Political Gastronomica : August 2006

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Davis/Smith Debate II - He shoots, he...

Only in Florida can a campaign be sidelined by Mother Nature - and campaigns are trains that, by themselves, are forces to be reckoned with. After Ernesto cancelled the debate for Tuesday, the Davis/Smith campaigns have had a field-day regarding whether or not to commit to another debate.

As reported in the Miami Herald, the Smith campaign decided not to commit to another debate because of the planned campaign stops in Northern Florida. The Davis campaign got a chance to give a shot about Smith's connections with US Sugar. It was reported in the Palm Beach Post that Davis was ready as of 2pm Wednesday to be at the debate, but by 4pm, the Smith campaign decided that it would not work to be in West Palm Beach and still handle the campaign schedule they had already planned.

Is this horse-hockey?
Being on campaigns now for a bit of time, the time for prep and getting all of the practice in is extremely demanding on a campaign. I can speak to the stressors and efforts put into the Kerry and Deutsch campaigns to prepare for their debates - especially trying to get all of the advisors ready and to agree on what is the best spin on a topic. But, Rod is a natural orator. He was materful in the previous debate - and impromptu has never been his weak point.

Could it be that the efforts of ads, mailers and the previous debate (that is more than likely replying over and over again on PBS) was enough that Rod does not need any more visibility? With the Strategic Vision Poll out (reported by FLA Politics) yesterday, is it suprising the Rod is feeling the momentum that precludes a showing on local television? The amount of votes Rod is going to gain from this North Florida run that he has not already won is miniscule - compared to what exposure he might get given a focus on a West Palm debate. Think about the additional coverage he would get from WSVN and other local stations in a rich Democratic region like Broward County... Or could it be that Labor Day Weekend is not the best time to expect people to see candidates on television - especially since they would be heading out for a holiday with the family, and not sitting in front of the TV.

Truth be told, the race is almost over. After Labor Day, the decision will be made. The people coming out more than likely have already made their mind. The question is - who do you support?

Tags: Rod Smith, Jim Davis, Florida Governor

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Understanding nuances of Nicco

Unfortunately for the blog wave, I have been under a rock working on a number of different issues - this weekend had me taking care of affidavits, enjoy a trip to the Finger Lakes and then working non-stop on an NSF proposal for a community-based project for The Cooper Union due at 5pm today. So when I fired up my FeedDemon, suffice it to say I was surprised to see so much ruckus kicked up by Aldon Hynes' compassionate post, to Rick Klau's support, to Markos' and Zack's somewhat "pitch him over the rail" commentary. Reading through the comments on Daily Kos, I was blown away from the assertion that Nicco would ever be considered a traitor, simply because he might be "working for the enemy".

High integrity and high moral character
I first connected with Nicco back in November of 2003, when Dean had gotten the Gore endorsement and I first attempted to connect the tech guys from the campaigns via the DemTech group. Out of all of the campaigns, Nicco was the first person to respond to the idea of working together - and we kept contact for quite some time over the course of the campaign. When we hit our first million dollar day, he and I were caucusing about what was the speed of the Dean Campaign reaching that mark. When the Dean Campaign came to an end, Nicco was the first person i called to offer a chance to come aboard the Kerry Campaign. In every conversation i have had with Nicco, it has been one of integrity and high character - especially when he is addressing an issue that is in his heart.

I do not believe that the fact that he has been "helping" the McCain folk should be a damning thing against Nicco, since I do not believe that Nicco would ever violate the trust of a client or the Democratic Party. I think that Nicco has the ability to stand by his honor and integrity to be able to address this particular issue. I certainly do not think that he would have "swiped" any private information from a Democratic candidate and would use it in the McCain Campaign.

DavidNYC on SwingState Project makes an interesting argument about how to evaluate Nicco's decision and EchoDitto's action on "leave of absence" . I am not sure how to react to it -but I do expect (and this is IMHO) that Nicco and Harish would never jeapordize their relationship with the Democrats that they work with.

Maybe this is Nicco's way of having one last harrah before he gets married and settles down. He might be tired of campaigns and the politics within. Could he be wanting to see how the other side lives and work with a person he respects? He chose to work for Howard Dean well before anyone thought Dean was going to be a powerhouse. I, for one, accept his decision for the fact that he made it, has had it addressed in public, and is standing by it. I trust in Nicco's integrity. And while I may be fighting him in the trenches, I will afford him the respect of a worthy adversary.

P.S. Great recap by William Beutler at Blog PI on the progressive and the conservative point of view on the issue.

Tags: Nicco Mele, John McCain

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 11:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Florida Governor Debate - Smith versus Davis - who won?

Got home late last night and watched the streaming video of the Florida Democratic Governor debate between Congress Jim Davis and State Senator Rod Smith. As I watched, I tracked the performance of each candidate on each issue discussed gave my estimate of who performed in each issue to help me better understand the stance. Prior to watching, Davis came into the debate with assumptions of being stiff and not as strong a debater as Smith, whereas Smith would be more in his element.

After watching, and knowing about the race, I would suggest that Smith won over Davis - even though Davis did perform better than expected. The first half was light - and Davis was able to position himself as a straight-talker and more animated than I expected. If I wanted to play a little Oliver Stone, I might suggest that Smith even stumbled and played behind to gain some sympathy for his "nervousness". But once the two were able to ask questions of each other, Smith's abilities began to overshadow Davis. And, whereas Davis might have tried to point out how Smith had the backing of big, bad US Sugar - it came off sounding weak. Smith, who initially came off kind of "off" was able to pound on Davis two major points - you did not do your job AND you are a Washington outsider. Incredible as this seems, Davis, who originally used the concept of not being a Tallahassee insider to point out his strength, now found Smith using it to demonstrate how out of touch he was with the issues in State. His technique of discussing his family and being a parent was a nice tactic, Smith's use of "there's another Washington answer" during the debate was a deft touch to keep Davis positioned outside the Florida mainstream during the debate.

