:30 - Editor’s note: There is a “No Spec” movement — or speculative work, based partially on contests for free design
10:31 - Owyang: “Never outsource your design strategy. Keep that close to heart”
10:32 - Samson, Crowdspring.com - Spec work is a market expander and good for small business who can’t afford $5,000 for a logo. Crowdspring is all about contests for logo and branding design.
10:35 - Any creative professionals “knows better.” You wouldn’t go to a doctor and say “I have this rash, what’s your opinion?” and then turn down his prescription. This is the way many people interact with designers. (But isn’t design more subjective than medicine? -ed.)
10:37 - Questioner: “Don’t think the customer is stupid” to applause. He is hearing that from the panel and it’s wrong.
10:38 - Mann from AIGA: They are against spec work. See their position here.
10:39 - Krempasky in line to ask a question. W00t!
10:40 - Question: Is spec work to design what blogging is to media? Owyang: Not all industries the same.
10:41 - Samson: For hundreds of years, musicians have performed without any hope of getting distributed or writers have written without publishers, all for the passion of it. Others point out that they weren’t doing it to a client’s specification.
10:42 - Krempasky: I’ve used large designers; targeted at David Carson: “a display of unmitigated arrogance.” You sound like MSM in 2001 - if only it weren’t for those damn bloggers people would pay us. What industry has not been made better by competition? In some cases spec work is good and in some cases it’s crap. It is what it is.
10:47 - Jeffrey Kalmikoff, CEO of Threadless: A lot of people who can’t afford to pay designer will give a small equity stake in the company.
10:49 - Question: How is Threadless not spec work (they are apparently against specs). Response: Threadless unlike Crowdspring is not a contest.
10:50 - This is David Carson’s site.
10:50 - Crowdspring: We pay out $750,000 in awards. Threadless $1 million. They are bickering.
10:52 - Questioner: Crowdspring stole 99designs model. (Wow.) This is a pretty acrimonious debate. Crowdspring says Threadless was their inspiration. Questioner: Threadless being your inspiration shows you have no idea what you’re talking about. This questioner is getting really personal now.
10:58 - A client asks: If I don’t crowdsource, how do I find good design?
12:00 - Crowdspring is a talent-finding mechanism not a way to get stuff done for free necessarily. (YES!) Moderator concludes by acknowledging strong opinions — not a panel where people fall asleep. Best panel at SXSW so far says Twitter commenter.
12:01 - I come down on the pro-crowdsourcing side. The anti-spec crowd = unions defending special privileges for “their people.”

See You at #SXSW

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:17:34 -0700

This will be my third year at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin (and the first as a non-speaker, making for what I hope is a more relaxed time). SXSW Interactive is hands down the best conference in the country for digital enthusiasts, and what makes it so great is that the focus is squarely on the creators rather than vendors selling their wares, though I’m sure there will be some of that too.

With the renewed attention on technology and politics in the wake of Obama’s election, I count at least four political panels on the agenda. Beyond the numerous conversations in the lobby or over some good ‘Q, Engage will be co-hosting a happy hour for conservative and libertarian members of the technology community on Sunday.

We invite all our friends to join us at RIGHT-by-Southwest with our special guest Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams. Williams is seeking the U.S. Senate seat likely to be vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison in her run for Texas Governor.

Here are the deets:

What: RIGHT-by-Southwest Happy Hour & Tweetup

When: Sunday, March 15, 5pm-7pm (please arrive at 5 sharp as Commissioner Williams needs to leave to be honored at the Texas Social Media Awards at 6)

Where: Moonshine Grill (on the patio), 303 Red River Street, Austin, TX (right across from the convention center) - Google Map

We thank our friends at Edelman Digital for their co-sponsorship of this event!

RSVP on Facebook, Sched or Rebuild.

Follow updates from me and Mindy on Twitter for all the latest from Austin.

