How Networked Campaigns Work, in English
Alex Steffen, 23 Jan 04
Whatever happens in New Hampshire, the Dean campaign's net-based strategy has shaken up the way the art of politics is practiced.
Now Howard points us to Henri Poole, who does a fine job of explaining in plain language the strengths of Dean's net-based campaign and how it works.
I'm still waiting for an analysis of what went wrong for Dean in Iowa that goes beyond "his paid media sucked." There's been an awful lot of talk about how much the Deaniacs did right in networking their campaign - but not much about what could be done better, what tools remain to be invented, and what sorts of things netowrked campaigns just don't do well at all.
Lots of analysis of this on this site: http://www.dailykos.com ( a somewhat dean partisan site, I think run by one of the guys who helped dean get started ).
In any case, my wife was also on the ground in Iowa, and what it sounded like to me was that there were a couple reasons 1) the Dean v Gephardt battle did a lot of damage and 2) poor organization on the ground - a lot of people from out of state who were not given much guidance in terms of how the Iowa Caucus worked. Out of towners were not matched up with locals. And, at least in the case of my wife's local Caucus, they were not aware that they should have been bringing signs and materials for in support of Dean. Edwards and Kerry people were all decked out.
#2 in short meaning that the internet network campaign of Dean is great for getting a message out and getting money, but there still needs to be a good person to person organization out in the real world.
Posted by: adrian cotter on 23 Jan 04