Style points go to Davis in the debate for performing better than I expected. And Smith, in the debate, still had his almost Baptist minister-like energy, but by the end of the debate, I had begun to get tired of the fast delivery and a sense of over-confidence. His last line in the closing somewhat unnerved me - regarding how Davis had not earned the right to be Governor and (in contrast), he had.

Who will be the best person for the job? I would say that Davis makes me feel that we will be the thoughtful Governor, but Smith has a record of deomnstrating how to handle the issues between working as a minority party with the majority working against him. He knows the system and more than likely would be able to work it much more effectively than Davis, who has been outside the social structure that is Tallahassee. While Smith has the backing of US Sugar (which I have seen first-hand the ability of their negative campaigns), he came across much stronger and more with a strong understanding of the issues and mechanations of Florida politics. Advantage goes to Smith, though I wonder what people in South Florida will say in the coming days.

UPDATE: Fla Politics has a great run down of all of the articles out today on the debate.

What follows are my notes from the debate - and my conclusions on who won the points on each of the issues raised.

Quick thoughts and notes:

• Opening - TIE - both made mistakes on the opening, neither were strong
• Fixing schools and keeping teachers - DAVIS who answered the question, SMITH only discussed the problems
• Same question - DAVIS again, answered the question
• Death penalty - TIE since Davis supports the death penalty, Smith speaks with authority but has not answered the question straightforward like Davis
• Email question: Preserving Florida history - DAVIS since he answered the question directly, connected on the heart issue. Smith good story-telling, focused on the developer control, Davis talks of his family history, historical boards, economic development
• Everglades cleanup/US Sugar - DAVIS - Davis worked on federal tax dollars for the Everglades, smacks Smith regarding Everglades, $1M to Smith campaign, back to Everglades cleanup. Smith points out delay did not happen, FL did the money expenditure, states $1M not to him, to 527, states not connected to US Sugar and polluters will pay
• Insurance - SMITH on the issue, DAVIS on connecting: Smith states get out of Citizens Insurance, sales receipts from previous years, reinsurers, independent board - smacks Davis regarding rates, Davis will raise the money. Davis states loophole was made to help people in problems, policy holder advocate general fight back now - Davis responding much better
• "Lax" gun laws - SMITH on the issue, DAVIS on connecting: Davis supports some restrictions on some guns, connecting with the cause even though not understanding well. Smith connects with story on past experiences - early prevention and intervention.
• DAVIS to SMITH: You fought against a third party mailer before, what about now? - DAVIS squeaks by barely - Smith says "I did not have anything to do with this" - and he believes that nothing should be a personal attack or untruthful. From his light eval, the content was not a personal attack - not going to work when you should have, not being on the job when supposed to. This is a discussion on trade issues. It is not untruthful. Davis reiterates US Sugar has control over you.
• Turning pointSMITH to DAVIS: You missed more work than anyone else - why did you allow politics to get in the way of your attendance? - SMITH - Davis says he had a 93% attendance now, 97% before the campaign. He has always been focused on Floridians - continued to fight against oil drilling, against Tom Delay, against Bush. Smith responses "Washington language" - politics ahead of your job.
• DAVIS to SMITH: Phone rates (gets a laugh) - Smith first supports and then repeals - was it a bad bill? - SMITH - Smith states that it is revenue neutral - you did not read the bill. Important thing to remember - always do best when we had competition. Be sure to read the bill when you get the work. Davis slams regarding US Sugar and how the phone bill was against us.
• SMITH to DAVIS: Class size at reducing class size and attracting new teachers - where were you? - SMITH - Davis supports reduced class size here. Davis responds with his past - he is a parent. Smith says you supported the record - painting Davis as Washington outsider.
• DAVIS to SMITH: Where were you on greenbelt bill abuses? - SMITH - Smith slams Davis - "check the record". I brought a bill to committee.. Davis states "you did not do your job" - a call to committee does not equal action.
• SMITH to DAVIS: compensation for claims act - SMITH - Davis states that he listened to the evidence, but the evidence he looked for was not there. Rather than focus on the popular position, he focused on what is right, not popular. Smith says this is "Washington talk" - accuses Davis of not making a stand when he could.
• Electronic voting machines - TIE - Davis discusses loss of confidence, "I will make sure we restore the trust in the power of your vote - do not let these folks make you think your vote does not count." We shoudl have a paper trail, we should restore rights to felons who have paid their dues. Smith focuses on his recent bill, and an amendment he attempted to pass years ago. Smith feels the issue of restoration of felons rights must happen as well.
• Higher Education - DAVIS - Smith speaks incredibly fast - will discuss resources, excellence. Davis recomments on Graham. Wants to reinvest in our students - not just adequate class size. Too much in terms of politics. Abolished the Board of Regents. Will change the business model in the state. $300M for 300 jobs.
• Wet foot/dry foot: do you agree? - TIE - Davis says the policy does not work, wants a fair issue. Wants a comprehensive immigration policy. Immigration reform - fair path to citizenship. Smith states does not work for FL - need to focus on the homeland security. Need to work toward guest status - need to focus on reality.
• How will you work with the Republican majority? - SMITH - Smith finds working with Reps easy. Been very successful in a Rep majority. States the intangibles tax reinstatement - Reps will be willing to work to this effort. Davis responds with an accusation of the falsehood of intangibles tax. Plan on raising teacher salaries - remove the rewards. Unite the state - the loophole is bad for business. Stand up for consumers. (Davis does not say how he will work with the Reps).
• Closing statement - Davis pounds on the negatives on Smith - tries to tie Smith to the "bad" legislature (never says Republicans). Who's going to be on our side. Judge his record - honored to serve as next governor. Smith agrees on effectiveness - connects on positives for himself and connected. Pounds on Davis' as a Washington outsider, misses , Davis' loophole - pounds on Congress again in terms of the Everglades. About effectiveness - Davis has not earned the right for a promotion. He says he has earned his chance to be the next Governor.