The Next Right Launches

Wed, 28 May 2008 12:05:22 -0700

Since our launch yesterday, I’ve been spending a lot of my time getting The Next Right off the ground. We’re really jazzed about the reaction so far — 9,000 uniques and over 20,000 pageviews on the first alone, and on track for another big day.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be moving most of my political blogging over to the new platform. There will be some tech/personal stuff that pops up here from time to time, but most of my energies on the blogging front will be devoted to The Next Right community.

The easiest way to keep in touch is to subscribe to my RSS feed. Through the magic of Yahoo Pipes, my blogs from The Next Right will show up automagically in the feed along with stuff from here.

I hope all regular readers will join me in making The Next Right a daily pit stop.

Unifying Narratives Work. Microtrends Fail.

Thu, 22 May 2008 13:08:30 -0700

David All argues that the proliferation of competing “agendas” now emanating from individual Republican House members misses the point. I agree, but for very different reasons than David. His essential argument is that Republicans should ditch any hope for a Contract-style agenda:

Gone are the days of Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America, a plan which every Republican got behind and backed. A unified agenda back in 1994 was possible because of Newt Gingrich’s intoxicating personality and strong leadership style; but it was also a different time, a time before the Internet inspired a culture of choice and information.
Today, thanks to the Internet, each Member of Congress can and should be fighting in the trenches for the hundreds of issues which drive their voters to the polls under the banner of the Republican Party. The Internet provides a medium to distribute our message like never before. We can fight on thousands of fronts.
Rather than being forced to to pick a few, limited set of agenda items, House Republicans should change the game and act more like iTunes and NetFlix — offering conservative, libertarian, and independent voters a lot of different choices — all of which can only be found under the larger brand — Republican.

This overlooks the most salient example: Obama, the epitome of the new net-centric candidate. Obama has actually thrived on a very strong, unified message.

Change. Hope.

This is not an agenda. It’s deliberately vague. But the message is as clear and unifying as Reagan’s optimism. Those who celebrate the bottom-up nature of the Obama campaign can’t deny its top-down, cult of personality, aggressive brand management aspects.

I was recently discussing the difference between the Clinton and Obama campaigns with a GOP pollster in town. In the conversation, an interesting point came up: that Obama has beat Clinton because he’s refused the play the small-bore, microtargeting game epitomized by her ex-strategist (and Microtrends author) Mark Penn. Obama has run on a big, national message of generational change in both red and blue states and it’s worked.

Democratic voters have latched on to this narrative. There may not have been a mass market for a 46-year old guy named Barack as President a year ago — but now there is. He created it. That takes a big, aspirational message that’s bigger than the sum total of a bunch of issue positions and demographic segments. The Internet doesn’t change that. It actually amplifies the success of popular messages at the head of the long tail. The common thread of Internet success stories is that they tend to be really big success stories, the enhanced variety offered by the long tail notwithstanding. Think of Google, Apple, and Obama.

What Obama has done for change represents what the Republican Revolutionaries did with the Contract with America. They married the Republican brand to the idea of Reform. Republicans may have won in 1994 without the Contract, but they would have governed a whole lot differently without it. Without a well-branded agenda, they would have more quickly drifted into a boring, piecemeal floor schedule.

The problem with the current “agendas” on offer is that they’re small-bore. They act as though we were still in the majority and our job was to fine-tune the workings of government. It’s not. In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994.

We’ll be discussing more of what these agenda items might be over at The Next Right, but I imagine it would be things on this scale:

A total ban on earmarks
Let the half of Federal workers due to retire in the next few years retire – and don’t replace them
Personal Social Security accounts
A 50% cut in farm subsidies (yeah, good luck on that after this week)
McCain’s idea of ~~replacing~~ supplementing the UN with a league of democracies

There’s a market for this kind of change. When Tom Cole posted a few of the incrementalist agenda items to the NRCC blog, I couldn’t count a single positive comment in favor of the nearly 2,000 posted. This shows the disconnect between Washington and the grassroots. Instead of boldness, many members still think a 1998-style litany of “practical solutions” will work for a party that could be headed into the wilderness without a shock to the system.

Like this post? Join us on May 27th as we discuss the future of the Republican Party and more with the launch of The Next Right.

The Next Right Launches May 27th

Thu, 22 May 2008 08:21:10 -0700

We just sent the following announcement out to The Next Right’s e-mail list:

We’re pleased to announce that The Next Right has a launch date: next Tuesday, May 27th.

Since announcing this project, the response has exceeded our expectations in every way. Some of the savviest analysts we know have already signed on as writers. And over 1,000 of you have signed up to stay informed on latest developments.

If you want The Next Right right now, you don’t have to wait. We’ve already launched an RSS feed with relevant posts from the site’s founding editors, and links to the critical stories we’ll be covering on the site. This feed will remain the same after launch.

http://feeds.feedburner.com /TheNextRight

We’ve also updated our splash site with more information on how YOU can help support the site, with information on how you can be a Next Right writer, advertiser, or help defray our startup costs with a generous contribution.

See you on Tuesday,

Soren Dayton, Jon Henke, and Patrick Ruffini
TheNextRight.com

Beyond Bush

Fri, 16 May 2008 19:44:48 -0700

The hue and cry for the GOP to file for divorce against President Bush is reaching a crescendo with Tom Davis’s acid-tongued barbs and this more gracefully worded column by 2004 Bush campaign advisor Peggy Noonan.

Davis and Noonan mean well, but their proposed strategy amounts to taking the Democrats’ bait. Because whether the GOP decides to run for Bush or against him, the meta-narrative will still be about Bush. Any day people are reminded of the President in a political context, even when our people are throwing him under the bus, is a bad day for Republicans.

President Bush is a lame duck. His term expires in eight months. Politically speaking, John McCain is the leader of the party. Bush’s term will overlap that of the 111th Congress by a whopping 17 days. Why should Republican Congressional candidates take the bait by positioning themselves vis a vis someone who will be a political non-factor once they take office? If they embrace President Bush, it’s political poison. If they make a fuss of distancing themselves, it guarantees headlines with Candidate X and Bush in close proximity, and looks politically motivated. Don’t take the bait.

The challenge for Republicans is not to support Bush or to reject Bush but to transcend Bush. We are quickly nearing the point where the last piece of meaningful legislation will cross this President’s desk. To suggest that Republicans might want to get around to crafting a post-Bush agenda ignores the fact that the post-Bush era is already upon us. It began March 4, when John McCain secured 1,191 delegates. Start acting like it. John McCain is the only national Republican local Republicans should be talking about.

Republican candidates could do well by parrying attempts to tie them to Bush as follows:

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that President Bush sparks strong feelings on both sides. But last I checked, there’s an election coming up soon to replace George Bush. I’m focused on the future, and the next Congress and the next President. There’s only one person in this race who’s fixated on the past and on George Bush and that’s my opponent. I can only assume that’s because he’d love to continue the hyper-partisanship of the last decade. Not me.

With all due respect, my opinion of President Bush matters about as much as my opinion of President Coolidge. They’ll both be in the history books come next January. When I hit the ground running in 2009, I look forward to serving with President McCain to bringing gas prices down and our troops home victorious.

This has the advantage of being intellectually honest. Voters are forward-looking and know that Bush won’t be President soon. In no other election since 2000 could you say this.

By subjecting themselves to a massive internal debate over the President, Republicans would validate the Democratic narrative of this election as a referendum on Bush. Just ask Al Gore how productive meta-debates about the President’s role in his exit year really are. And his boss was at 65%.

Don’t take the bait.

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John McCain: Tolstoy in My Inbox

Thu, 15 May 2008 21:20:10 -0700

Today, I sat in on my first McCain blogger conference call and cheered as McCain promised to continue these sessions on a biweekly basis as President. (Contrast with Barack Obama, whose netroots coordinator left in frustration at Obama’s refusal to be similarly accessible.) And this comes on top of weekly press conferences, and submitting to questions in the well of the House a la the British Prime Minister. McCain could become the most transparent and cross-examined President in history.