Tags: Rod Smith, Jim Davis, Florida Governor

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 4:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Will Social Networks Change Politics?

As the 2006 campaign is coming into the primaries, I recently lunch with a friend from Conde Nast who asked my opinion on whether social networks would have a significant impact on the upcoming 2008 Presidential Election. After our lunch, I glanced at my email inbox and found a newsletter from the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet which quoted an article (from researcher Riki Parikh) entitled "Will the MySpace Phenomenon Change Politics?". Just this week, the KerryPAC sent out a job description on looking for an Online Communications Director who would be "responsible for online community outreach and organizing, including strategy development, working with external/internal blogs and social networking sites, online organizing, e-mail campaign creation, and Internet-related project management." In my start-up consulting business, I recently met with a company that was trying to offer something that resembled Essembly-lite. And just yesterday, the IPDI announced a conference on the issue of social networks entitled "Person-toPerson-to-Person: Harnessing the Political Power of Online Social Networks and User-Generated Content in Politics" on September 15th in Washington, DC. What was amusing about the synergy these threads is that social networks is becoming the topic de-jour in the political realm.

Will MySpace and YouTube change the way the Beltway does politics? IMHO - Nah.
Every day, in the past two years, I have heard about MySpace and YouTube - this week, Fortune had an article on the "MySpace Boys". YouTube founders were getting fawned over on Good Morning America and other magazines. And the impact of videos on the YouTube site are sited as contributory reasons for Lieberman's downfall to the Lamont Internet-friendly campaign. But I would bet that when you ask any seasoned campaign professional - what will the real impact of social networks be in the political process, I believe you will hear in 2008 social networks will be a nice hype story, but the networks will not be as effective as they can be in terms of what is needed for political campaigns. And, because the campaign cycle is already upon us, campaigns will not work to use these networks effectively due to their high human cost and low return.

But I make one caveat - the only way social networks will have some REAL impact will be if campaigns dedicate the energy/resources to make them effective OR to let their supporters within these networks have REAL control over the messages in a fashion as described as virtual precinct captains.

History of Candidates in Social Networks - Is this new?
Interestingly, there were a slew of articles on the topic of the 2004 primary candidates using social networks. In particular, BusinessWeek discussed the Kerry/Edwards profiles on Friendster and how George W was no where to be found, Many2Many discussed Jonathan Abrames thoughts on Kerry's profile, and Salon discussed how Friendster changed their process for the Kerry campaign (see the article at Portfolio at NYU) - and that is just for Kerry as he was on the rise.

If you looked during the primary, you can find other examples of the other candidates and their efforts:

• General Clark was the first to have a profile in orkut, google's social network play, having a staffer manning the profile and communicating with people within the orkut network (before it became the virtual United States of Brasil). Then, with the creation of the Clark Community Network by Cameron Barrett and team, the Clark campaign could centralize their communications directly from a home-grown platform.
• Not only did the Dean campaign also establish a presence in orkut, Friendster and other social network spaces, but Zack Rosen and Zephir Teachout created the concept of DeanSpace (rumored to be inspired by an inadvertent purchase of networking books). DeanSpace became Dean's own social networking solution that would connect the campaign to the distributed campaign - much the same way MeetUp was doing already. Zack continued with his dream as civicspacelabs.org, which now is one of the best Drupal installations and seems to have dropped the social networking angle altogether.
• At Kerry, I have discussed our efforts which were managed by Erin Hofteig across a number of social networks such as orkut (where he also exceeded his maximum allowed friends at the time), Friendster, Ryze, tribe.net and others. But what was lost in the priority shuffle that is a primary campaign was the concept of KerryNet - a DeanSpace project designed to help our supporters become the virtual precinct captains. While the development on the transparent networking got shelved, the general concepts of the reward and centralized management structure was reflected in the Kerry Action Center.

Interestingly enough, the Kerry social network experiences provided some insights into how the relationship aspects could work - and the Leiberman/Lamont race demonstrated the next level of social networks - or how concepts/assets can be used within social networks to the advantage of a campaign.

Evolution of Social Networks
Back in 1995, companies trying to secure venture capital always had to include in their pitches some description of their "viral marketing efforts" - how they would keep the cost of marketing down and increase the growth by some form of "word-of-email" functionality. A slew of stories were written and a number of companies were relatively successful (eGroups, a company I helped with, grew faster than any known service at that time, due to the inherent viral nature of mailing lists). The first phase of social networks was supposedly about providing a new level of transparency to other people's networks - allowing members of your network to connect with others within to connect beyond your node. And the growth of this first wave? Email invites.

As networks have more transparent (seeing more degrees of freedom/friends-of-friends), a confluence of experiences have made the jump into more attractive networks than ever before. Services made it easier to express their personal interests in a machine-friendly fashion (read: tags), dating sites and search engine tools in all forms of web applications has made searching through structured (and unstructured) data easier, and the ease of developing community tools (e.g. Drupal, Joomla, RoR) has increased the speed to market immeasurably. Couple that with blogging, RSS, faster Internet connections, etcera - and you have turbo-charged connectivity.