Online, it seems to be a different story, at least when it comes the image of John McCain as projected on JohnMcCain.com and in the daily emails that go out under his name. Good online strategy is simple: reflect the very best of your candidate offline. John McCain offline is transparent, accessible, and willing to answer any question. John McCain online is stilted and awkwardly asking me for money. There’s a fundamental disconnect.

The email the McCain camp sent today illustrates the problem. I’m deliberately zooming out because I don’t want you to focus on the copy:

These are recent emails sent by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:

Even from a distance, it’s night and day. You’ve got brevity and short, rapid-fire paragraphs. They feature a clear call to action above the fold. They’re highly readable, or more to the point, scannable – since the average reader online reads no more than 20% of content. They respect today’s attention-deprived user. Less is more.

Most important is what these messages say about the candidate. These messages were crafted solely for the e-mail channel. I don’t know about you, but the e-mails I get everyday from friends and colleagues look a lot more like Hillary and Barack’s e-mails than they do War and Peace. I’ve even entertained the thought of Obama banging out a few pithy sentences on the MacBook Pro in the hotel suite on the way to the victory party (it’s believable enough). I know that he didn’t, but the fact that I’ve wondered counts for something.

McCain’s e-mail start off with the anachronistic “From the Desk of John McCain” — a 1970s-era direct mail device I haven’t seen on a piece of real stationery in a decade. The haughty phrasing is designed to evoke a sense of prestige — the sense that the person addressing you is Big and Important. But the Internet is not about being Big and Important. It’s about being One of Us. Again: fundamental disconnect. McCain offline gets this, shedding the trappings of the Imperial Presidency. McCain online, not so much.

But that concern pales in comparison to the content. Today’s e-mail, in marked contrast to the short, e-mail-like e-mails from Hillary and Barack, is lifted from speech text. In that he spoke the words, it is him. But it’s not him communicating something unique for the online audience. It’s him or his handlers keeping us at a safe distance using the most formal version of McCain possible – again, the polar opposite of what McCain’s offline strategy is about.

The explanation for why this is actually very prosaic: the approval process. In a short-staffed campaign, the easiest — and sometimes the only — option is to lift from already approved text. Nobody has the time to spend up to 24 hours getting all new text approved by McCain or his closest advisers, by which time the window of opportunity may have passed. And McCain’s signature nets more money than Rick Davis’s, no matter how you word the message. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In the moment, it all makes sense. The problem is that over time, you wind up cheapening McCain’s personal brand. Maybe I’m being a Steve Jobs-like pie-in-the-sky perfectionist here, but having to play along with the illusion that John McCain sat down at his desk to deliver us gobs of text is demeaning both to us and to McCain. This is not direct mail. We are not some people data-mined off a consumer list who’ve never heard from you before. We opted-in. We are the top 1% — the savviest, most interested, most influential supporters. We get the joke. On the flip side, consider how much Hillary and Obama get simply by seeming real in their e-mails, even if they don’t get to cram in as many policy points.

This may all seem very esoteric, but it’s important. The pixels you see in the Hillary and Barack e-mails fueled the rise of the biggest people-powered fundraising machine in history. It’s worth studying how they do things at a very minute level.

Improvement starts by smashing the desk — and giving us the real McCain.

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You Lose, You Resign

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:46:41 -0700

There is no sugarcoating tonight’s result in MS-1. Thankfully, the NRCC doesn’t even try, issuing a soberly worded statement from Chairman Tom Cole in lieu of the usual upbeat results memo:

[T]he political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. Therefore, Republicans must undertake bold efforts to define a forward looking agenda that offers the kind of positive change voters are looking for. This is something we can do in cooperation with our Presidential nominee, but time is short.
I encourage all Republican candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall by building the financial resources and grassroots networks that offer them the opportunity and ability to communicate, energize and turn out voters this election.