If you want to find like-minded people who enjoy surfing on the East River, look in MeetUp for "East River Surfers". If you want to find people who want to help victims of the latest natural disaster, you can search the web via google or any other engine for the relevant keywords, or look on your social network for people who are involved in the effort. More than likely, if you are already connected to the networks, you have an email in your inbox calling upon you to get involved with an effort. And, if you want to help a local politician get support in the Netmosphere, create a diary on DailyKos and get a bunch of your friends to astroturf it - thus attracting others to get involved in the discussion.

But, waitaminute - this is about personal interests. People, given a passion for a topic/interest/action, and a "space" to form within - naturally self-organize, given an objective. In political campaigns, this seems like a natural fit - get the candidate elected and dedicate your time and resources to this goal. Uh ho, it is not that easy.

Preaching to the Converted - Friction-Free Communication
Now, mapping this to political campaigns, the benefit of networks would tend to be the ability to leverage supporter's connections to spread the word and/or to convince to participate - whether by signing a petition, sending a letter to an editor, or donating in a group fashion. But what is the problem with this? I think a hint comes from the quote that Riki brings from Clay Shirky's Many2Many blog post:

[W]e talked ourselves, but not the voters, into believing. And I think the way the campaign was organized helped inflate and sustain that bubble of belief, right up to the moment that the voters arrived...

So, social networks make it easy to find people of like-minds to work together, but does not afford the ability to converse or convince people on the "other side" to the merits of your points. And recalling the many "trolls" that scrambled on the Kerry or Dean blogs, discourse was not the order of the day - flaming and negativity was the order of the day. Even on forums, where people would sign up to join in the discourse, contrarian opinions were often shouted down, or shouted aloud without consideration. "You are WRONG, I am RIGHT" often seems how the discussion is engaged. So - why should we care about his issue of "social networks"?

Tipping Point Alert: Online Networks are hitting critical mass
A report I recently read has MySpace at over 100M registered users. hi5, another social networking site, has 25M. Tagworld, launched just over a year ago has 2M users and growing rapidly. The population of these networks are becoming the equivalent of medium-sized states which, if geographically bound, would garner a large number of Electoral College votes. But, in the eye of the seasoned professional, they are (often) not considered valuable because communicating with members of the community does not generate the benefits that you find in the real world.

Let me offer a couple of intriguing scenarios:

• Imagine if you would, former Governor Mark Warner having a MySpace page and a list of friends where he sends a fundraising email to all of his "friends". Think about the social impact that will have on the MySpace community. MySpace is about sharing content, swapping notes and building friends and recognition. Money making is made outside the community. I believe a case can be made for both sides.
• Now think about Senator Clinton, building a virtual campaign office in SecondLife, the 200K member community that allows for intellectual property ownership and currency exchanges. In this case, the campaign has a virtual store within the office where you can purchase "Hillary '08" paraphenalia with your Linden dollars (L$). To pay the "rent" in SecondLife, the campaign converts those Linden dollars used to buy the campaign gear into US currency through various online exchange sites. (Ooch - those pesky-little rules from McCain-Feingold could potentially problem for compliance issues - but it does help in those data collection needs).
• Or how about Mit Romney decided to try the Lamont tactic on McCain, using the content from Matt Stoler's many anti-McCain posts on myDD. He captures a lot of good video content, and now posts it on YouTube. But, in the forest that is the content within YouTube, very little gets found that does not have other support behind it. Maybe he decides to have his "Internet guy" navigate the over 300 video hosting sites, and post them there. Does he get the same bang-for-the-buck as Lamont did?

What does this point out? Applying the standard model or rehashed models does not always work - and campaigns are not designed to play long-term to benefit from the mistakes they make along the way (with maybe the exception of Hillary and Frist).

Thinking of these social networks as databases or platforms is a BAD IDEA - much like the way campaigns consider email lists and voter files as one large blast mechanism with a percentage of response that has a projected average take, social networks could be perceived as another form of communication that can be broadcast to in an "effective" (read: cost- and time-saving) manner. But, as many people have discovered when marketing in MySpace or on YouTube, the "social" aspect of social networks is key. If success in blogs is dependent upon two-way interaction, success in social netowkrs is even moreso. Consider that by entering into a social network, you are leveraging the trust of your connection, to reach out to another. If the relationship is not formed in the social structure that exists within the space, ham-handed actions will quickly alienate the candidate from within.

Campaigns will try, make hay in the press, but little else
Consider the goals of a campaign: raise money, raise awareness, raise lots of money, and then get the voter to the polls (and potentially convince the other side's supporters not to go). So, put yourself in the shoes of the campaign management - the challenge is: with these priorities, does a social network provide the return that the other tried and true methods do? Does conventional wisdom agree that this is possible? is the concept ahead of the curve?

Hillary has already begun with her recent hiring of Peter Daou as "blog advisor", Warner has Jerome Armstrong and now Kerry is seeking an Online Communications Director, will this be simply a channel for the Communications team to use for broadcasting or shaping the response - or will it become the conduit for coordination between the pieces of the fragmented world of the Internet - building the "virtual precinct captains" we once discussed for KerryNet? To be successful, this will require staff resources and management of large virtual teams. Will a campaign allow this to happen? Unfortunately, I think not - in this cycle.

One last minor anecdote - I always wanted to recruit a field person into the role of Internet Volunteer Coordinator, simply because they understood the need for coordinating large groups of people for a particular activity, and the Internet would just be a different "space" and channel for communicating with the supporters. At the Deutsch Campaign, I almost recruited one - but at the last minute, he decided to take a "real" field role in a northern state. But my experience in both Deutsch and Kerry field operations were incredibly instructive. Erin Hofteig played that role at one point, and I look forward to learning about others.

Tags: Social Networks, Election 2008, MySpace and Politics, YouTube and Politics

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 6:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Defining the main theme of 2006?

Interesting post by Stirling Newberry at BOPNews.com regarding the true motivation behind Lieberman's loss...