The problem with this is that they’re pushing a “change” message with the same faces. The guy at the top of the ticket represents his own kind of change. But if we want 2008 to be more than a “lonely victory” you need a changing of the guard at the leadership and the candidate level.

I’m not going to say that heads roll because of these three elections alone, but if we fail to recapture the House or make surprising headway towards that goal, we need to be pretty firm that the current leadership must resign en masse. Boehner and Blunt have six months to turn this ship around.

In fact, this should become a standing rule: You lose, you resign. We will start winning a lot faster once there are consequences for losing.

That’s how it works in every Parliamentary system. One party loses the election even by a little, and the old guard turns over the keys. It may take two or three tries, but usually this results in leaders who not only talk different but are different. The grassroots needs to work to create this same sort of accountability here. And we need quit outsourcing Congressional elections to the Presidential level, since nationalizing the electon worked real well in MS-1 and LA-6.

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MS-1: Will Nationalizing Obama Work?

Sun, 11 May 2008 20:48:40 -0700

Another too-close-for-comfort special election looms on Tuesday, with Republican Greg Davis in a dogfight with Democrat Travis Childers in MS-1, a Bush 62%, Cook PVI R+10 seat. Childers nearly won an outright majority in first round balloting two weeks ago.

Once again, the strategy of tying Obama to a Democratic Congressional candidate is being tested aggressively, with Childers stirring the pot after denying Obama had endorsed him (when he in fact had).

This was what the NRCC put on the air in LA-6, our last special election defeat:

It’s no wonder Woody Jenkins came up short. This is a conventional cookie cutter ad that could have been run in any of the other 434 districts in any election this past decade. The NRCC claims some credit for tightening the race from the 5-9 point lead Don Cazayoux had a week or so out to three points, but at the House level and with the additional variable of a conservative independent on the ballot, that spread is not too convincing. Obama/taxes was ALL the NRCC ran in LA-6.

The NRCC’s IE unit is doing better work in MS-1, targeting its ads squarely against Childers:

Still, the Obama message is being heard in a big way, with Freedom’s Watch dumping at least $500,000 into anti-Obama spots like this one.

I have to ask: Is this it? Is this the best we can do? Demonizing Nancy Pelosi has worked nowhere because of the Speaker’s milquetoast public persona. Absent some scandal or hugely controversial statement, it’s difficult to nationalize a local race around a party leader. In the wake of Rev. Wright and “bitter,” some are betting Obama can be this lightning rod.

He may well be, but these special elections are the wrong places to test the theory. Special elections are low-turnout affairs dominated by high information voters likely to know a lot about local issues. These are the voters least likely to be swayed by a boilerplate nationalization of the race. This is part of why specials can often diverge so wildly from the partisan trend in a district despite the local majority party’s best efforts. In special elections more than most elections, candidates rise and fall on their own merits.

In the general election, with an extremely high noise level surrounding the Presidential race and Congressional elections an afterthought, Republicans might have better luck with tying red state Democrats to Obama. In November, a smaller percentage of the electorate will be making an independent decision about a local Congressional candidate. For many, their Presidential vote will influence their votes down ballot. This is why we seldom see huge partisan swings at the Congressional level in Presidential election years. Expanding the universe of low-information partisans voting tends to dampen the partisan mood swings we see in midterms. In Presidential election years, districts more easily revert to their partisan norms, normally a good thing in places like LA-6 and MS-1.

Still, we have to do better than the ads Republicans have run in these spring specials, which are so conventional they’ll automatically get tuned out and have zero persuasive impact whatsoever.

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The Left’s Stupid Anti-McCain Messaging

Fri, 09 May 2008 21:41:48 -0700

Third Bush Term. The Bush-McCain hug. McSame.

Excuse me while I McYawn.