This race isn't really about the war - it is about lying. People feel they have been lied to - about the economy, about how sound the housing market is - one rural route was packed with for sale signs for homes - but it is the war that they have proof positive they were lied about. They want someone who can stand up to Bush - who is not "the President" but "that President" - and someone who won't lie to them any more. Lieberman's campaign, desperate to keep the election close, or even win under depressed turn out - has lied about Lamont's past, about his own record on the war - and now about their site being hacked. (my emphasis)

Interesting point. I wonder if the anger that is tapped here is truly from the national feeling - or a personal frustration at Lieberman (after the general impression of inevitability of his re-election). As I read the previous blog posts, I see very little extolling support for Lieberman, and a lot of people expressing their anger at him. With the blogosphere leading and the mainstream media reporting on the Cinderella story of Ned Lamont and drubbing of Lieberman, is it any wonder why he became the focus of the Dems anger at this time?

Integrity is a tough quality to measure - especially when you consider that it is not measured by the winds, but by a personal code. I wonder - does Joe actually think that the war is good or is it support for the Administration policies? The people that I know, who know him personal, speak of his incredible integrity and the fact that he would not be so duplicitous. His belief in the country and the threats that exist lead me to believe that he is strong on his convictions, even when faced with a vocal group of constituents who disagree with him.

Does he know something we do not?
Is it right to assume that Lieberman is privy to other pieces of data that we are not - and is it this information that leads him to make these decisions? It is this integrity that makes me (want to) believe that he must have some reason for his unwavering faith in this course of action. Maybe I am being naive about my belief in the goodness of others - but as I have said before, a number of friends have vouched for his integrity - and for that, he gets credit from me.

And, as I have said before, I am not in support of the war or the actions that have brought us to where we are today - but I still believe in the inherent goodness of the man - even if he seems to have lost the pulse or the sheer representative nature of his position.

Thought exercise: are Representatives/Senators supposed to be a pollster to their state in terms of expressing the majority opinion of the state - OR - are they to be the person we would trust to represent the best interests of our state in Congress? Is it better to have a representative reflect the moods of the people they represent, or be the person they have represented themselves to be in Congress? Or should we use the word AND?

UPDATE: just read at Media Matters that Bill O'Reilly and I seem to share a similar view on Lieberman. Not sure if that is a good thing or not, especially since I do not think highly of O'Reilly.

Tags: Joe2006.com, Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, Political Integrity

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 4:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ummm - Lieberman website crashing?

Interesting - learning about Lieberman's website going down - yes, you could potentially call this "hacking", but when you are under a large amount of traffic - as long as the traffic is coming from many different hosts, this would not be counted as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Let me see "the facts" - which, by the way, are snipets of information gleaned from the blogosphere

• The Leiberman website suffered from delays on Monday night and crashed by 7am Tuesday morning (Stanford Advocate)
• According to Dan Geary, there were numerous requests for "web pages, FTP files, and emails" which swamped the server. (MSNBC)
• The Joe2006.com server was on a shared machine which hosted 70+ other sites (DailyKos)
• The Joe2006.com server more than likely was on a low-cost solution that could have had a large bandwidth allocation (gleaned from multiple blogs and from MSNBC)
• Joe2006.com email server is hosted at the GoDaddy/SecureServer service provider (DNS Stuff)
• The Lieberman/Lamont primary was the most contested race on Monday/Tuesday which would have had a large amount of traffic on Monday and Tuesday (see previous post about web traffic)
• Today, the Joe2006.com website is hosted at a different IP address (68.178.232.95) as I gleaned from pinging the server

So what do I see? Actually, not enough for a conclusion. Simply - I would want to see the server logs on machine hosted at IP address 69.56.129.130 (the original site of the Joe2996.com site). Dan suggests that he got a deluge of FTP (port 21), emails (port 113/25) and web requests (port 80). Since the machine will track via logs. If there is an attack, it would have logs to show for it.

My guess is that the server was having problems because shared servers are reknowned for having limited number of web clients to handle traffic. No amount of bandwidth can address not enough web server processes to handle the enormity of requests. Just this week, one of my clients (www.goodnightburbank.com) just launched a new episode of their show. Interestingly - we have over 100GB of download purchased, but the site would not load for many people. What I discovered was the virtual/dedicated server only had a max of 10 http clients available for spawning and had no growth for increased need. Once I increased the settings, I was able to handle the enormity of the requests and the site was running smoothly once again.

What? What are you saying?
Best way to explain is using a supermarket analogy. When the supermarket is in normal operation, two cashiers are usually enough to handle the number of customers - and if each customer has ten items, then there is a set amount of time to go through each of the items and handle the transaction. And if the items are all the same, small size, then the time can be estimated pretty consistantly. But what happens when suddenly a hurricane is announced and everyone comes into the supermarket to purchase items. And not only toothbrushes or sliced luncheon meat, but big bags of dog food and gallons of water?

Now the store has only a set number of employees in the store, and a subset of them can actually run the cash registers. You can see that even though there might be an increase in throughput by the cashiers, the large number of requests would queue up and come to a standstill with long lines filling the interior of the store. Now add one more behaviour - after 10 minutes of waiting, people begin to leave the store in anger and disgust.

What I have just described is what happens between a web browser and a web server, if the web server is the cashier bank and the web browser is a single customer. The groceries are the various components of the webpage that are being requested by your web browser. In the case of the Joe2006.com homepage, there were 16 images that were separate from the actual page and unknown number of background images that also needed to be loaded. On top of this, the code running the website was not simply a web server - it was also a dynamically generated website which ran PHP (which is notoriously known as a processor hog). And, even if they did try to switch over to a new server which could handle the processing - the DNS timeout (telling the computers on the Internet to go to a different machine) would not have propogated (read: happened) in a time. Am I surprised the website ran slow? Not at all.

How to prove who did what?
Get the server logs. Real simple - and if the machine crapped out - it will be because the traffic load. If there were strange FTP requests or email requests, that would prove something was up. And, you can tell if they switched servers to a better machine to handle the load, because other DNS servers will know when the information changes for the IP address and the TTL (time-to-live: how often it checks for changes iin the IP address). But my gut tells me that they were suffering from a underpowered server - not too little bandwidth.

Related Kerry story
Yes - as usual, there is a related Kerry story. When we first were migrating from our underpowered server, Slate ran an article on our newest video ad and we suddenly found our web server coming to a screeching halt. Fortunately, we were literally were 90 minutes away from switching our video content to Akamai. That meant we had shortened the TTL time to 30 minutes and Akamai had the video streaming service operating - and we recovered within 45 minutes. And this was in October 2003 - well before the crushing traffic we were to experience in the coming months.

Tags: Joe2006.com, Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, Denial of Service, Overloaded Server

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 9:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And just what is the impact of TV on the web?

One of the questions I have been asked in the past two years was what it was like in the trenches when the campaign suddenly began to take off. As I have written in the archives, the change was astounding - but none so remarkable as what occurred on the night of the 19th. As all know, Kerry pulled off an incredible feat in winning the primary in Iowa - but what is not known is how difficult it had been to get Kerry to recognize the power of his own voice when helping the Internet side of the campaign. The image below is a data set I have talked about in the past, and now feel comfortable enough to share since this lesson is becoming more commonplace than before.

The Impact of Kerry saying JohnKerry.com on National Television

(click to see larger image)

Trying to get Kerry to say the URL
One of the hardest tasks we had on the Internet team was to get the staff to accept the fact that the website was an important part of the campaign. We had a memo written that requested the URL be included in every press release, Kerry wrote an email to the staff instructing them to include the URL on all communications and our ongoing challenge with the Political staff on the need for coordination between them and the self-organizing supporters through MeetUp was a regular head-ache. Even JK was uncomfortable about saying the name of the website - it was suggested he thought it was too self-serving to say his "JohnKerry.com" on television.

In an earlier archive post, I mention David Thorne, JK's ex-brother-in-law who was instrumental in helping the Internet Team get sufficient traction. What I did not mention is how David is the architect of what happened that night in Iowa.

After becoming incredibly frustrated with the Advance team and the Political team, David decided to take matters into his own hands. He ended up creating what is now the JohnKerry.com logo, getting it placed on foam-core, and then sticking it on the front of the podium before JK arrived. He then made sure the URL was in the speech and, as JK walked up to the podium, he whispered strongly in his ear, "Remember the website!" The results are seen above.

Afterwards
I spent that night babysitting the machines and tracking performance - making sure we did not crash. One of the tasks I took on was to find a way to track what happened in terms of time. The only dataset that was worthy of note was out bandwidth usage for our website. The graph shows five minute increments of bandwidth usage - and the peak shows that we had a jump of over twenty times the base usage in a very short period. In the world of large content sites, this is not that big of a deal (google 200x this traffic in a single day). But as a graphic to demonstrate what could happen, this was extremely persuasive. Once David showed this graphic to JK in the morning, he could not stop saying "JohnKerry.com" at almost every event he was at.

The power of the candidate is extremely underutilized - especially when considering what is the potential return. With the Deutsch campaign, I was able to tell when and where ads were being aired simply because the traffic impact was significant enough to drive people to the website in minor bursts. Do not discount the impact of multi-channel media strategies and the multiplicative results they can have.

Tags: TV and the Internet, eCampaigning, John Kerry

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Are you using the Internet as effectively as Hillary?

After going through my candiate emails (and trust me, there are a lot of them), I began to evaluate the rationale of the content (similar to what I did for the English eCampaigning in 2005). In going through the emails, I began to notice a trend that should be noted such that the other candidates are better equipped for the upcoming online battle ahead. To this end, take a look at this quick and dirty assessment of emails I have been keeping track of:

HillaryClinton.com
One of the interesting things about the frequency of the emails coming out, is that their specficity of action has become more targeted. In the last three months, Hillary (and her staff have) discussed:

• Sign a petition to fire Don Rumsfeld - which is code for "Iraq"
• Sign a petition for Plan B Emergency Contraception - which is code for "abortion"
• Sign a petition for Stem Cell Research - which is, well actually, about stem cell research (and "abortion") and sent twice to confirm
• Sign a petition to support Minimum Wage
• Contribute to NY Dem Mike Arcuri - which connects back to her Contrinution server and helps identify NY voters and others that would support candidates other than herself
• Sign a petition to support Net Neutrality
• Sign a petition in support Homeland Security - which is code for "defense"
• Have a House Party for Hillary - which is code for "super supporter"/influencer
• Sign a petition supporting Family Planning

All in the past three months. And note, almost no request for money for her - only for Mike Arcuri.

JohnKerry.com? In comparison, in the past three months, Kerry has sent:

• Requests to contribute to races he supports - which goes back to his contribution server
• Sign a petition for the Kerry-Feingold amendment
• Cheerleading emails ending with "Make a Contribution"
• Call your Senator on Iraq - with a "report back feature" on the page
• Support Enviromental Candidates fundraiser - back to his contribution server

And what about the other candidates? Well, Joe Biden's "Unite Our States" has:

• Asked for contributions
• Wished the list a Happy July 4th
• Talked about his recent trip to Iraq
• Told me when he would be on "Meet the Press"
• and asked me to read his speech, download a plan and then sign his petition on Energy Security

Why do you act?
Why the analysis? Consider the trends above - note that for every issue discussed, if you were to "sign the petition" or do the action requests, do you think your action results in an action within the campaign? Or are you saving the staff time and energy by keying in your details and signalling the campaign your interest "hot buttons"?