For all the left has done to move bodies and build infrastructure, there’s one area in which they remain woefully lacking: message. Nowhere is this more apparent in their central charge against McCain: that he’s a Bush clone from top to bottom. From the Obama campaign, to the DNC, to 527s and c4s like David Brock’s Progressive Media USA, you’ll see this repeated over and over.

With President Bush’s approval ratings in the toilet, and I think I’m being charitable here, it’s easy to see the Democrats as picking off low hanging fruit. They’ve been Bush haters for this long, so why give up now? And why resist the temptation to hang the Bush albatross around the GOP’s neck, which would seem to be their trump card in another down year for Republicans?

The problem is that it runs counter to some deeply ingrained perceptions about McCain, the most transparently un-Bush candidate Republicans could have nominated. How does one overlook the fact that amongst Republican primary voters most dissatisfied with Bush, McCain dominated. Or McCain’s bitter rivalry with the President that lingered long beyond the 2000 election, culminating in charges that he threatened to leave the party, and now, that he didn’t even vote for President Bush in 2000? How does Arianna’s story square with the narrative of “McSame?”

The Democrats have chosen to run the same campaign against McCain as they would have run against Romney or Huckabee. This will turn out to be a strategic mistake.

Why? Because they ignore the new media reality that no amount of points on television can overturn a narrative backed up by the free media. The left’s “McSame” campaign is an example of the particularly crude communications tactic of countermessaging. Countermessaging consists solely of challenging a prevailing public narrative. The media is not liberal. There was no housing bubble. Global warming is a myth.

This tactic can be useful practiced by notoriously off-message B- and C-teamers running interference while, well behind the line of scrimmage, the quarterback prepares to throw long. The problem is that this particularly uninventive form of McCain Maverick Denial is the Democrats’ central strategy for discrediting the Republican nominee. Few people who aren’t partisan Democrats actually believe it. If you were to ask undecideds about McCain’s comparative weaknesses, I’m not sure Bush-coziness would be close to the top of the list in the same way it would be for a more conventional Republican.

If we are in an era of authenticity, where free media narratives reign, then you’re limited to arguing based on a candidate’s actual weaknesses and strengths. In a few cases, you can create weaknesses if you’re operating in an evergreen space where there are no public perceptions yet either way. Unfortunately for David Brock et al. Bush-McCain tensions have been a recurring theme in our collective political psyche for nearly a decade.

If the left were actually smart, what would they do to us?

Drive wedges between McCain and his base by playing up McCain’s ongoing feuds with Bush and the conservative movement, demoralizing conservatives and keeping base turnout closer to 1996-2000 levels as opposed to red-hot 2004 levels. Focus on insider issues like the 2000 vote that won’t get much play outside the respective party echo chambers, limiting any fallout among true independents, who are a dwindling percentage of the electorate anyway. Remember that it’s easier to get 4 million conservatives not to show up than it is to get 2 million independents to switch.
Portray McCain as the “fake Democrat” and Obama as the “real Democrat.”
Limit Bush=McCain criticisms to Iraq only, where there is already an established public narrative of McCain being very hawkish, and in fact, leading Bush into the surge. And isn’t Iraq the core of their indictment? Why muddy it up with domestic stuff where Bush and McCain are often night and day?
If you are going to focus on Bush-McCain similarities, always juxtapose with McCain’s past Bush opposition to make him appear inconsistent. But publicly recognize that Bush and McCain were once opposed, so you don’t take the credibility hit you would from straight-up McCain Maverick Denial.

Will they pick up on this? Doubtful. To do so would mean to concede some Republican talking points to make even more devastating anti-McCain arguments, something those like Brock who are accountable to the netroots must never do. And countermessaging is too central to what Brock does as the head of Media Matters advancing liberal media bias denial.

In many ways, the Bush 2004 definition of Kerry provides a useful contrast. It was a textbook example of a more nuanced message offensive that the base wouldn’t have chosen. It would have been easy to run a classic Kerry as Massachusetts liberal campaign. Instead, they tagged Kerry as a flip-flopper, with the goal of maximizing contrasts with a decisive wartime President. In that year, juxtaposition and the perception of incoherence mattered more than one’s current or past positioning.

And isn’t Hillary Clinton the ultimate example of one’s relationship to a President not counting for squat in a real-world election?

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Introducing The Next Right

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:35:23 -0700

Today, we’re giving a sneak peek into something new on the right side of the blogosphere: an online community for change-minded activists and hardcore political junkies in the conservative movement. We’re calling it The Next Right. We’ll be launching in a few weeks, and you can sign up to get an email when we do.

My partners in this endeavor are already well known to you if you’re a fan of savvy, fact-driven political blogging: Jon Henke of QandO and recently a consultant to the Fred Thompson campaign, and Soren Dayton of RedState and Eye on ‘08 fame and all too briefly of the McCain campaign.

Here’s why we’re doing this, and here’s why it’s different.

It’s no secret that the right operates at a severe disadvantage to the left when it comes to building online political infrastructure. People point to ActBlue and Obama’s massive fundraising advantage, but the problem cuts deeper: netroots activists on the left have built critical mass around an idea that regular people on the Internet can get their hands dirty and remix Democratic politics. They not only raise money. They recruit candidates. They fund full-time investigative journalism to ambush Republicans. They act as a party whip, creating consequences for Democrats who, in their view, don’t act like Democrats. They volunteer and flock to states with key races. The right can build all the tools it wants, but without a narrative and a rallying point for action, it will be for naught.

Part of the problem is structural. When the conservative blogosphere first emerged, we were in the midst of a political upswing, with back-to-back-to-back victories in 2000, 2002, and 2004. Political activism wasn’t going to be a comparative advantage for the right online. Most were content just being pundits or media critics. This trend was reinforced by the blogosphere’s success in scalping Dan Rather, part of a series of new media-driven events that arguably changed the trajectory of the 2004 election.

Ever since then, a radically different set of circumstances has dominated our politics. It’s one that requires a substantially different response — one that requires us to stop being pundits and start being change agents.

Put simply, the party, and in many cases, the movement, has lost its moorings. Earmarks exploded ten-fold, and it wasn’t under a Democratic Congress. In this winter’s primary, we saw the once mighty fiscal-social-national conservative coalition turned in on itself, with economic conservatives pitted against social conservatives. And too many of the “experts” in the Presidential campaigns this cycle failed to modernize the way the party does business, clinging to the old top-down rostrums of direct mail and fundraising-by-cocktail-party in an increasingly networked and crowdsourced world.

It’s no wonder that Joe Conservative outside the Beltway feels that none of his self appointed “leaders” are listening to him. He looks to Washington and sees a leadership class that is too often arrogant, timid, divided, and technologically behind the curve. It’s no wonder why this year more than most his wallet has been sealed shut when it comes to supporting Republican candidates — even the good ones.

We’re calling the site The Next Right because much of this story will be written in the future tense. Our analysis will be as much about looking ten and fifteen years down the road as it will be about dissecting the mechanics of the 2008 contest. What are the coalitions, strategies, and tactics the right needs to win again? How does the party need to change to attract a generation of voters who could very well be lost to us if we don’t move fast? Where do we find the candidates who will lead a resurgent right in the 2010 and 2012 elections and beyond? The vibrant discussion Soren, Jon, and many others had about the future of the movement last spring and summer would be perfect fodder for this new venture.

If you’re looking for pure-play opinion and link bait on sundry topics from Ann Coulter to Jimmy Carter/Hamas, you won’t find it here. What you will find is in-depth (often unabashedly technical) writing about the election, the polls, the strategy, and the issues. Our analysis will track truth and stay true to the numbers. But it will self-consciously serve a greater purpose — educating YOU to be your own political strategist and start doing something — whether that’s blogging about your local Congressional race or Democratic corruption in your state, organizing fundraising drives, and maybe even managing races or running for office yourself. Only a revival of civic engagement at the grassroots level will create a conservative future we want: one that is pork-free and robust in the defense of our country and its values. We can’t call a switchboard and wait for Washington to fix the mess. We have to do it ourselves, from the ground up, in every state.