One of the greatest challenges we faced during the primaries of Kerry Campaign was how to inspire people to donate via online donations. In a crowded field of ten candidates and a front-runner found in the wintery hills of Vermont, we were frustrated with equal parts of growing our list and successfully burning it out with continued fundraising emails that were not very effective. With our limited budget and dwindling timeframe, we discovered that we had to optimize our email performance with the limited services and tools we had. So what is happening now?

Identifying your interests increases donations
One of the lessons I learned from Kerry Finance Director Pete Maroney and National Treasurer Bob Farmer (as well as others on the Kerry Fundraising Team) were skills about how to entice donations and convincing others to contribute. It was amazing to watch Maroney on the phone making calls to various donors. He was equal slaesman, taskmaster, psychologist and badgering family member - depending on whom he spoke with. He could be sweet, harsh, smooth, short, halting, etcera - whatever he felt would connect with the person on the other end of the phone. What made all the difference was his understanding of the hot buttons for each donor and how to conjole them to donate.

So why do I bring this up? Well, a lesson from Cialdini's book "Influence" talks about the start of the alignment and loyalty being borne upon the small, low-cost actions that bring about longer-term engagement and investment in whatever they are aligning themselves with. It is kind of funny to think that something as inexpensive as submitting your name and email address to a website should have any psychological impact on you, but consider the next step:

• The candidate that you signed their petition now asks you to help them with the same issue by emailing your friends about the issue - complete with a tool to handle composing and delivering the email. It does not cost you anything but five minutes of time, and you can even connect to your Outlook Contact list if you'd like. So, you decide to help and send the message to your friends or to the local paper.
• Now, Congress is now addressing this issue on the floor of the House or Senate. Now, they need you to reach out and tell more of your friends. Or perhaps to support another candidate on the issue since they are in a battle for their seat against the opposition. Give a small donation (with a trailing amount in cents to show your support) around $5, $10, $25.
• And now, the candidate is looking for contributions for some other issue. What do you think you will do?

The greatest value in the web has always been about information that can be pulled from large amounts of data. google started from an effective algorithm, but what makes the ads it serves effective is about knowing your interests and intents. Sales and revenue is the short-term metric of performance, but information and rationale for action is all about long-term "customer" value. Politics seems to focus on short-term returns - because campaigns are about 18 month engagements. Savvy candidates spend most of their time building Rolodexes with high dollar contributors and understand their rationale for donating - which makes raising money for re-election that much easier. But with McCain-Feingold and the ability of small-dollars to be aggregated into large funds, it is more important to understand the trends of the masses and slice and dice with greater precision.

Catching up with the (business) Jones
This is not rocket science. Companies have these tools within their grasp (look at E-piphany) and product driven companies know this in their DNA. Pollsters for years have been using this knowledge for the benefit of the candidate to understand the best message to address - since it has been focus-group tested and evaluated. Ahhh - but there's the rub. It is not about the lowest common denominator any more - it is about "mass customization" and building relationships with supporters while using technology and information to connect more effectively.

So what's a voter to do?
Good question. Interestingly, you have to decide for yourself. Senator Clinton, who seems to have invested the most in her Internet infrastructure and planning (as evidenced by her focus on soft actions, instead of continuous appeals for donations) has been working this for longer then most. While John Kerry might have a larger list (from the 2004 election), it is obvious from the body of emails that his focus is on his issues - not on the members of the list. My bet - with the Mayfield Strategies solution behind her, she will begin to target more specifically over time as described earlier. Down to understanding and mixing in demographic, psychographic and geographic information to better target you durring the primaries and even during the general. And what does this cost her?

Return on Investment
Well, since Senator Clinton (and Cantwell and Nelson) is running for re-election and she is a Senator, it turns out that Senators are exempt from submitting their financials electronically. But political action committees are not exempt - which affords us but a glimpse. John Kerry's Keeping America's Promise is paying Mayfield Strategies a maintenance fee of $5K per month for site and service management and when other features need to be added (like the Call Your Senator page) increases the spend to numbers like $10K. And, my evaluation suggests that they do not use MSG for their email content.

From my own assessment, it could be assumed her Senate committee (focusing on the longer-term goal of the Presidential run) is paying on the order of 10K per month - which includes service, content (especially for their emails and video) and statistics. And, add on the needs for additional services like Flash or other services not included beyond the base offering, and she could easily be paying on the order of $20K per month.

Sounds like a lot? Consider the total cost is on the order of $200K for a year. How much will be made in the long run with such improved information? Thinking long-term has given Hillary the chance to surpass the successes of Dean and Kerry. Dean brought in close to $40M with donations under $100. Kerry, simply by being the presumed Democratic fundraiser and the alternative to Bush, was able to draw in $82M during the primary on the web. Imagine what 2008 will bring.

For the price of two senior fundraisers, Hillary's Internet fundraising operation is position to break Kerry's totals - and provide Hillary with the most effective political marketing engine through emails, text messages, videos, etcera. What will the rest of the field do from this day forward?