In that spirit, we’re opening the doors to anyone who wants to blog on The Next Right. Users will be able to create their own blogs on the site, an ability only a handful of conservative sites offer today. We’re also looking for a great stable of front-page writers who can write smart, savvy analysis on a consistent basis — email us if you think you fit the bill. We want to open this up as much as possible. It can’t just be about the three of us, or it will fail.

I’m pumped about this new venture. The last few months have seen a considerable amount of backchannel discussion between the thought leaders about the sorry state of online activism on the right — often with great agreement on a direction moving forward. The good news is that the talent is there. I’ve long relied on Soren and Jon for high-level political analysis, and by bringing it under one roof and opening the door to more people, we hope this quickly becomes a hub right-leaning junkies like you.

We don’t think this alone will solve the activism gap. Anyone who tells you that they alone have the answer is fooling you. This is not “the Daily Kos of the right.” What we’re hoping to do is create momentum and an intellectual framework for action — because action ultimately starts with narratives and ideas. We want grassroots conservatives and libertarians to start believing that they can make a difference again — a sense all too many have lost. Only you – and not some well-funded 527 — can bring the movement into the future. Only when grassroots conservative have a direct stake in the future of the party are we effective. The Next Right is about creating a vision for a 21st century Republican Party and conservative movement.

On a personal note, you should finally see me blogging more, though not at PatrickRuffini.com. I’ve committed to moving all my purely political content to The Next Right, and will be setting up my RSS feed to automagically redirect you to my writings there. I’ll still keep some personal and tech stuff here, but most of my stuff will be there.

We hope you’ll join us in taking the next right.

Grand Theft Auto Republicans

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:16:57 -0700

Via Jon Henke on Twitter, this Google Trends chart for “grand theft auto” is pretty interesting. Not only does it show a noticeable uptick surrounding the release of GTA IV this week, but check out the Top 10 states where people are Googling the game: Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

These were all Bush states in the last election, or were tossups. Who knew that Grand Theft Auto fans skewed Republican?

Last fall, I blogged about how free analytics data from social sites around the web, in this case Facebook’s advertising platform, could be used for behavioral targeting. (If you watch SportsCenter and worship the Star Wars trilogy, you’re probably a Republican, and if you’re into Colbert and Paris Hilton, you’re probably a Democrat.) Though Facebook has since pulled its segmentation by ideology after its ill-considered move towards open-ended political affiliation, and we only have geographic data to go by in Google Trends, this data may gain more mainstream acceptance since there is no more mainstream action online than Googling for something.

For instance, Julie Germany’s microtargeting riff at SXSW that vodka drinkers are Democrats and bourbon drinkers are Republicans is fully borne out by Google Trends. All ten of the top vodka states are blue states. And eight of the top ten bourbon states are red states. And I didn’t need some six figure study to tell me that.

Combine the lean Republican nature of Grand Theft Auto players with the hard Republican tendencies of bourbon drinkers, and you’ve just microtargeted bourbon drinking gamers as solid Republicans. (We already knew from the Facebook dataset that the gaming community skews conservative.)

Of course, any post titled like this is bound to be a little tongue in cheek. More recent GTA adopters do tend to be from bluer states, as seen in this April 2008 chart.

Other charts can help quantify what we intuitively already know. Check out Twitter’s top cities: San Fran, Austin, Seattle, Portland, New York, LA, DC, and Boston — the classic early adopter lineup.

Ever since the Bush campaign’s pioneering use of microtargeting in the ‘04 campaign, building the perfect model for political behavior from consumer data has been the holy grail of politics. The reams of data that’s only now just surfacing about consumers’ online behavior is making it a little easier, allowing, say, a Congressional campaign to perform basic targeting on their TV and online advertising.