Tags: Email Campaigning, eCampaigning, Political Infrastructure, influence, Hillary Clinton, Mayfield Strategies

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 7:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Emails Keep On Comin'

In the last couple of weeks, I have begun to notice a steady increase of emails from the various players in the 2006 and upcoming 2008 election cycle. Ranging from my frequent email missives from Hillary and John, I am seeing:

• Russ Feingold - using GetActive to send out emails to get people to sign his petition for healthcare and announcing his new website
• Evan Bayh - using a Articulated Man-like design to send out emails from his newly revamped website
• Senator Joe Biden - using a Articulated Man design and GetActive to send out media alerts

Additionally, I get email from:

• State Senator Rod Smith - running for Florida governor
• Congressman Jim Davis - Smith's Democratic primary competitor
• AG Charlie Crist - Republician front-runner for Florida governor
• FL Senator Bill Nelson - Senior US Senator for Florida
• Senator Maria Cantwell - running for Senate in Washington state
• Former Governor Howard Dean - for the DNC
• Congressman Rahm Emanuel and Congresswoman Nanci Peloci - for the DCCC
• My "friends" at the GOP and the RNC
• Democracy for America, True Majority and MoveOn on the left
• RightMarch on the right

And so many other players. One thing I noticed is that all (of the Democrats) are beginning to follow the basic premise of emails gained from the Dean campaign. Seen cribbing from the echoDitto site, most are beginning to use this basic format of links in the body and such. But, what seems to be missing from some - and especially from Republicians like AG Crist - is a succinct, engaging narrative that poses a problem that is solved by our involvement. Getting us to engage and invest in the solution makes us stronger supporters in the long run.

I have to give credit to some of the players - like BlueStateDigital (behind the emails from Rod Smith) and Mayfield Strategies (behind the content from Hillary, Cantwell, Casey and others) - they are generating well-written and engaging content. What worries me is that others - like Bayh, Biden and Feingold - who are trying to position themselves for the upcoming fight - are not winning the discourse. They are getting missives out there - but little engagement. Where are the real problems that we could solve with you - the candidates?

Anyone looking at Warner?

Hmmm....here is a candidate that seems to be involved in engagement, rather than announcement. In terms of his actions and interactions, this candidate seems to be building a relationship with his base. And instead of thinking of pure marketing (or broadcasting and blogging for the PR aspects), Warner seems to be involved in the communications - and building what people used to describe as the Dean campaign. Will a movement form? Will Warner's emails get to the level I describe? Not sure - since, for some reason, I have not been getting them. But I will keep on the look out and see how everyone begins to shape up. And - Sen McCain - what's up with your connecting?

UPDATE: Granted, getting a trackback from a fellow bloggerKari Chisholm is not usually cause for note, but when it is the first solid one that is not trying to sell Hoodia solutions, Viagra or other sundry links - all I can say is thanks.

Tags: Email Campaigning, grassroots marketing, Rod Smith, Jim Davis, Hillary Clinton, Mark Warner, EchoDitto, Blue State Digital, Mayfield Strategies

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 4:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Integrity - Lieberman-style

I was chatting with a friend of mine who happens to be a very strong supporter of the Lamont campaign. Senator Lieberman, who I have come to understand to be a person of high integrity from friends and associates who have worked with him, has been lambasted for his position on Iraq (which I personally do not agree with). His argument seems core to his belief system, which I understand to be the essence of integrity. While I may not agree with his point of view, I could respect him. My friend, on the other hand, could not.

To help in our discussion, I searched for the definition of "integrity". After hearing this word being brandied about this campaign season either as a badge of honor or a failing in others, I wondered if I really knew what the word integrity actually meant. Looking at Merriam-Webster site, I found this definition:

INTEGRITY
Function: noun
1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY
2 : an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS
synonym see HONESTY

What was especially interesting was the synonym: HONESTY

HONESTY
Function: noun
1 obsolete : CHASTITY
2 a : fairness and straightforwardness of conduct b : adherence to the facts : SINCERITY
3 : any of a genus (Lunaria) of European herbs of the mustard family with toothed leaves and flat disk-shaped siliques
synonyms HONESTY, HONOR, INTEGRITY, PROBITY mean uprightness of character or action. HONESTY implies a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way. HONOR suggests an active or anxious regard for the standards of one's profession, calling, or position. INTEGRITY implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility, or pledge. PROBITY implies tried and proven honesty or integrity.

In our conversation, my friend suggested that integrity and honesty does not necessarily equate - especially in politics. It is often perception rather than truth that becomes reality. Stated in a different way, honesty can be overshadowed by marketing political expedience - especially if the "firm adherence to a code" is the goal of being elected or re-elected. What leads to my respect for Senator Lieberman is his firm adherence to his views and the fact that while the winds of politics has shifted, he still is strong on his position and is standing his ground. While I do not agree with his position, I can respect the fact that he has put thought and deliberation in order to form his point-of-view.

The Challenge
If you are a staunch believer of the principles of your party and country, but your position is not aligned with with those in the party, how should you act? If defense of your opinion/reputation could be at the detriment of your party or yourself, what should you do? When forced to defend oneself from outrageous allegations, do you shy away from the battle for your values for the good of the party?

Politics is something I have grown to appreciate - and can only imagine I have a small understanding in the grand scheme. But I am often left wondering: do the mechanizations of politics and the games people play have to impinge on your integrity? Does a person have to forego the "moral code" one believes to play well in politics. When I think on this, I am brought short by one of my favorite quotes from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

While I do not agree with most of Senator Lieberman's views, I respect the man's adherence to his own moral compass. He is fighting his own battle - and while he strives for this seat, I believe he will fight the fight he believes in. In 2000, we had this man as our potential VP. In 2004, he fought a hard fight for the Presidential nomination. I hope the Joe-mentum does not fade away if he loses this battle. While I have never met the man personally, friends and collegues who have met him speak incredibly highly of his personal integrity and valor. While some would feel that he has lost his way in the eighteen years he has been in office, I leave the decision of whom should represent CT to the voters of CT. If he loses the race, I hope he continues to battle on the issues he feels is right and just. A democracy is made better by discourse, rather than consensus.

Tags: political integrity, Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, Theodore Roosevelt, Man In The Arena

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 7:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack